Building trust
at marketplace scale

The problem with trust in
peer-to-peer commerce

OLX operates as a classifieds marketplace where millions of people buy and sell second-hand goods daily. Unlike e-commerce platforms with centralised fulfilment, OLX transactions happen between strangers — which means trust is the product.

Without a reputation system, buyers had no way to verify if a seller was reliable, and sellers had no way to prove their track record. Fraud, no-shows, and misleading listings eroded confidence and suppressed transaction completion rates across all three markets.

Understanding distrust
across three cultures

Each market presented a distinct relationship with trust and peer reviews. We ran contextual interviews, diary studies, and competitive analysis across Turkey, India, and Indonesia to uncover key behavioural patterns.

Three themes emerged consistently: users wanted verified reviews (tied to real transactions, not self-reported), reciprocal trust (both parties reviewed), and transparency (visible history without exposing personal data).

From insight to
shipped feature

We followed a double-diamond process adapted for a multi-market rollout — designing a core system flexible enough to accommodate cultural nuances without fracturing the codebase.

The biggest design challenge was the review trigger moment — when to prompt a user to leave a review without being intrusive. We tested 4 different trigger points (post-chat, post-meet, 24h delay, and user-initiated) and landed on a soft prompt 24 hours after a marked transaction that felt natural without pressuring users.

A trust layer built
into the core experience

The final design introduced a verified review system tied exclusively to completed transactions — meaning only users who had actually interacted could leave feedback. This was key to building credibility.

Each user profile gained a trust score surfaced as a star rating with a review count, alongside verification badges (phone, email, Google) and a transaction history timeline. Reviews were bilateral — both buyer and seller could rate each other — with a blind review mechanic preventing retaliatory ratings.

To handle cultural nuance, review prompts were localised per market — more direct in Turkey, more relationship-focused in Indonesia. The rating scale used a 3-tier positive/neutral/negative model rather than 5 stars, which tested better across all three markets for clarity.

Impact across
three markets

The Rate & Review feature launched across Turkey, India, and Indonesia within the 6-month target. Early adoption showed strong organic engagement — users were motivated to build reputation without explicit incentivisation.

Beyond metrics, the project established OLX's first cross-market trust design framework — a set of principles and reusable components that could be extended to future safety features across the platform's 40+ markets.

What I learned

Designing for trust across cultures taught me that there is no universal UX pattern for safety. What feels reassuring in one market can feel invasive or unnecessary in another. The research phase wasn't just due diligence — it was the foundation the entire system was built on.

Working with engineering across three timezones also pushed me to invest heavily in documentation and annotation — the design spec wasn't just a handoff artefact, it was a communication tool that needed to work without me in the room.