Selling Your Own Car
A mobile selling flow vision for private car owners that inspired a 35.8% increase in conversion.
Most buyers have a car to sell
80% of people buying a car on AutoScout24 also have one to sell, yet fewer than 20% of them were using our selling options. For a marketplace, every one of those cars is supply going somewhere else.
I was tasked with unifying our selling flows, and with creating an inspiring visual direction for where they could go next: one that would shape roadmaps and give the rest of the UX team a reference to design towards. As a vision rather than a build, it was a solo project, and I worked closely with our VP of Design throughout.
Choosing before you know
Sellers had to decide up front how they wanted to sell: list their car privately, sell it to a dealer, or just find out what it was worth. Each choice led into its own separate flow.
But our previous research and conversion stats showed that most people can’t pick the right route until they know what their car is worth and how much effort each option takes. We were asking the hardest question first, before giving them anything back.
One flow, built around the seller
The vision tested one big question: where do sellers actually do this work? At their car, where we could guide them through scanning the VIN and taking each photo on the spot? Or on the sofa, working from photos they’d already taken? I built two prototypes, one for each, and tested them with sellers.
The answer was both, with a lean towards the sofa. Sellers found working from the sofa easier, didn’t always fill in the listing in the order we suggested, and often came back over more than one session. So the ideal flow supports either route: scan the VIN at the car or enter details by hand, take guided photos or add ones you already have, and save progress automatically so sellers can pick up where they left off.
Testing also made the starting point clear. The valuation was the common thread: it was what both routes, private sale and DirectSale, depended on, and for many sellers it was the thing they wanted most. Once we’d shown them that value up front, it was much easier to bring them into the rest of the flow.
From there, the vision guides sellers through the rest: photos reordered to put the best first, and condition rated against real examples of dents, scratches, tears and stains.
“How should I sell my car?”
The business’s question“How much is my car worth?”
What sellers were actually asking
Where the team landed
Much of the direction shipped. Valuation first, with vehicle details collected before sellers choose how to sell, rolled out across Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, and VIN scanning launched in the app.
The vision’s prototype and testing fed directly into planning, and its DirectSale entry point went into the next round of design. Its biggest lesson changed how the team thought about listing: sellers didn’t do it in one sitting at the car, and many listed from the sofa over several sessions.