Turian Tales Oct 2021 | Optimistic Tidings

After a debilitating second COVID wave, India’s economy is recovering rapidly. Many high-frequency indicators are reaching pre-COVID levels. On a year-on-year basis, India staged an 89% recovery in the hiring index in August ’21 compared to the year before. With a rise in vaccination and reduction in reported cases, this trend is likely to continue into the remainder of the year.

Ola Cabs reported that its GMV surged to pre-COVID levels and has staged a 3X faster recovery from the second wave. The FAStag transactions (indicating road travel density) registered a 167% annual growth in July 2021.  Domestic passenger traffic improved to about 4.52 million in the first three weeks of August, almost double of the last year levels during the same period. At this rate, we could see a recovery to pre-covid levels by the October-December quarter. Clearly, Indians are getting out of their homes and travelling more. 

Stock market indices usually are taken as a proxy to robust future growth. The recent SENSEX rally from 50,000 to 60,000 in just 8 months was achieved in hopes of containing the third COVID wave, increased vaccination, falling COVID cases and a realistic assessment of sustainable economic recovery in the next two years.  

While the concerns over COVID remain, we believe that the worst is possibly behind us. And India – just as the world – is ready to ride on these recovery trends into the future.

At Turian Labs, we have seen the innovation engine across the sectors restarting with a roar. We have seen renewed focus this year across diverse sectors from organisations keen on understanding the intersection of technology, people and business. 

Read on to get a glimpse of our exciting work!

The Quest for Customer Retention

The app-driven food delivery space witnessed massive growth in the lockdown worldwide. With curbs on the movement of people, food delivery emerged as an essential service exceeding the most optimistic estimates of even the most conservative players in this industry. Zomato saw its revenues double whilst achieving a market value of over $ 13 billion.

 In line with this reality, we helped one of the largest emerging-market food-delivery platforms to understand the user mental model for food subscription services. Using ‘cognitive walkthroughs’, we mapped crucial moments of truth along the entire user journey and understood the users’ noticeability, perception and comprehension of the various subscription plans. Our study provided interesting insights to drive faster app adoption and stronger custom retention (Daily Active Users and repeat orders) - two critical metrics in this business. 

 From our interactions with such users across the country, one consistent story that jumps out is that of the rise of the ‘data prosumers’ i.e. users speaking of the need for quantifying their consumption and eating habits and were vocal about the need for a dashboard saying,

 “You know all my eating habits through the app… You are sitting on so much of my personal consumption data, why don’t you suggest better food choices for me, healthwise?”

The Resilient Emerging Market SMBs

The importance of empathy in product and service design is obvious and well-known. It became even more pronounced during the global lockdown when SMBs faced challenging times. Their needs from existing products and services changed overnight. The only way to sustain their businesses was through innovation and technology.

Our work for a global technology giant took us to the emerging markets of Indonesia and Brazil, besides India. We gained first-hand insight into how SMBs from diverse sectors like grocery, mobile phone retailing, pharmacy, apparel and restaurants were fighting the pandemic to survive and sustain. 

We witnessed technology leapfrogging i.e. offline SMBs, who never used online collaboration tools before, started using them heavily as mainstream tools. Here’s how an Indian mobile phone seller recounted his transformation:

 “When India was locked down, people stopped personal interactions. Mobile phone servicing is a 100% walk-in business where customers share many details. Unless I found a way to serve them remotely, I’d have to shut shop. I downloaded all the popular video conferencing apps and taught my staff to use them. We started addressing our customers’ problems using these apps. They paid us online using mobile payment apps. Video conferencing and mobile payment apps were the saviours of COVID; so a round of applause to them. COVID taught us to do business and brought us online.”

The lockdown in Brazil forced SMBs to pivot their business models. An offline professional services SMB which launched an online programme to generate cash flow summarised his pivot thus:

 "We went from 100% to zero. We had some contracts terminated. We had to create a way, create something innovative to teach online. We came up with the e-learning programme. So it was a product we came up with but it will be temporary. We won't use it when this pandemic ends."  

