Carousell launches Smart Listings

Mobile classifieds marketplace Carousell recently introduced a new feature that helps users to sell their items faster.

The Carousell Smart Listings is a significant update to the selling and buying experience on the app -- speeding up the process while also helping sellers create more detailed and effective listings, the company said.

The selling process is streamlined to a series of taps and multiple-choice prompts to fill up the necessary details for a good listing. The first step is to snap or upload a photo and select a category. Once the item’s category is selected, the rest of the prompts are dynamically generated to be specific to the item. For example, women’s fashion would prompt for type of clothing and size and other relevant details.

This is in contrast to the previous process of typing out all the details in a description box. The description box is still available for sellers to add further details and stories, but the key details can be entered via the new Smart Listing process.

The process also prompts users for the key details that Carousell’s research has shown to be necessary for an effective listing in specific categories and a user will not have to feel uncertain about which details to include when listing in a new category.

“Our users are always asking us to help them sell their items faster,” says Andrius Baranauskas, VP of Product at Carousell. “With Smart Listings, we’re confident that our users will be able to create their listings faster, and with information that help buyers find them faster too. It all leads to an overall speedier sale.”

Carousell has been working on a number of artificial intelligence (AI) projects to power its latest Smart Listings features, such as category suggestions. Through machine learning, the app will intelligently scan the user’s photo and suggest categories based on what it think the item is.

More AI-driven features are slated to be rolled out to help users sell and list faster as well as to bring a more personalised browsing experience, Carousell added.