Separation of customer profiles and freelancer

Since ancient times, freelance exchanges have been pointed and blunt in matters of customer profiles and freelancers. The same person can act in both roles, be both a customer and a freelancer. On one stock exchange a person has two profiles, one for each role, on the other one profile, a multi-account that allows you to perform both roles simultaneously.

In separate profiles there is more unambiguity, it is easier to arrange everything without unnecessary details. There is no confusion with the definition of the role of this user.

However, there are unpleasant moments. Often you just need to register twice, fill out information about yourself.
There are also issues with the link between these two accounts. This connection is not always there and it is impossible to determine that the user, in principle, acts in two roles, although it is useful to know about this connection.

For example, speakers in two roles may be better aware of problems from two sides and be a more convenient counterpart. Or, this user often reassigns part of the work – he takes the order to the turnkey website, and the design orders here.
In different situations, different people can interpret such information in different ways, the main thing is to have something to interpret.
If there is a connection between accounts, then it is better than without it at all, but there may be inconsistencies such as different registration dates or different online times, or even different names in these different accounts.

Due to these reasons, we always had a combined profile and for many years we struggled and put up with its shortcomings.
This is how the profile of the combining role looked like before separation:

Consider in general terms the blocks in the main part of the page from top to bottom.

  • Customer statistics
  • Freelancer statistics
  • Portfolio Works
  • Last tip (no matter who he was from)
  • Currently open orders
  • Summary

Depending on who is looking at this page – the customer or freelancer, some blocks for him will be superfluous. Will overload the page and take away space from more important information.
For example, the customer is primarily important statistics freelancer and work in the portfolio, as well as feedback from other customers. And vice versa – the customer’s portfolio will hardly be the main factor for a freelancer.

To solve this problem, we decided to make two types of profiles for the same user. One reflects his activity as a customer, the other as a freelancer.
When moving from certain points of the site, we probably know who looks at the page – the customer or freelancer, and therefore it is clear what information he is interested in.
Such points we have are the order page and the catalog of freelancers. This is the main move, users follow these paths.
The customer goes to the pages of freelancers from the catalog or from the order page, from the list of applications.
Freelancer to the customer page usually also goes from the order page, but from the description of this order.
Thus, we know what information to show in such a transition.

On the customer page, we show:

  • Customer statistics
  • Currently open orders
  • Last feedback from a freelancer

On the freelancer page, respectively:

  • Freelancer statistics
  • Portfolio Works
  • Latest customer feedback
  • Summary

We have added a switch to the pages of those users who have two types of activity, so you can see what is in another role.
With the switch had to break my head. I didn’t want it to become the central element of the page, because information about the second role is in most cases additional and not of interest to everyone. But for those who are interested in this element should still be.

As a result, we stopped at the option on the right, there was just a place. Not too noticeable and allowed not to increase the page height. It's nice when work in the freelancer portfolio is visible immediately after the download.

For cases where we do not know what role interests the visitor, we try to determine the main role of the reviews. What kind of feedback from the last 10 more, that role and assign. If there are more reviews from freelancers, then we consider that basically the user acts as a customer. And vice versa.
If there are no reviews, then we see what the user has – orders or works in the portfolio.

We do not know who looks at the profile when switching from personal messages, from the forum and when switching to a profile from other sites when there is no context.

The definition of the role of the default thing is ambiguous, there were ideas just to give a choice to the user, but then there are situations when the user acts as a freelancer, then the activity as a freelancer stops, but acts as a customer. Previously, it was clearly visible on the work of a decade of "freshness" in the profiles of customers. Also, as such users do not remove work from the portfolio – they will not switch the main role.

Let them combine both roles not so much, now their profiles look good.

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