Across geographies, the same technology tools addressed entirely different business challenges. The needs, usage patterns and solutioning mindset offered fresh insights and a deep understanding of the SMB owners’ psyche. This helped us evolve better product-market-fit (PMF) directions for the emerging market products of our client. 

Optimising Online Advertising with Eye Tracking

Mapping and measuring the efficacy of online content using eye-tracking is one of the most promising techniques to understand what viewers see first, see last and don’t see at all. This insight is important due to the rising number of internet users seeking information on various devices like desktops, laptops, tablets and mobiles. Eye-tracking studies generate gaze plots and heat maps of the viewers’ eye movement across the device screen.

For a global technology giant, we studied the user journeys of users in the USA and the UK markets, in relation to their search for hotels. Our study showed some interesting text scanning patterns such as the ‘F-shape’, ‘spots’, ‘layer cake’ among others. 

While our technology ably did its job; one user gave an interesting metaphor summing up her predicament thus:

“The results are right now like a drive-thru menu for American fast food. It's like I'm going to Burger King or McDonald’s. The things highlighted are all geared. Oh, this is what the average American is looking for. But hey, if I’m going out of town I don't want Wendy's experience, I want it to be Boston.”

Clearly, she was looking at greater granularity and customizability in her search results. She did not want the search results to be force-fed to her in the prevalent form.

We pinpointed specific areas of attraction and distraction on the screen and the implications for UX design across the web and mobile interfaces.

Conducted at the height of COVID lockdown, this international project highlighted our ability to execute complex research engagements involving eye-tracking studies remotely in different time zones. The challenge involved recruiting respondents in different locations, shipments of hardware to international locations, training the respondents to use the eye-tracking equipment and analysing the technical data in a seamless way back at our Pune office. 

Tackling Cart Abandonment in Online Retail

The rise of in-app advertising and promotions is also giving rise to cart abandonment. This happens when the user, generally prompted by a moment of truth at the end of his user journey, decides against making the purchase. With a nearly 70% rate of cart abandonment, eCommerce portals lose around $18 billion annually.

One of the largest Indian mobile payment apps wanted us to map their users’ moments of truth to better understand the churn they experienced in their in-app credit card promotion. The client wanted to understand the in-app and external factors impacting the conversion rates of the promotion.

Our work pointed to huge scope for user empathy while developing financial products and services. First-time card users were more willing to not only receive promotional information but also act upon it. Given the rising awareness of customers, we realised that all it takes is just the right non-invasive communication and a gentle call-to-action nudge to create winning financial products.

India Transforming: 3Vs of the Internet Economy

Non-English users comprise 75% of India’s total internet user base. As of 2021, India’s vernacular internet user base stood at 536 million (CAGR: 18%) compared to 199 million (CAGR: 3%) English internet users. To tap this burgeoning ‘Bharat’; one must speak in the native Indian languages! Interestingly, 90% of Indians prefer to use their local language in search. Also, translate as a search increased 50% year-on-year. This rising local language market in India is best characterised by the 3Vs – vernacular users, voice search and videos!

To deep-dive into this reality, one of the world’s largest video search and sharing platforms commissioned Turian Labs to understand the psyche, persona and unarticulated needs of the Indian vernacular internet user. We engaged with a cross-section of ‘new’ and ‘experienced’ users across Tier I, II & III towns of India covering major Indian languages.

Voice search was clearly preferred by the new internet users (voice search queries in India are currently growing at a whopping 270% per year) as typing with a vernacular keyboard is seen as a challenge. Users also expected to see only vernacular results for vernacular searches! It would be exciting to see how the Indian online retail market would shape up by 2025 with this change!

Never Settle; Just Live.

The pandemic has taken a lot out of us. Yet, we must move purposefully towards our goals. We leave you with this evocative blog by Manoj who says, “Strength has to come from within. And it does, if you focus enough.”

Crises might be unsettling. But as Manoj, Turian's Chief Futurist says, never settle; just live. Until the next issue of Turian Tales, stay safe. 

Do write to us what you think about Turian Tales Oct 2021 here.