The story of one young service Daida (art by subscription)
Hello! We begin the publication of reports with QIWI Kitchen, and the first will be the report of Absamat about his art service by subscription. The word to the speaker.
My name is Absamat, I am a partner of service-design agency Useful, and I also do DaiDa service in parallel, which allows people to rent art objects, namely pictures by different artists.
')
In this post I will share with you our experience: from the idea to the beginning of the product creation, about our jambs and in general about how it was.
There is such a thing as PMF, product / market fit. There are many definitions for this, if briefly - this is how your product meets the expectations of the market and the audience. How much it is needed at all and whether it will be in demand. It is easy to understand whether PMF has been reached or not - if you see a multiple and constant growth of users and you understand what is happening - you have PMF, it is difficult to make a mistake here.
We, as a PMF startup, did not find, we are still in the process. As for the idea, then everything was as follows.
A year ago, as part of our agency, we conducted a large study of the contemporary art market and identified a number of trends. First, we noted the democratization of this market as a whole. Secondly, they found a niche of accessible art and understood that they need to dig this topic further. We are on all the canons of service design talked with all the players in the market - gallery owners, consumers, artists. The result was three main questions to which we tried to find answers at the prototyping stage.
The first question is how to transform the classical gallery into the style of modern art, that is, to create an alternative to Zara in this market.
Question two: how to solve the problem of free and already occupied walls. People usually have a fairly limited number of walls in apartments, in principle, and the free space on these walls, where you can hang something, so that it is beautiful, and even less. People may already have shelves, calendars, photographs, televisions, and LCD panels on the walls. Or even other paintings that are here once and for all. That is, people did not need new paintings, because they either have no place to hang them, or they don’t know how to find a job to an existing empty wall.
And the third question: how to strengthen the position and add some interactivity to the audience, because this market needs to push. And quite active.
The solution we found in the format of the provision of art objects on a renewable subscription. Yes, this is not something completely new, that no one has ever done before us, we have synthesized the best practices from existing industries. This is a marketplace, this is a sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb) company, this is a Netflix business model, when you just pay once a month for using content.
It works today like this. The user enters the site, chooses an object of art he likes, and we bring and hang it. Next month this picture hangs at his home, and after that you can either renew the subscription for the same amount and leave the object of art for another month, or go to the site and choose something else as part of the subscription. Then within 3 days the previous picture will be taken away, and a new one will be delivered instead.
To choose an idea with which you will start creating a product and enter the market, it’s helpful to start with this.
The importance of research should not be neglected either; this is the case when it is better to spend an extra month, but to conduct a series of studies than to save this month in pursuit of first sales.
After we came up with it all, a year has passed. For a whole year with this idea, I did not do anything. And as practice shows, time is a good filter of ideas. If you have any idea, you continue to live as before, then after some time you come back to this idea and understand that it is still relevant, and the idea is cool - it means that it definitely deserves to spend on it time and resources.
Here I can give my own example. The first thing I did was find like-minded people. It also looks obvious, but without the right people who share your ideas and just want to bring it to life, everything will be much more complicated. If it works at all.
Maxim is responsible for the content in our team, this is a person who has his own art association Sense. At the same time, he has a useful experience in product design - in our parallel project, he is also the owner of the product. There is an IT specialist, Vadim, with whom we met at the service design jam. De facto, our entire team lives in a design format, so all participants are close to the idea in its current form.
We started collecting MVP (where without it), and decided to do it right. Generally, when you are at the very beginning of your journey, you want to do everything as correctly as possible, so that you can spend time only on revisions and improvements, and not on correcting what you did wrong. We formulated the main hypotheses and went to check them.
The first hypothesis was that the Hedonist (one of the portraits of our target audience) would be ready to pay 3,000 rubles per month for using the service. From this, the metrics were also considered - let's say we will have 7 purchases within the first 3 weeks. So, then you can customize users, identify different contexts and so on. we used the most simple channels, landing pages and facebook, just to evaluate whether someone needs it at all or not.
