CDON is an online marketplace started in 1999. Starting with music and movies, it later expanded the product portfolio to include gardening, home, health, tech, and more, and opened up to many different types of merchants. Today, they offer approximately 12 million products from 2,400 merchants.
In 2018, tretton37 was involved in integrating and transforming CDON into a more scalable solution for merchant integration, as well as improving performance for both the B2B and B2C segments. In 2022, CDON approached tretton37 again to help them develop an app. Although they didn't have any specific ideas, CDON wanted to innovate and create something new. CEO Peter Kjellberg's goal was for CDON to focus on higher-quality products, improved delivery, and a sustainable approach to enter a greener market. This strategy would help CDON become more competitive and reach new target groups and investors.
tretton37 had a team of four people working with in-house employees at CDON to create a complete product team. We used Expo (React Native) for the app development, but we knew that simply building an app would not be enough to attract attention and create a new revenue stream. So, we conducted user interviews and analyzed market data to determine the best course of action. After a few weeks of research with the CDON UX team, we presented three different concepts to management for their consideration. The decision was made to focus on pre-owned products that were already on the marketplace but had a smaller profit margin. Few customers knew about these products on CDON. Through research, we discovered that customers interested in buying pre-owned products tended to return to the same source to find useful products, so we decided to focus on this segment. Throughout the development process, we continued to iterate based on feedback from customers and other stakeholders at CDON, including legal, marketing, data, and finance teams.
Within 6 months, we were able to launch the app for both Android and iOS platforms. The app was specifically designed for pre-owned products and featured various functions such as filtering products, saving products to a wishlist, searching, and logging in or creating an account. Additionally, campaigns could be run within the app to further promote products.
On October 21st, a soft launch was conducted, which meant that no paid marketing was used, only CDON's own channels. In the first quarter, the app was downloaded by 3000 users and had a 50% retention rate, with an average time spent of 22 minutes in the app.
.webp){kind=small}
