Facebook Marketplace: How a single button and textbox ruins the service
If you've ever sold anything on FBM you have invariably experienced the maddening assault of "Is this still available?" messages.
I had one item on there that received over 700 views and, I kid you not, over 200 "Is this still available?" messages, with nearly 100% of them ghosting me after a quick "Yes" reply.
In one case the guy said "Sorry, my kid was using my phone".
Why is this happening?
Well, while FB's intent is to make it easier for users to inquire about an item being sold, the fact that the "Send" button instantly fires-off a message creates a nightmare for sellers. If you check discussion boards, this is probably one of the biggest complaints.
The UX problems comes from a lack of understanding of how people use the service. People like to fill time browsing through stuff on various services. This includes FBM. Sometimes they will click on an item that might be interesting just to see more pictures, understand what it is (descriptions can be really bad sometimes), etc. To be frank, I would not be surprised if a lot of people are bored and scroll through stuff out of habit.
The issue is that a simple unintended touch of the "Send" button launches an unwanted interaction that wastes the seller's time. The person browsing was never really interested in the item and has no intention of engaging at all.
How to fix it?
Simple: Make them type the message. The "Send" button should be disabled until they type a non-trivial message (greater than N words or use AI to check that they are not just saying "blah blah blah"). And, when they do click "Send", ask for confirmation.
At one point I had over 50 listings (we were emptying out a storage unit). The experience was what I would characterize as a dumpster fire event. It was an utter waste of time. The vast majority of "Is this still available?" messages --HUNDREDS OF THEM-- resulted in ghosting, no interaction at all. My conclusion was that having a local garage sale would be far more effective and real. We did. It was. Amazing how many people showed-up to check out computers, drive arrays, collectible cameras and a bunch of technical stuff. The rest will go on eBay and Craigslist (which might not be what it used to be these days, don't know).