By the way, we had a fairly correct backlog, our product designer drove the UX / UI tests, and I was responsible for testing the product itself. Such is the CJM and blueprint service we have formed. This is one of the steps that I advise everyone to do - so you can synchronize the team well. You will immediately notice the strengths and weaknesses, understand where you can sink, which things you have thought badly about, and so on. A blueprint will help you adjust the internal processes of the company under the user's path.
After all this, we decided to run. The golden rule of the product owner is “If you launched your product and you are not ashamed of it, it means that you started late.” Therefore, we tried to start early. To be ashamed, but not very much.
We had a lot of positive feedback, and he did exactly what he usually does - turned our heads. We were praised by all who learned about the service, even the already accomplished entrepreneurs. a wave of repost went, they started writing about us, and these were not paid publications, but letters like “Guys, you are cool, can we write about you?”.
This went on for three weeks, and then we looked at the result of all this.
It worked very soberingly and brought us back to earth. Of course, when everyone says that the service is cool, that's good. But if at the same time no one buys anything - something needs to be done.
In my opinion, the first mistake was that we set the goal of a metric instead of a feedback. That is, if 7 people buy a subscription, it means that the hypothesis put forward by us will be correct, and we went from this. But it was necessary to understand how to act at this point in time in order to refine the hypothesis itself. This is how the service should work.
The second joint is associated with the site. We here took as reference the site of direct competitors in the art market. And the sites are not the most advanced. We decided to correct this by taking the most innovative sites on the topic as references. It really helped us raise the conversion.
We tried to understand why with all this the number of sales fit into a round number (0). We had little data, and we tried to test everything that was possible. And advertising on facebook, and a request for feedback from friends, even if they are not Central Asia at all, they will still receive useful feedback. The main thing is the maximum feedback, it does not happen much. More feedback - more new hypotheses to test - better service.
Separate milestone was the collection of information through bloggers. When we started advertising with them, they offered to do something else for us. Therefore, we asked them to place questionnaires, they say, users, and why did you visit the site, but did not buy anything? And almost throughout the feedback, regardless of the sources, the main problem was manifested - not enough content.
Therefore, keep in mind that if you are dealing with any content within your project, then content is the first thing you should pay attention to.
Focusing on the content, we took a step back. You remembered what makes the platform a platform - this is when you simply connect Central Asia to each other. That is, artists simply upload their works to the site, and users choose what they want to buy. We generally do not participate in the production of this content. And the principle of the platform allowed us to sell what we have, what value unit we have (a work of art).
After that, we managed to tune a few things with lean canvas, especially what was not working through the channels. Now we have formed a few more hypotheses, letting the consumer vote for the work he liked on the site, check all this within the framework of the castdeva. On the platform, work is now completely in the hands of the user. We made it so that people themselves choose what they like, what they like, and this now forms their tape of impressions. But at the same time, we do not enter into this process at all and do not supervise it.
The curator itself as an entity is now used precisely as an input moderation of work - the curator looks at the incoming flow of applications and allows (or does not allow) this or that work to the site. And if he doubts, then we run the test - we post the work in instagram and give the users to vote, we need this work on the site or not. Gaining 50 likes - hits the platform.
In the current prototype, we are testing a couple more topics. When enough works are gathered for their analysis, with the help of Google technologies, we can recommend users and other works that they might like and most closely match their choice.
Service of this kind is also offline interaction with the user. For us, this experience is no less important than the design of interfaces and so on. This is how we deliver our customers work.
Why am I all this? It is important to understand where your product starts and where it ends. Designers today very often fixate only on digital, ignoring the user experience in the physical space. In my opinion, this is a so-so approach. Therefore, I would like to encourage designers to expand the boundaries by designing business models of the platform and digital experience. You will see how your perception of the product changes.
And you will see satisfied users.
Thank!
My name is Absamat, I am a partner of service-design agency Useful, and I also do DaiDa service in parallel, which allows people to rent art objects, namely pictures by different artists.
')
In this post I will share with you our experience: from the idea to the beginning of the product creation, about our jambs and in general about how it was.
