‘Upcycling’ 2dehands
Enhancing User Experience and brand consistency in the Homepage redesign
2dehands.be was established in Belgium in 1999 as one of the first classified ad websites in the country and is widely spread.
Visitors range from private individuals, small and large businesses.
It gets around 3 million visits per month and an average of 70.000 new listings posted per day.
Let’s hear it from the users
Understand their pain points and opportunities for the redesign
The look and feel of the brand
Emotionless | Functional | Outdated | There’s no beauty
The look and feel of the Homepage
Great chaos | Starts to frustrate, too many ads | Hard to know the difference between an ad and a listing | Difficult website | It doesn’t always feel safe
Other input
I want to be able to draw a map of the area where I want to look for items [instead of giving a postal code]
The uploading process is easy
Very often the phone recognises when a picture needs to be turned around but then 2dehands reverts that mechanism and there’s too many pictures in the wrong direction on the website
Interviews conducted in an informal environment on October 22nd 2025, with a sample of 4 people (3 men, 1 woman, between 37 and 75 years old, using desktop web version, mobile web version and app as touchpoints).
And let’s not forget the competition
Small benchmark (national and international platforms)
The logo as of now
First version
Current version
Rebranding
Taking into account the small sample of interviewed users, we’re going for:
Functional
Reliable
Friendly
Without forgetting what is at the base of it
Circular Economy
THE CHALLENGE:
To represent circularity without using arrows
Sketches
Grid of the logo
Straight lines to indicate ‘cut’ of a line that has continuity
Letter S would seem unbalanced on its own, but because the ‘2’ also has a larger upper body, the ‘S’ helps the logo feel more balanced
Color
Color contrast according to WCAG 2.0
Possible AAA color combinations
Possible AA color combinations (text above 19px)
AAA Pass, AAA (7+)
AA Pass, AA (4.5+)
AA18 Pass, Large Text Only (3+)
DNP Does not pass
Typefaces
Tweedehands, eerste keus.
‘Second hand, first choice’ - the new slogan.
Homepage (desktop)
UX/UI
Menu
Too many interactive elements
Rework categories
Different icons or even images
Understand the difference between all categories and work accordingly
Rework cards
Let’s give some more information
Price at the same level
What did I do?
2dehands is the kind of platform that reaches every kind of user from the most different backgrounds.
I knew it wouldn’t be smart to change too much but I definitely wanted to simplify as much as possible and find the right place for all elements.
Menu
Divided in Topbar and Navbar
More playfulness in the way 2dehands talks to users
Featured
“Uitgelicht” (featured) becomes “Voel je veilig” (feel safer)
Region of search
“Zoekregio” offered as an option in the search
Categories
New design of categories, now including also Immo that was in the “Featured” list
Cards
Now include location and rating of the seller, to help buyers feel safer and hold the sellers accountable
Ads
Ads and professional profiles have a different design with a blue stroke and a label at the top right
Footer
Instead of having all categories and sub-categories visible, I added accordions that only show the sub-categories when clicked