Can’t Wait to Develop My First Product!

Initially, young people who have had experience buying fashion items on IG shop were invited to do interviews in terms of their shopping habits and encountered difficulties. Most of them mentioned that it is hard for them to find IG shops which they may like upon searching on IG as some IG shops do not have “shop” in their names and too many irrelevant search results were shown which is time-consuming indeed. In this regard, they thought that there is a need of adding category or filter functions for a better search experience. While they revealed that the only circumstance in which they would be willing to pay for using the platform was a discount offer. Although the interviewees have had different shopping behaviors on IG, they have had similar needs and incentives to use a new platform. Therefore, I decided to choose young users aged 23 to 26 who are enthusiastic about online shopping on IG and spend $500 or above monthly as a persona type that I would like to focus on.

The above person type is adopted as they have already developed a habit of shopping online and have a decent income to cover their daily expenses. They hence are more willing to regularly spend more than other groups on IG shops (i.e. $500-$1000 per month). They are enthusiastic about online shopping on IG and browse IG shops every day to check if there is anything attractive to buy. In this way, they not only have a stronger need for solving the problem of search issues and having a better shopping experience, but are also more willing to pay for the new website.

Furthermore, another stakeholder, IG shop owners were found to be the main contributor to the largest revenue during the interview. Small to middle-scale IG shops were found to encounter similar problems in which they have had challenges in increasing shop exposure and managing the orders on IG. In this respect, IG shops which sell fashion items but with less than 10k followers were chosen to be my main persona type as they are willing to invest in platforms that help improve shop awareness and order management while they have a limited budget to create their own websites. In addition, if the new website could not only provide a platform for them to collaborate with other IG shops, but also provide analytics reports and SEO solutions for better exposure, they will be willing to pay $1000 per month for the website. Also, they are also willing to offer special discounts (10-15% off) for members who subscribe to the website on monthly basis and bare the cost themselves.

The scope of the project was better defined by understanding more about IG shop customers and owners’ needs and considering business goals more thoroughly, as well as by analyzing their present user journey and stories, which serves as the foundation for developing the problem statement, along with the functional specifications and content requirements that could direct the development of the solution and the gathering of information in the later phases.

You can find an overview of the project here.