Frustrated with the lack of a simple way to sell and buy items online, theGOOD charged itself with imagining and developing a solution.
The challenge was to make selling and buying anything online dead simple, transparent and efficient by using existing platforms people are already engaged in. From both a design and usability standpoint, simplicity was the overarching guiding principle. Challenges abound when developing user flows for selling, buying, listing, bidding, and all other elements inherent in creating an online e-commerce marketplace.
theGOOD concepted, designed and developed Sell Simply using the Twitter API as the core user account and application engine platform. Twitter was chosen due to its wide adoption, transparency of user accounts, and real-time data qualities. Boiling down listing products to the simplicity level of a single tweet was a valid and good solution to the original problem.
On Sell Simply sellers have a Simple Shop, where they can list items of any variety for sale. Shoppers looking for these items can easily search by tag, location, keyword and price range. Shoppers can “follow” these searches to get a direct message when an item matches their search criteria. Once they find an item they like they can make an offer. Sellers can accept any offer at any time and get paid with their PayPal account. Shoppers can “follow” these offers to be alerted when their offer has been accepted, or outbid. All communications are facilitated using your Twitter account.
Think of Sell Simply as an Etsy, only simpler, cheaper, without product restrictions, and controlled with your Twitter account. Think of Sell Simply as Craigslist, only totally transparent, spam free, and without all the back and forth email hassle. Think of Sell Simply as an Ebay, only something that takes you minutes, not hours, to experience.
