We built Villagr, an e-Commerce web platform focused on promoting small businesses in need.
Live Demo: https://villagr-client.herokuapp.com/map
Summary
Background and Context
Research
Competitive and Comparative Market Analysis
User Stories
Data Insights
Information Architecture
Wireflows
Features
UX Prototype
Credits
Our Team
- Small-business owners and service providers that are struggling financially need to be prioritized and given more visibility in online spaces.
- Potential customers are interested in supporting and buying from struggling local small service businesses.
Create a website that allows users to search and browse local service providers, prioritizing businesses based on each company's critical need, rather than rating or popularity.
| The Problem | The Solution |
|---|---|
 |
 |
With small service businesses shuttering around the country, Villagr has identified a way to help uplift and positively impact small businesses and help them reach new customers and stay connected to the community. What happens when no one is out in the world, looking for places to try? With our mission to help small businesses stay relevant in a virtual society, we pivoted to making sure customers can share and book businesses that most urgently need local rallying support to survive. Villagr is built to help small businesses gain the visibility to reach new audiences, and to inspire folks to support local entrepreneurship.
The Villagr team is a group of innovators and changemakers dedicated to business transformation.
As Grace Hopper, inventor of the common business -oriented language (COBOL), once said:
Humans are allergic to change.
They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.' I try to fight that.
| Discoveries & Features | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Source | Our Data comes from the SBA’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. |
| Relevance | With data current as of December 2020, this program offered an emergency provision of working capital to small businesses impacted by the pandemic. |
| Defining Need | The size of the loan amount is a useful proxy for “how much injury” was sustained. |
| Feature Engineering | Quartile ranks were calculated based on loan size. |
| User Opportunity | The user gains visibility into the scale of their financial impact on a recovering business in their city or state. |
- Homepage
- Map View
- List View
- Business Profile Cards with Address
- Geo-Location Pins
- Level of Need/Impact Indicator Chips
- Control toggles
- Villagr Logo and Favicon
- Business profile image placeholders
Small Business Association (SBA): COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program
