Case Study - MyHomeNeed.in

2020

Overview

MyHomeneed is an alpha stage FMCG eCommerce company based out of Bangalore. We primarily deal in FMCG and home need products. We are planning to operate in 20 zip codes across Bangalore. The way it will work is, a buyer could order the product online. The ordered product will be delivered to the buyer’s place the next day before 1.00 p.m. That means any order placed on a particular day would be delivered the next day before 1 p.m. across select zip codes in Bangalore. The whole order placement, procurement, and processing would be fully automated with the help of AI/ML along with world-class last-mile delivery.

Once the order is placed online, the backend AI/ML will kicks into action. It will identify the products ordered, find the warehouse nearest to the customer’s location, update the warehouse about the order, and will get the order ready to hand it over to the last mile delivery agent. It will also monitor stock across multiple warehouses and will assure the availability of products at all times by keeping the procurement team involved and informed.

My Role

I joined the MyHomeneed team as a Consultant for Product Planning and Designing. The team comprises its two founders, a Development team, and a sales and marketing team. I, along with the founders and the sales and marketing team, worked on the product requirement. In the absence of actual users, we had several rounds of discussions amongst ourselves, as part of the requirement gathering session.

Problem Statement

Covid-19 has changed the world forever. In these times, customers are finding it difficult to get homeneed goods easily. They either have to go out and shop for themselves, risking getting infected, or have long waits from online grocers. Availability is another challenge for these products. The whole supply chain management stands disrupted, both for offline and online vendors.

Online ordering platforms also need to revisit their catalog. Catalogs of most of the online vendors have grown beyond customer need and expectation. That makes things difficult. Especially when you need to look for products across very few categories and not more than 250 to 300 products. And these are the products that need to be ordered often and not once in several months. There is also a need to look at how the supply chain is managed and how the product moves during the last mile delivery.

Goal

MyHomeNeed’s goal is to deliver home needs and FMCG products to customer’s doorstep in a timely and planned manner. We also want to make sure that all orders are delivered the next day before 1 p.m. This delivery schedule was concluded based on a survey conducted by Sales & Marketing team

Research

I spend a significant amount of time working with the Founders and the Sales and Marketing team. Since we were not able to do any real market research, the initial product definition was done based on findings of the sales and marketing team, and stakeholders’ discussion. In terms of customer identification, expectations and anticipation, we made a few assumptions to start with. Simultaneously, the sales and marketing team prepared a Survey question that we shared with a sample user group. This user group was put together by the sales and marketing team. We had a prior agreement with them in terms of answering the survey and helping us understand the requirement. This helped us in preparing the product requirement. 

User Profiles

we started with considering multiple User Profiles that we were considering for this exercise. But finally zeroed upon two.

Housewives
Working Professional

It was finally decided that we will consider Housewives as the Primary user persona for the product. They would be using the website daily or at least several times a week to order everything they need at home. For homeneeds and FMCG categories, housewives have their needs clearly identified. But in these Covid times, they are finding it difficult to procure things they need at home. Other grocers and online stores have a very huge and bulky catalog. That makes shopping cumbersome. The minimum order size would be Rs 200, hence it was expected that order volume would never be a problem. Order Size would build up with Custome Service and engagement.

User Persona

Tools Used

Discover

  • Competitor Analysis
  • User interview
  • Market Research
  • User Research
  • User Profile
  • User Persona

Define

  • Business Requirement Documentation
  • Gitlab – Product Backlog
  • Conceptdraw Mind Map – I.A

Design

  • Pencil Evolus
  • Adobe Photoshop

Design

View in full screen for a better quality of the image

Lessons Learned

with my past experience in eCommerce, I was well prepared for closerpeek. But when I actually started looking at user experience data, my learning was about to begin.

  1. To understand your user behavior, google Analytics is a must-have tool.
  2.  Do your competitor analyst well.
  3. The Internet is full of e-commerce UX research data. Exploit them well. 
  4. Design for no-brainer & obviousness
  5. Banner gets attention but not conversions. 

Final Words

MyHomeNeed is a revolutionary idea that has the capability to re-invent the whole of online ordering and supply chain mechanism. its founders are very enthusiastic and energetic people with a lot of penchants to do something extraordinary. it’s only all matter of time and effort before MyHomeneed becomes a differentiator in the market. The product is still in the alpha stage lot of innovation and design thinking is happening. over a few iterations, the catalog will become more robust, user flow will become more defined and AI/ML engine would become more sustaining and learned.

Tools Used