Takealot Onboards New Sellers & Drives Advanced Feature Adoption With Whatfix

$224,000 in total value realized

by accelerated seller onboarding, improving advanced feature adoption, and containing support tickets.

132,000 deflected support tickets in FY24

due to sellers resolving issues indepedently with Self Help.

83% accelerated

time-to-onboarding completion for new users to create their online store and make their first sale.

"With Whatfix, Takealot has enabled its sellers to make their first sale with frictionless product-led portal onboarding, keep up with advanced seller portal features and selling techniques with in-app communication, and overcome support issues with self-guided experiences. We're not just enhancing efficiency, but fostering a culture of growth and success together."

Louanne Reynolds, Product Manager at Takealot

The Takealot Story

Enabling Sellers With Product-Led Onboarding and Self-Guided Experiences

Takealot is the leading online marketplace in South Africa and one of the continent’s largest, most innovative e-commerce marketplaces.

With 10,000 active monthly sellers using Takealot, the brand is tasked with constantly onboarding new sellers and supporting its existing seller community.

New sellers are eager to begin selling on the platform, and existing sellers want to maximize sales revenue while taking advantage of advanced e-commerce features, such as sales promotions and performance reporting.

Too often, however, sellers experienced friction using the Takealot seller portal. New sellers, for example, required guidance to set up their profile, create their first shipment, or manage orders. Existing sellers needed assistance with more advanced processes, such as managing inventory, administering after-sales queries, or analyzing reporting metrics.

The growing number of support tickets overwhelmed Takealot’s help desk, causing onboarding delays for new sellers, frustrating existing sellers, and resulting in low feature adoption and usage. Adding to the problem was the help desk-managed communications regarding new seller services, features, and announcements amidst the high volume of inquiries.

The Solution

Enabling Sellers With Whatfix Self-Guided Experiences to Drive Advanced Feature Adoption

Takealot standardized its seller onboarding and support process with Whatfix’s DAP to enable sellers to maximize its platform’s benefits with self-guided experiences.

Takealot created interactive in-app tutorials that guided sellers through completing their onboarding and account setup, uploading their first product, and better understanding the overall Takealot portal.

Whatfix provided sellers with up-to-date information regarding the selling portal, enabling Takealot to announce new selling portal features and push other contextualized content to sellers inside their portal with in-app alerts and pop-ups.

This in-app guidance supported sellers throughout the end-to-end selling process. For example, when new sellers logged into the portal, they were presented with an introductory video explaining how to register and where to find support.

With Whatfix Self Help, Takealot enabled its sellers with an in-app resource center that provided a frictionless way to resolve any seller portal-related issues and find additional help content, from how to use its advanced seller features to overcoming typical seller problems.

Self Help integrated with Takealot’s FAQs and knowledge base, included videos to support its seller community, and included prompts that guided users through its seller portal features with step-by-step walkthroughs.

Whatfix’s analytics dashboard provided an overview of all seller interactions with Whatfix content and the underlying portal. It enabled Takealot’s stakeholders to understand the seller adoption, feature usage, and onboarding effectiveness, while identifying any additional areas of friction that required attention.

For example, Whatfix Analytics revealed that Takealot averaged 10,000 daily active sellers engaging with its portal, with 80% of sellers interacting with Whatfix content and 98% of all Self Help searches successfully connecting sellers with contextual user support content.

The Results

Takealot Empowers Its Sellers and Drives Business Growth

Using Whatfix, Takealot streamlined the complete seller journey, making it faster and easier for new users to start selling products, guiding sellers to experience their “aha!” moment and adopt advanced features, and delivering a more rewarding user experience to its sellers. These improvements empower Takealot and sellers to grow their business and increase revenue.

With Whatfix, Takelot experienced the following benefits:

Accelerated and improved new seller onboarding: Takealot enabled new sellers to use its portal quickly with product-led onboarding and in-app guidance – reducing time-to-onboarding completion by 83% (from 30 minutes to 5 minutes.) This enabled new sellers to take advantage of the Takealot platform, allowing them to list and sell their first items on their first login.
Supported sellers in using advanced features and ultimately selling more: Step-by-step walkthroughs on product listings, inventory management, and other tasks enabled sellers to concentrate on selling rather than learning how to use the portal, driving advanced feature adoption and help sellers take full advantage of Takealot’s product updates and seller portal features.
Improved profile completion and product description with AutoComplete: Takealot is also an early adopter of Whatfix AI and has implemented AutoComplete across its seller portal. With AutoComplete, sellers are empowered with a writing assistant to easily add product descriptions by suggesting the next set of words that sellers should write. This improved the quality of product descriptions across Takealot’s marketplace, as well as improved profile completion rates.
Deflected seller help desk tickets with self-guided support: In the last six months, Whatfix enabled self-guided support within Takealot’s seller portal, deflecting 132,000 support queries and giving back 33,000 hours to the business.
Improved visibility into the user experience: Takealot implemented Whatfix Analytics to gain comprehensive data on user engagement. In six months, it uncovered 2,462 positive comments, with a 93% positive feedback rating. It also used Guidance Analytics to understand how sellers engaged with in-app experiences, allowing Takelot to take a data-driven approach to onboarding and support improvements.
Improved adoption of new features and actively communicating to sellers: In six months, Takealot used 148 in-app notifications to drive awareness and adoption of product updates and new features, with users interacting with this content 51,544 times.
Delivered significant business value: Whatfix helped Takealot save $224,000 in one year by simplifying portal adoption, accelerating engagement with feature updates, and decreasing support inquiries.

“With Whatfix’s AI capability, AutoComplete, Takealot empowers sellers, saving significantly while delivering an exceptional experience. Leveraging AutoComplete Takealot boosts productivity with automated suggestions accepted by over 30% of sellers.” said Louanne Reynolds, Junior Product Manager at Takealot

Takealot’s success showcases how the Whatfix Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) has significantly streamlined onboarding with product-led experiences, enhanced seller engagement by driving new and advanced feature adoption, and enabled sellers with self-guided support and knowledge discovery on its platform. As an early adopter of Whatfix’s innovative products, Takealot has set a benchmark for leveraging technology to drive continual success in the online marketplace and e-commerce landscape.