1. Context: Whatsapp Groups
At Neon we have a product called “ZAP do MEI” that offers courses via Whatsapp groups on 4 different topics that deal with taxes, invoices, and sales. The courses last for 3 days, and on each day the Group Moderator sends the course content and answers the students' questions.
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A screenshot of our Whatsapp group content.
2. Opportunity
Looking at data we identified an opportunity: the retention of users who enroll in courses via Whatsapp is much higher than that of non-enrollers, from the first month to a year after having enrolled.
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This showed us that we could use our Courses as a way to increase retention.
2.1 Business constraints: Whatsapp groups moderators were expensive
There’s a risk in increasing the number of enrollees of Whatsapp courses: the cost they have for the business. It is necessary to have dedicated people as moderators to maintain them.
Because the moderators:
- Manually send the content during the 3 days of the course duration;
- Answer students' questions during the same period of time;
- And they send the participation certificate to those who completed it, which is also a manual process.
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We need to find a way to scale the courses without increasing the cost for the business.
2.2 Business goal
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How can we scale our courses to increase enrollment and thus improve long-term retention without increasing the cost for the business?
3. Discovery
3.1 Data Analytics
The PM and I defined what data would be relevant to pull to help with product discovery, and our data analyst discovered that:
1.
New entrepreneurs are the ones who enroll the most in courses
The entrepreneur that started their company less than 1 year ago is the one who enrolls the most in courses, representing more than half of the customers who enroll in 3 or more courses.
Insight: The insight we take from this data is that it makes sense to focus for now on creating courses for new entrepreneurs to reach more subscribers and achieve a higher engagement rate.So talking about more “beginner” topics such as taxes and invoices is interesting to new small business owners.
2.
Participation Certificates do not impact retention
We found that the certificates we offer for those who stay for 3 days in the course do not impact the retention of that user in the app — they are only 1% more retained when compared to those who only signed up for the course.
Insight: We defined that offering a certificate now is not something necessary, since it demands effort and high cost for the business.
3.
There isn’t a specific profile that enrolls more in courses (besides new entrepreneurs)
We looked at the enrollees’ profile data such as: how long they have been using the app, age, and business field, but it was the same profile our active user base had.
Insight: Because of what we saw on topic 1, this data helps us to define our focus on new business owners only, since other profile characteristics weren’t relevant.
3.2 User interviews
Together with the UX Researcher, we defined the script, profile, and objectives of the user interviews.
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We want to understand what are their study and learning habits, as well as understanding their perceptions of their experience with the courses
We interviewed clients who are highly engaged in the courses, which means that they have enrolled in 2 or more courses of ours. We also selected users with different levels of formal education to capture differences in their study and learning habits, as well as their perceptions of the course experience.
A screenshot of our debriefing board on Miro.
I, the PM, and the UX Researcher gathered to do the debriefing and think about insights from the interviews, for that, we wrote our interview notes on post-its so we could group them according to the topic.
3.2.1 Research insights
These were the main insights we found in the interviews:
1.
They wanted to learn how to be an entrepreneur
Their main motivation for enrolling in the courses was to ask questions about duties, taxes, and how to manage the company. This was the case even for those who already had some knowledge about these subjects before enrolling.
2.
Course content met expectations
For those interviewed, the content of the courses met, and in some cases, exceeded their expectations.
3.
Knowledge empowers and builds confidence
They mentioned that there was a feeling of gratitude and accomplishment for the knowledge they gained in the course.
4.
They put what they learned into practice and revisited the course content
Most were able to put into practice what they learned in the courses. After finishing it, some mentioned that they deleted the course conversation on Whatsapp, but tried to find the content to reread in the app (and didn’t find it).
5.
Lack of focus and very basic questions
People who send messages that are not related to the course subject and/or that ask “very basic” questions, hinder progress and learning. However, they did not blame us for the distractions, they blamed the Whatsapp app because it is a chat tool, so it incites small talk.
6.
