How a User Decision Model Revamped a Used‑Car Platform’s UI

Clarifying Design Direction

Business goal → design goal

1. Business goals: higher traffic efficiency; better car‑finding experience.

2. Design goals: improve connection rate, reduce decision cost, enhance decision effectiveness.

Metrics : increase distribution capability, improve traffic utilization, raise connection rate and commercial revenue.

Research Plan

Two steps: pre‑connection decision efficiency and full‑process operation experience.

Step 1 – Decision Efficiency – Identify user motivations, core needs, and current problems through user interviews, feedback analysis, and data analysis.

Step 2 – Full‑process Experience – Conduct expert walkthroughs of the existing product, categorize issues, prioritize with PMs, and iterate the redesign.

Design Strategy

Step 1 – Discover Problems

Analysis of the old homepage and detail page revealed low scene coverage, a simple information structure, vague recommendation strategy, and insufficient decision information.

User Feedback Analysis – Users’ needs across the car‑search journey remain unclear.

Competitive Analysis – Competitors provide stable homepage scenes and multi‑dimensional detail pages that aid decision making.

Step 2 – Define Problems & Solutions

Key problems: information architecture does not satisfy user scenarios; decision‑information placement is ambiguous.

Qualitative one‑on‑one interviews identified four car‑search scenarios and their influencing factors, leading to the creation of a user decision model 2.0.

Visual Style – Continue brand DNA, align with user characteristics, and express scene relationships.

Step 3 – Apply Decision Model to Design

Homepage redesign 1.0 built on the decision model; 2.0 refined based on data, prioritizing user motives (e.g., upgrade, budget).

Detail page redesign enriched decision‑support information, followed by 2.0 iteration.

Step 4 – Validation

Post‑launch metrics show higher connection rate, increased commercial revenue, higher click‑through rates, rising PV, and stronger user stickiness, confirming the redesign’s effectiveness.

Conclusion

Clear design goals, a structured research plan, and data‑driven validation formed a closed loop that guided the entire project, improving user experience and business outcomes for the used‑car platform.