There is such a thing as PMF, product / market fit. There are many definitions for this, if briefly - this is how your product meets the expectations of the market and the audience. How much it is needed at all and whether it will be in demand. It is easy to understand whether PMF has been reached or not - if you see a multiple and constant growth of users and you understand what is happening - you have PMF, it is difficult to make a mistake here.
We, as a PMF startup, did not find, we are still in the process. As for the idea, then everything was as follows.
A year ago, as part of our agency, we conducted a large study of the contemporary art market and identified a number of trends. First, we noted the democratization of this market as a whole. Secondly, they found a niche of accessible art and understood that they need to dig this topic further. We are on all the canons of service design talked with all the players in the market - gallery owners, consumers, artists. The result was three main questions to which we tried to find answers at the prototyping stage.
The first question is how to transform the classical gallery into the style of modern art, that is, to create an alternative to Zara in this market.
Question two: how to solve the problem of free and already occupied walls. People usually have a fairly limited number of walls in apartments, in principle, and the free space on these walls, where you can hang something, so that it is beautiful, and even less. People may already have shelves, calendars, photographs, televisions, and LCD panels on the walls. Or even other paintings that are here once and for all. That is, people did not need new paintings, because they either have no place to hang them, or they don’t know how to find a job to an existing empty wall.
And the third question: how to strengthen the position and add some interactivity to the audience, because this market needs to push. And quite active.
Decision
The solution we found in the format of the provision of art objects on a renewable subscription. Yes, this is not something completely new, that no one has ever done before us, we have synthesized the best practices from existing industries. This is a marketplace, this is a sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb) company, this is a Netflix business model, when you just pay once a month for using content.
It works today like this. The user enters the site, chooses an object of art he likes, and we bring and hang it. Next month this picture hangs at his home, and after that you can either renew the subscription for the same amount and leave the object of art for another month, or go to the site and choose something else as part of the subscription. Then within 3 days the previous picture will be taken away, and a new one will be delivered instead.
Idea
To choose an idea with which you will start creating a product and enter the market, it’s helpful to start with this.
- Explore innovative business models. It sounds obvious, but it is important.
- Explore users. This is generally a must have, these are the people who will ensure the viability of your service. Or will not.
- Dive into the industry. Usually successful startups are such because their co-founders worked in those industries that are somehow related to the startup theme. That is, they have the necessary background and they are well immersed in the market.
The importance of research should not be neglected either; this is the case when it is better to spend an extra month, but to conduct a series of studies than to save this month in pursuit of first sales.
After we came up with it all, a year has passed. For a whole year with this idea, I did not do anything. And as practice shows, time is a good filter of ideas. If you have any idea, you continue to live as before, then after some time you come back to this idea and understand that it is still relevant, and the idea is cool - it means that it definitely deserves to spend on it time and resources.
How to decide
Here I can give my own example. The first thing I did was find like-minded people. It also looks obvious, but without the right people who share your ideas and just want to bring it to life, everything will be much more complicated. If it works at all.
Maxim is responsible for the content in our team, this is a person who has his own art association Sense. At the same time, he has a useful experience in product design - in our parallel project, he is also the owner of the product. There is an IT specialist, Vadim, with whom we met at the service design jam. De facto, our entire team lives in a design format, so all participants are close to the idea in its current form.
We started collecting MVP (where without it), and decided to do it right. Generally, when you are at the very beginning of your journey, you want to do everything as correctly as possible, so that you can spend time only on revisions and improvements, and not on correcting what you did wrong. We formulated the main hypotheses and went to check them.
The first hypothesis was that the Hedonist (one of the portraits of our target audience) would be ready to pay 3,000 rubles per month for using the service. From this, the metrics were also considered - let's say we will have 7 purchases within the first 3 weeks. So, then you can customize users, identify different contexts and so on. we used the most simple channels, landing pages and facebook, just to evaluate whether someone needs it at all or not.
