💡 Continuing from Part 1
This article builds on Part 1: Delightful Seller Experiences in an Agentic World, moving from the possibilities of agentic seller experiences to what good could look like in practice.
I’m apprehensive about claiming that there is a template for creating great products. Great products rarely come from following a standard template or applying a set of best practices. They come from understanding their users: their habits, their quirks, and what matters to them. For example:
- Apple understands that upgrading your device shouldn’t mean starting again. The new device feel like yours from the start.
- Canva understands that its users don’t necessarily want to become professional designers. They want to create something that looks professional.
- Noom, the weight-loss app, understands that people trying to lose weight are often hungry (for information, ahem) about how to stay consistent. Its short daily lessons offer a little to absorb and act on each day.
The common thread is how well the product fits the people using it.
That matters even more as we move towards agentic experiences. We’re moving from giving sellers workflows to complete tasks themselves to actually doing the work for them.
To do that well, we need to understand who we’re solving for, how they think, and what they care about - and carry that understanding through every decision the system makes on their behalf.
Product 101 : Getting back to our Seller Cohorts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaL2KRZUzkI
This brings us back to : user cohorts. every eCommerce marketplace has classified its cohorts, put them on posters, and shared them across the organization.
But rarely have the partner experiences been defined with these cohorts in mind. In a classic seller scenario -
- The business owner cares about growth and profitability.
- The catalogue team cares about getting products live accurately.
- The fulfilment team cares about dispatches and exceptions.
- The commercial team cares about sales and advertising performance.
For our example, let’s take a business owner joining a marketplace for the first time. They’re bringing their boutique fashion line onto the platform and don’t quite know what to expect. They have a lot of questions running in their minds.
“Will sales take off on day one? How long will it take to get my first order? Will customers care about what I have to offer?”
They know their products. What they don’t yet know is how those products will find an audience in this new environment - or what it will take to build a successful business there.
Day 1: Their inventory is on board. What happens next?
Day 1: the welcome sets expectations, and the numbers stay small until there’s something to show.
“Okay, my products are on board.
When can I expect my first sale?
Is there anything I can do in the meantime?
Why is no one seeing my products?”
A brand-new shop has a dashboard full of zeros, and those zeros don’t help the seller understand anything.
At this point, it may be enough to explain what happens next, what they can do to improve visibility, and when they can reasonably expect to see early signs of interest.
Nothing more. Give them a sense of what to expect and something useful to do. Otherwise, they may simply refresh the page 30 times, only to leave disappointed.
They need that handholding, is the product able to provide that, to the same extent as a partner?
Day 7: “Right on time”
Day 7: progress is measured against what was promised, and the next step is one click away.
“Someone just wish-listed my product? Would they buy it now?
I just got my first sale, how do I make it perfect”
The first favourite. The first sale.
These are moments worth celebrating with the seller. Someone noticed their product. Someone chose to buy it. Their business on the platform is beginning to take shape.
Then, help them make the most of that moment.
Every partner goes through onboarding, but information shared upfront won’t always stick. What is more likely to stick is consistent, relevant guidance at the moment they need it.
That first order is the start of the journey. Now, help them deliver a great experience: prepare the order, check the packaging, dispatch it on time, and keep the customer informed.
Celebrate the milestone. Make the next step clear. Help them feel, “I’ve got this.”
Then keep helping them along the way.
Day 30: “Here’s what we’d do next”
Day 30: a normal dashboard, led by the one chart that matters and recommendations ready to approve.
By the end of the first month, Sam has a real business to look at.
The screen now becomes a more familiar dashboard. It leads with units sold, explains what went well and what could improve, and then gets to the part that matters most: what to do about it.
The cues are there, with recommendations for what to do next and deeper analysis of what worked and what didn’t. Sam can explore any point that needs more explanation.
“My fulfilment rate is low. Why is that?”
“Tell me more” should open up a deeper investigation: what happened, what contributed to it, and what Sam can do to improve.
The dashboard gives Sam a view of the business, with help close at hand whenever they want to understand something better or act on it.
Bring the expertise into the product experience
No one has a better view of what drives success on a marketplace than the platform itself: which product attributes matter, how delivery affects the customer experience, and what successful sellers do differently.
Platforms often share that knowledge at seller conferences or through business development teams. Why isn’t it built into the product? Why can’t the product be the consultant?
It could help sellers identify where they can improve, explain why it matters, and guide them through what to do next.
Part of the promise of a marketplace is that anyone can set up shop and give their products a chance to succeed. That promise is stronger when every seller can access the knowledge they need to compete—not just those with an account manager or a seat at a conference.
Teaching sellers how to use your product to achieve the outcomes they want should be a responsibility of the product itself.
Same business, different priorities
The experience above is designed for a business owner focused on making their business succeed. An operations or catalogue team may have a very different view.
Their questions are more specific: Is the catalogue complete? Is the information accurate? Do the images, descriptions, sizes, and other attributes give buyers what they need to make a confident decision?
The experience should reflect those priorities, helping them spot gaps, understand which ones matter most, and act on them.
The same shop, viewed as Catalog Onboarding: counts to act on, a to-do queue, and new listings checked attribute by attribute.
The view a marketer or sales team needs may be different again.
We need to tune each experience to the person doing the job. Understanding their jobs to be done—and shaping the experience around them—becomes the central task.
The platform should become an expert consultant, helping each person bring out the best their products have to offer. Technology should increasingly enable that ambition. From there, the system can fit into their specific workflows and take on more of the work.
Knowing your user cohorts and their jobs to be done is an essential first step in building a successful agentic experience. Everything else follows from how well you translate that understanding into action.
Do you know your cohorts, and what they care most about? If not, it may be a good place to start. No great agentic product would come out of not knowing the top things that your key cohorts care most about.
In the next section, we’ll explore why your agent strategy isn’t a chatbot.
Betsy is a fictional marketplace; all names and numbers in the screens are illustrative.
