Let's See Where This Goes?

During these very unique times, the ideal path forward is not always possible and you need to work with the cards you are being dealt. Here at True Digital this is certainly applicable and we are doing some odd stuff in order to rise to the challenge.

So what is this "oddity" you may ask? Well, the core of it is nothing new - we are doing a re-design of our flagship app/web experience. This is not shocking, but it is the "how" that is off here. Normally, you start this type of an effort with a design board, guiding principles, and a ton of consumer insights/data. You then take concepts and validate those with customers, refine, then finalise. From here, you should have some core journeys in hi-fi, site IA confirmed, and a style guide in order to guide the way. Move this into dev, shield the team from scope creep, and ship a brand new shiny e2e experience.

In our case, we are completely foregoing the last part. Yes, we have customer insights, principles, data, inspirations, and even some user testing. Check! we were doing so well. Then things went off the rails. As we finalised the roadmap/timelines and showed these out, it became clear that the timeline was too long. OK, no worries. We would go back, really focus on what is an MVP, and shave off some time. We did so, showed, and it was still way off. Then, a new mandate arose -We had to deliver in less than a month.

For those that really get dev, you understand overhauling a complex app ( a super app even) in less than a month is not possible. No amount of caffeine, late nights, or lack of weekends was going to get us there. So, we got creative. We are rolling out the new re-design in phases to the customers and the larger group is supportive of this iterative approach (yay!) This is still so weird to me - some of our experience will look new and shiny, some will be old, some IA will be off. Not ideal... but let's see what comes out of it - and of course share the learnings.

Homepage/Movies - lead the way!

We started with releasing our new homepage and movie section. For this, it was just UI. We did not adjust core IA nor refactor our code (/cry). Below are some initial findings. This is largely an apple to apples comparison: lockdown was still present, marketing budget was constant, no new "crazy content" etc.

Data below is first 2 weeks live vs. previous 2 weeks.

• DAU/MAU rose by 3%. DAU/WAU rose by 5.2 %
• PVs increased by 2.3%
• App store ranking/ratings - roughly the same
• 1st day engagement rate for new users increased (iOS) Android was stagnant
• Retention after 30 days went up 1.5%
• Time spent saw no movement

• VOD views are flat over same period
• Time spent on VOD - flat
• VOD purchase up 1.5%

Overall, we have seen marginal gains which is interesting. I was honestly expecting no gains. Overhauling a homepage and a few sub-pages without improving our code, navigation flows, or other pages seemed like it would result in a disjointed experience to our users.

I have seen some impact to the teams in terms of confusion and uncertainty. While I have tried to keep this approach as transparent as possible, it has been hard since we are basically trying to build the plane while flying it. I think that has been my real take away so far. A transparent GANT chart etc. would have helped in execution across our teams. The good thing in this process is - test, learn, iterate! This takeaway will help us tackle the next few phases and execute a little smother.

Stay tuned for the next instalment - it will be an interesting one as we are going to launch a new site IA which should certainly yield some fun findings.