High-touch, time-based auctions for Hagerty Marketplace — with escrow and title transfer handled for every sale.
View Marketplace (opens in a new tab)In keeping with its customer-first approach, Hagerty Insurance launched Marketplace in 2022 to give car enthusiasts a way to buy, sell, bid on and win rare and desirable vehicles — on a platform built by a brand they already trust.
Bring a Trailer already had a strong reputation in the industry, but it didn’t offer buyers or sellers the kind of support and security Hagerty could. Auctions launched in October 2022 to do exactly that: high-touch, time-based auctions with title transfer and escrow — something no other platform had been willing to take on.
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
— Jakob’s Law, Jakob Nielsen
Our subject-matter experts and the team at Hagerty had already lived the joys and pitfalls of the existing platforms, and much of that was documented in the early business plans and user journeys. With every feature and update, we kept going back to those platforms to make sure we were designing something familiar — and improving on what was already out there.
Nothing quite like this had been done before, so we worked with the product managers to write interview scripts, then talked with prospective buyers and sellers as well as Hagerty’s own auctioneer and consignor. Those conversations gave us solid requirements for what to build so launch would go smoothly.
Every seller has their own reasons for selling, and a different level of comfort with selling online.
Team members vary widely in role, responsibilities and level of admin access within the auction system.
Buyers want the rare find you usually only read about. They’re enthusiasts, and they have a community.
Sellers told us they’d happily pay a small premium, because they trusted Hagerty to provide escrow and title transfer.
Owners of the calibre of vehicle this platform wanted expect white-glove service and a submission flow that just works. We built one that gives them the best chance of getting the best value for their car.
“What if I sold that one I love but hardly ever drive anymore?”
We heard plenty of complaints across the industry about beloved cars being turned down for auction on other platforms. Enthusiasts don’t like hearing that their pride and joy isn’t good enough to list — and our vetting wasn’t going to be any more lenient if we wanted the quality of vehicles buyers would appreciate.
So we made the forms as well designed and easy to fill out as possible, giving the Hagerty team what they needed to make initial evaluations and decide on next steps as efficiently and painlessly as possible for everyone involved.
Hagerty already had a well-designed customer management interface, plus auction specialists we could lean on for feedback as we planned features. Clear, concise requirements — ones that made sense to, and had the confidence of, the people already doing the job — made it straightforward to design new functionality for the auction management team.
“If you build it, they will come” just isn’t enough with buyers and bidders. A platform needs inventory — constantly fresh, high-quality inventory. It also needs to be somewhere buyers feel safe and can engage with each other. Hagerty Marketplace Auctions set out to deliver all of that and more.
Vehicle cards are a key element of Marketplace, appearing in different places, at different times and on different devices. They had to be designed for every case, state and context.
To create the auction space we wanted, we added a little extra security by using Marketplace’s existing verification methods. That made registering to bid slightly longer than on competing sites, but the added peace of mind was worth the extra steps.
Bidding had to work perfectly at launch, so we made sure every component behaved as it should. A two-minute anti-snipe reset on each new high bid isn’t groundbreaking, but making it engaging through micro-interactions — and working with stakeholders on when a vehicle should switch into red “countdown” mode as it nears the end — was important, and something we spent a lot of time on.
listings by October, against a goal of 1,000 by the end of the year
standalone Hagerty Drivers Club (HDC) sign-ups
For ChatGPT, Claude or your own agent: every word, fact and caption, with each of the 29 images as a link and its alt text. 2,021 words, nothing left out.
https://www.joshuamartens.com/work/hagerty.md
I do my best work when I own a product area and keep improving it. Let's build.