Course content met expectations
For many, it was their first experience taking online courses, and they liked the format. They mention that studying online is well suited to the busy entrepreneur's routine. They said they usually only use their cell phones to study the content, not their desktops.
7.
The participation certificate did not influence their decision to enroll
Most users did not know there was a participation certificate when they enrolled for the course, finding out that it existed only after reading messages mentioning it on the Whatsapp group. The certificate is not one of the main motivators to enroll in the courses.
8.
They study while multitasking
Some mentioned that they study by listening to the content while doing other activities such as working out, having lunch, and while on their way to work.
3.3 Quantitative research
We also sent a survey and understood where they tend to search for new content to learn:
It was a multiple-choice question, and most of them answered that they learn new skills in day-to-day practice (34%), as needed.
And in second place, but with a good difference, we have courses (18%), followed by a considerable difference from those who learn by watching videos on youtube (13,2%) and social networks (13%).
Despite not being the 1st place, the courses had good relevance, as well as the videos that got 3rd place, indicating that these two could be good paths to be explored.
Multiple choice question.
Regarding courses, the online courses beat the in-person courses, which may be a consequence of the pandemic. We have data from DataSebrae showing that in 2019 only 31% of entrepreneurs preferred online courses instead of in-person or hybrid courses.
On another question, we asked them how they prefer to learn, and learning with videos was their favorite way to learn (78%), winning with a big advantage over the others.
4. Define
We held a Brainstorming session with the team, stakeholders, and other teams to capture solution ideas based on the research findings and data.
We used an Opportunity Solution Tree to organize the opportunities we found and prioritize which one would bring us closer to our business goal (increase the # of enrollees in our courses). It also helped us brainstorm experiments to test the solutions, and to define what other experiments we could do next.
4.1 Solution
Based on the discovery, we learned that our users prefer to watch videos, that they feel a lack of focus in Whatsapp groups, and that in their opinion other students send very “basic” questions.
They already seek to learn through courses and videos, they want to learn about what is like to be an entrepreneur, they prefer online courses, and study while doing other activities (multitasking).
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All of these insights helped us to arrive at our solution to increase the number of enrollees in our courses: Creating a new type of course - Video courses.
4.1.1 Video courses
A screenshot of our TV MEI Fácil Youtube videos.
We had the goal to create an MVP with low effort to validate if our users are really interested in learning through videos, so we selected 4 existing videos from our Youtube channel to offer in the app as courses, instead of creating totally new videos (it would have a high production cost).
These 4 videos are about the same topics that we have in our Whatsapp courses, which means that they’re about beginner's topics such as taxes and invoices.
5. Develop
We did a remote Crazy 8's with the team with the goal to create a simple, low-effort screenflow for the video courses.
Screenshots of our team’s sketches.
We also had 2 rounds of design critiques with the team.
Figma screenshot of the flow with the team’s comments.
6. Deliver: Final screens
6.1 Courses
On the courses screen, we replaced the existing components with the Design System ones in a simple way, so it could be low-effort from a design and engineering perspective, and to stop using the old designs.
6.2 Course details
On the course details screen, we presented what content will be covered in each step of the video course and an option to share this course on your social networks — a way to make it easier for you to share and refer this course with your friends, word-of-mouth marketing to attract new enrollees.
6.3 In-app feedback
I also designed a modal for in-app feedback to capture users’ feedback on the course as soon as they finished it.
This entire video course experiment was done using Firebase so that we could run experiments without having to create a new app version.
7. Business Impact: 9k new enrollees, 10% conversion increase
- The average enrollment per month after the launch of the video courses rose by over 9,000 enrollees.
- And every month after the launch, video courses surpassed Whatsapp courses in enrollees, a total of more than half of the total subscribers.
- We have seen an increase in the conversion of people who have accessed the Courses page into enrollees, reaching almost a 10% increase in conversion.
- From the in-app feedback modal that we built, the rating of the video courses was above 4.5 stars on a scale of 1 to 5, which is very good because it demonstrated that the content was useful to our users.
