Project Overview

This company was focused on rewarding users with cash for their online purchases. Their main selling point: your personal data has a value and you should be rewarded for it. They wanted to start a research process to explore how to improve their services to achieve new ways of income. Studying the user’s digital purchases habits and relating it with a physical enviroment purchasing practices.

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The main constrain was that a bussiness model based on rewarding with cash for online purchases was atracting gamblers and not very participating users. The platform didn't have a regular flow of users which made it not very reliable.

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The Challenge was to pivot into a more stable business model and explore new ways of income by understanding the user and towards where the company wanted to grow.

The process

The stakeholders weren't sure about the type of user they needed to focused in. So we started interviewing the whole team to understand which motivations they had and their initial approach for starting a bussines like this. Understanding their goals we can focus on the user. We began an interview process getting in contact with their main user but also with new potential users. It was important to understand what motivates people to buy online and what makes them want to stick with a conventional store.

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Main insignts about:

Time invested: “I buy onlie because it saves me time” vs “I spend a lot of time deciding what to buy”. Most of the interviewed users said something similar to this two affirmations at some point of the interview. We realized that the user was spending more time online than if they’d gone to the store. Whereas is true that the sole act of buying online is faster than going to a store, getting in line to pay... Nowadays there are so many options to decide on the same item that users spend a lot of time researching and deciding which model to buy, while in the store usually is a matter of asking the manager for advice.

‍Doubting while making a decision: Most of the users find a pain point on the decision making process that makes them not to trust the online purchaes. This pain point is usually found on the fact that the user cannot see or touch the product they’re buying or because of the great amount of fake reviews you can find online.

Lots of influencers, not so many reliable opinions: A lot fo the users showed they feel confortable in their neighbourhood stores, where they put their trust in the manager or experts in the mater, to adviese for the best option regarding their interest. This reliefs some pressure on the decision making process.

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People feel the need to validate their decisions while buying. To know that your purchase is the best option for you grants calm and comfort

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Solutions

This information allow us to lean towards one type of user and start working on the redesign of their business strategy. Throughout a Design Sprint we develop an artifact focused on a network of verified and trustworthy product reviews with open forums where specialist or profesionals can answer questions, making the user feel comfortable and safe with their decision making process. With great reception during the user testing and by the company stakeholders, the new platform is on developing phase now, where these main functionalities will help the company pivot their business model towards new lines of income and new regular users.