Enhancing Trust: Verifying Private Sellers to Combat Fraudulent Listings

The opportunity

Imagine you’re looking to buy or sell a car. You come across a promising vehicle from a private seller or, perhaps, you're the one listing your car, navigating conversations and negotiations with potential buyers on your own. For many, especially first-timers, this process can feel overwhelming and fraught with uncertainty.

At AutoTrader, we uncovered through data and user feedback that fraudulent activity was a significant pain point in these private transactions. Fraud ranged from payment scams to vehicle and money theft, typically happening when users stepped outside of the platform to finalize deals. This not only jeopardized their safety but also created a sense of distrust between buyers and sellers—ultimately affecting the credibility and success of our marketplace. At the time, fraudulent listings accounted for approximately 14% of all listings, and our goal was to reduce this number by half, down to 7%.

Recognizing this, we saw an opportunity: how might we reduce fraudulent activity and make transactions more secure for our users? We decided to focus on the source—ensuring the listings posted by private sellers on our site were more trustworthy, creating a safer experience for everyone involved.

solution

Entering this project, the team had a solid hypothesis: requiring private sellers to verify themselves before listing an ad could help reduce fraud. However, we needed to balance this approach carefully to avoid decreasing the number of listings on our marketplace, which is known for having the most vehicle ads in Canada. This initial solution was a stop-gap measure to test its impact on fraud before committing to a third-party verification system.

After kicking off the project, speaking with stakeholders, and mapping out the user journey, it became clear that focusing solely on the user journey wouldn’t be enough. We needed a comprehensive view that went beyond the front-end experience, encompassing the back-end processes, tools, and people involved. To gain this understanding, I conducted both primary and secondary research, leading to the creation of a service design blueprint. This allowed us to map the end-to-end process, including all supporting systems, and align stakeholders on the current state. With this clear picture, we were able to evaluate how our verification hypothesis could seamlessly integrate into the overall process.

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Here is a bird-eye view of the service blueprint

Following the creation of the service blueprint and sharing it across the product team, I conducting a competitive analysis, exploring various types of verification methods, and reviewing with the team how assertively we wanted to implement this process were all key in balancing safety with maintaining the number of listings on the marketplace. These insights helped inform the flow and design decisions moving forward.

Once the flows and wireframes were ready, I conducted five moderated usability tests to address uncertainties around the process, focusing on user willingness, ease of use, interest, and perceived value.

Next, I worked with the business team to address outstanding details, such as email communication for users who did and didn’t complete the verification, transparency around verification timeframes, potential text messaging capabilities, handling sensitive user data, legal involvement, copy updates, and communicating additional value propositions. These considerations ensured the solution would be well-rounded and thoughtful as we moved forward.

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here are the final designs for the verification flow