User Experience Is Make-or-Break for Resale Platforms

For secondhand goods marketplaces to function, they need to attract sellers, and those who want to resell items care about more than whether there are going to be buyers — they want it to be easy.

By the Numbers

The March edition of the PYMNTS Intelligence series “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report,” titled “Tracking Consumer Use of Supplemental Income Sources,” drew from a survey of more than 4,200 U.S. consumers in February to understand their financial lifestyles.

Supplemental research from the study found that 54% of resellers consider how easy and intuitive the interface of a given online secondhand marketplace is when deciding where to sell their items. The share of consumers who care about usability is roughly equal to the share that cares about how large the platform’s user base is.

The Data in Context

Resale has been on the rise as consumers seek both supplemental income, on the sellers’ side, and less expensive purchasing options, on the buyers’ side.

European resale marketplace Vinted seems to have found the formula for success in the space by diversifying its platform to generate revenue from multiple aspects of the user experience. Last month, the company announced it achieved profitability for the first time.

“We have been deploying capital with high ROI for many years, constantly taking into account the financial sustainability of our investments, so I am pleased we are able to now share that we are operating profitably and posted positive EBITDA for 2023,” Vinted Group CEO Thomas Plantenga said in a statement at the time.

Plus, Faircado shared Tuesday (May 28) that it raised $3.3 million to advance its AI-enhanced reCommerce platform. The company expressed its aim to empower consumers to make environmentally and economically conscious purchasing decisions by facilitating the transition from new to secondhand goods.

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