Location Services, Spatial Data Marketplace
Year: 2023A B2B marketplace that turns a global location-data provider’s deep, technical catalog into something teams can search, understand and buy online.
- A global location-data provider with a deep, technical catalog.
- Made the catalog searchable and buyable like any online product; it became the storefront for all of the provider's products.
- Built search and filters on a real information architecture, so the right product surfaces fast across a large catalog.
- Designed the provider's side too: catalog management and analytics.
Context
A global location-data provider had a deep, highly technical catalog, and no good way for buyers to discover or purchase it.
A deep catalog
Highly technical location data, products, services and plans.
Hard to discover
Buyers had no good way to find the right product.
Hard to buy
No way to purchase it like an online product.
Problem
The brief: make enterprise spatial data feel like buying any online product, without losing the control the provider needs.
Like any online product
Search it, understand it and buy it online.
The provider stays in control
Commercial and operational control over the catalog.
My role
I was a senior product designer, working alongside a senior design manager. I drove the design with limited stakeholder input, which meant owning the structure, not just the screens.
Research
User research and customer journey mapping.
Audit
UX patterns across the provider’s products.
Structure
The information architecture behind search and filters.
Design
The storefront, the purchase flow, the platform home and the provider’s side.
Process
The structure came from user research and customer journey mapping with the design manager, plus an audit of UX patterns across the provider’s products. Search and filters were built on that information architecture, so the right product surfaces fast across a large catalog.
Solution
Findability is the whole game
- Challenge
- A catalog this size lives or dies on search.
- Solution
- The filter system mirrors how buyers think, by industry, use case and data type, not how the catalog is organized inside the company.
You can’t put a continent in a cart
- Challenge
- Buying “probe data across Europe” is abstract until you can see it, scope it and price it.
- Solution
- The region picker turns coverage into a concrete, transparent purchase: pick the sub-regions and the date range, see the monthly price.
A front door for a broad platform
- Challenge
- A platform this broad drops a new user into its full surface area.
- Solution
- The home orients them toward the few things they actually came to do.
The provider’s side
The provider’s side was designed too: a management and analytics surface to run the catalog, not just a storefront to shop it.
Outcome
The storefront for all of the provider’s products.
The marketplace became the front door to everything the provider sells.
Two sides, one marketplace.
A storefront to shop the catalog, and a management and analytics surface to run it.
What I learned
Own the structure, not just the screens
With limited stakeholder input, the information architecture decided more than any single screen.
Design for how buyers think
Organizing by industry, use case and data type, not by the company’s own catalog, is what made it findable.