What went wrong?
#3 Talking about how new initiatives need social proofing for successful user journeys, and the ways they build it.
For today's 'Understanding Nuances,' we bring the third article to our biweekly articles on new perspectives around product features. We talk about how apps today need more than just good onboarding or user experiences and how trust plays a critical part in the user journey.
How often do you stop at the payment button on an e-commerce app? Or an online travel website? What's stopping you is making these companies sleepless at night. Where did they go wrong?
They sniffed your intention of traveling somewhere.
Targeted you with relevant ads and offers.
Made you download the app and even offered you a first order discount.
Created a flawless onboarding and booking experience.
Still, the conversion is not up to the mark. Where's the gap?
There can be millions of things that may be causing the drop-off right from the first step. For instance, what if you have captured the utterly wrong audience? They just came to your app like a kid strolling in the park.
Not taking away any possibility from this "growth" case study, anything is possible, the flywheel is broken, and identifying the root cause may help in hypothesis formation.
Let's say you managed to bring the right audience. They are interested in going to Himachal. So they download the app, do some interaction (search, wishlist, etc.), and you still fail to convert them.
The reason they are not buying from you can be the same reason why most people still prefer Parle-G over lesser-known biscuits (sometimes even better in taste than Parle-G) that might be lying on shelves next to Parle-G. Everyone is trying to reduce the downside of transacting with the unknown by sticking with the conventional option.
This brings one more interesting example, this one from the heart of Delhi. You might have heard of legendary food outlet Karim's near Jama Masjid in Old Delhi. Tourists and gastro warriors from all over the country storm this place in the evening, leaving no space to breathe in an already congested, unbreathable surrounding. Do you know there is also one restaurant called Al-Jawahar located a few steps from Karim's? The interesting thing about AL-Jawahar is that it is more spacious and serves more delicious lip-smacking chicken than Karim's. Someone visiting the area for the first time won't risk his appetite going to Al-Jawahar irrespective of the space, comfort, and ease that space provides. Most people will still go to Karim's more often than not.
We all know Karim's is a widely known brand, but there is something more to Karim's success than just brand and marketing. That is social validation.
You see 100s of people lining up at a place to get the biryani, and you know that place is special, popular, and more reliable.
Apps can design great onboarding and booking experiences, which can also build muscle for your engagement and acquisition metrics, but transaction needs more than just design. It needs trust. Codifying trust in apps can be challenging if you remove marketing from the equation. Why do brands throw away crores of rupees on M.S Dhoni or Shah Rukh Khan just to perform a 10-second commercial? It is to build that missing piece (trust) in the conversion funnel.
But trust can also be built through social proofing. Referrals, influencer marketing, and paid promotion on social media are all variants of social proofing items to build trust.
I used it; I liked it. You can use it too...
My friend Rohan used it, and it felt great; you can use it too.
How are apps social proofing their new initiates and products?
Discovery+ is a lesser-known OTT platform; how do you social proof your content and build trust?
TripMoney is a new and lesser-known wallet powered by MakeMyTrip; how do you build trust so that users add their money to their wallets?
How do you convince people to book tickets on an app which is predominantly a transaction app?
And with that, we end today's piece on how apps build trust in ways more than one. We also post daily product observations on Twitter. For the newsletter, we will try to bring new perspectives around product features every two weeks straight into your mailbox!