By the way, we had a fairly correct backlog, our product designer drove the UX / UI tests, and I was responsible for testing the product itself. Such is the CJM and blueprint service we have formed. This is one of the steps that I advise everyone to do - so you can synchronize the team well. You will immediately notice the strengths and weaknesses, understand where you can sink, which things you have thought badly about, and so on. A blueprint will help you adjust the internal processes of the company under the user's path.
Product launch
After all this, we decided to run. The golden rule of the product owner is “If you launched your product and you are not ashamed of it, it means that you started late.” Therefore, we tried to start early. To be ashamed, but not very much.
We had a lot of positive feedback, and he did exactly what he usually does - turned our heads. We were praised by all who learned about the service, even the already accomplished entrepreneurs. a wave of repost went, they started writing about us, and these were not paid publications, but letters like “Guys, you are cool, can we write about you?”.
This went on for three weeks, and then we looked at the result of all this.
It worked very soberingly and brought us back to earth. Of course, when everyone says that the service is cool, that's good. But if at the same time no one buys anything - something needs to be done.
Errors
In my opinion, the first mistake was that we set the goal of a metric instead of a feedback. That is, if 7 people buy a subscription, it means that the hypothesis put forward by us will be correct, and we went from this. But it was necessary to understand how to act at this point in time in order to refine the hypothesis itself. This is how the service should work.
The second joint is associated with the site. We here took as reference the site of direct competitors in the art market. And the sites are not the most advanced. We decided to correct this by taking the most innovative sites on the topic as references. It really helped us raise the conversion.
We tried to understand why with all this the number of sales fit into a round number (0). We had little data, and we tried to test everything that was possible. And advertising on facebook, and a request for feedback from friends, even if they are not Central Asia at all, they will still receive useful feedback. The main thing is the maximum feedback, it does not happen much. More feedback - more new hypotheses to test - better service.
Separate milestone was the collection of information through bloggers. When we started advertising with them, they offered to do something else for us. Therefore, we asked them to place questionnaires, they say, users, and why did you visit the site, but did not buy anything? And almost throughout the feedback, regardless of the sources, the main problem was manifested - not enough content.
Therefore, keep in mind that if you are dealing with any content within your project, then content is the first thing you should pay attention to.
Second iteration
Focusing on the content, we took a step back. You remembered what makes the platform a platform - this is when you simply connect Central Asia to each other. That is, artists simply upload their works to the site, and users choose what they want to buy. We generally do not participate in the production of this content. And the principle of the platform allowed us to sell what we have, what value unit we have (a work of art).
After that, we managed to tune a few things with lean canvas, especially what was not working through the channels. Now we have formed a few more hypotheses, letting the consumer vote for the work he liked on the site, check all this within the framework of the castdeva. On the platform, work is now completely in the hands of the user. We made it so that people themselves choose what they like, what they like, and this now forms their tape of impressions. But at the same time, we do not enter into this process at all and do not supervise it.
The curator itself as an entity is now used precisely as an input moderation of work - the curator looks at the incoming flow of applications and allows (or does not allow) this or that work to the site. And if he doubts, then we run the test - we post the work in instagram and give the users to vote, we need this work on the site or not. Gaining 50 likes - hits the platform.
In the current prototype, we are testing a couple more topics. When enough works are gathered for their analysis, with the help of Google technologies, we can recommend users and other works that they might like and most closely match their choice.
Not only online
Service of this kind is also offline interaction with the user. For us, this experience is no less important than the design of interfaces and so on. This is how we deliver our customers work.
Why am I all this? It is important to understand where your product starts and where it ends. Designers today very often fixate only on digital, ignoring the user experience in the physical space. In my opinion, this is a so-so approach. Therefore, I would like to encourage designers to expand the boundaries by designing business models of the platform and digital experience. You will see how your perception of the product changes.
And you will see satisfied users.
What now:
- We developed a tariff grid , where a month of subscription costs 990 rubles, 3 months - 2490 and 6 months - 4900 rubles.
- As part of custdeva, we realized that our service is very relevant to those who have recently moved to a new location or made repairs.
- Started working with office spaces.
- Added content and made filters in the directory to make it easier for users to discover.
Thank!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/449240/
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