Orbia.ag
commodities
Design of a groundbreaking commodity trading platform for farmers in Brazil.
How to match sellers with commodities buyers?
Led an 8-month project with Orbia.ag's Commodities and Payments squad to build an integrated platform for trading commodities between producers, distributors, and trading companies. The solution seamlessly connected to the inputs marketplace through barter operations, creating a unified, streamlined experience.
MY ROLE
UX Lead
Project background
Buying, selling, and trading agricultural commodities has always been challenging — marked by complexity, delays, and unpredictability. This has been the reality for rural producers and trading companies for years. Recognizing that commodity negotiations are vital to the production cycle, Orbia aimed to simplify the process by building an integrated platform that connects seamlessly with its inputs marketplace and loyalty program.
We set out to bring buyers and sellers together in one place, enabling producers to trade their commodities within minutes. With this 'Tinder' for commodities, we revolutionized the market by matching producers with the best buyers, creating an efficient, fast, and reliable trading experience
When the UX team received the business demand, our first step was to conduct in-depth research, including regulations around digital contracts (CPR) and understanding the language used by producers. We also performed market comparisons of existing tools to analyze both offline and online trading mechanics.
Using empathy mapping and a CSD matrix (certainties, assumptions, doubts), we designed a user research plan and conducted interviews with producers and distribution channels. Insights gained highlighted the influence of family succession in farms, the complexity of onboarding, and communication challenges between the parties involved.
Usability tests
With the prototype in hand, we conducted remote usability tests with 10 rural producers, including farmers and ranchers, aged 23 to 55 years, from 4 different states in Brazil + plus additional in-app surveys.
Insights examples
60%
of the producers are afraid to provide the CPF digitally, while 50% prefer not to provide the state registration;
85%
those who trade soybeans close with two or more companies;
90%
of them work with the futures market and not barter (exchange ratio), something even more expressive with the rise of the dollar
Results and takeaways
Right after implementing the commodities platform, we saw a significant increase in transactions; only in the first 24 hours we saw more than 10,000 bags traded on the platform with a value of R$250,000. In 2019 (I'm no longer part of the company), we overachieved over R$ 35 million of trades in GMV. We started the MVP with only one commodity, soy, but we expanded since to offer negotiations for coffee and corn, which should positively affect the numbers.
Some key takeaways are:
The importance of creating a strategic plan to launch an MVP. This helps designers to know what to focus on in the first iterations. We wanted to include many features that took a lot longer to implement and weren't possible the first time;
User testing is a continuous process. Since the first version, we have seen room for improvement in many ways, especially using analytics and Hotjar;
Product specifications are just as important. We realized that some rules we intended for the product didn't work as we hoped for.