Originally published in The Times of India
.
Today, I’m introducing a new format called a ThinkIn. What’s a ThinkIn? It’s when a group of us come together to “mind meld
” (a Star Trek reference) on a specific topic, with Chatham House Rules in place. Basically, we can use the insights from the session without revealing who said what.
The first ThinkIn is with professionals from the Banking and Financial Services Industry (BFSI) on what could make for a better news product. It turns out they are heavy consumers of news and data, relying on it for their jobs. Most not only read Indian business news products but also consume The Economist, FT, Bloomberg, and WSJ.
Almost universally, bad user experience touches a raw nerve. Most BFSI professionals are among the top 2% of earners in India, earning high incomes and expecting affluent-level services. They are accustomed to products and services with a baseline user experience comparable to that of Starbucks or Marriott. When this expectation is not met, it leads to frustration and disillusionment.
Advertising?
- “I can’t focus and work while looking at news websites,” claimed a regular Bloomberg Terminal user.
- “Despite paying for an ad-free subscription, I still see ads, albeit for cross-selling the publication’s internal products.”
- “See, if you want to sell, then sell. I appreciate everyone doing dhandho (business). But know whom to sell what. You think I’ll come here to buy XXX?”
- Most were comfortable with ads, even as part of a paid subscription, as long as the ads were well-designed, relevant, and non-intrusive.?
Feed
Do you find the stories you are looking for?
- One professional explained how news products are “something for everybody” instead of “everything for me.”
- “I understand that you want to serve the largest possible audience set but in doing so you’ve become a Thali (a buffet that serves a little bit of everything) instead of a focused single dish.”
- “Why can’t I see stories related to my portfolio? In fact, recommend me stories that other people with a similar portfolio are reading. In the absence of this, I have a junior in the office who downloads interviews of CEOs of companies I’ve invested in and prepares me a weekly watchlist.”
- “The world of finance is huge with many micro-specializations. Serve me stories relevant to my industry and specialization. For that, I’m willing to give you access to my LinkedIn profile.”
- “News isn’t a timepass app for me. It is work. It is similar to email. Help me reach inbox zero. Remove stories that I’ve read and stories that you know that I’ve seen but not clicked on.”
- “I’m not tied to a publication. I’m tied to my job. Why don’t you scrape out all stories from across all the publications and give me reddit like personalized feed. Happy to click and read on the source publication’s website. But at least you’ve solved my curation problem.”
Search
Are you able to find what you want easily?
- “I come to news apps with a clear intent, say, for example, to find some data. There are so many options to choose from that I get frustrated, close the app, and just Google search.”
- “Often, I’m left with the feeling that I know it (some data or feature) is there but I just cannot find it.”
- “Sometimes, I read an insightful story. Then a week later, my boss is talking about the same problem and I want to forward the story to her. But I just can’t find it. Why not maintain my reading history?”
- “Often I bookmark articles to read later on the mobile app but cannot find the same articles once I log in to the website.”
Editorial
Would the content be worth paying for?
- Insights: “As an investor, I only have to make one smart decision a month or a quarter. That’s it. Everything I do is in service of that. Help me build that. A good example is the stories on The Motley Fool
, but that’s only useful for investing in the US stock market.”
- Competitive Insights: A professional in the investor relations team asked for insights into the competitive landscape and the investor community’s attitude towards her company and its key peers and portfolio positioning.
- Commentary with data: “Data and information are one thing. But where’s the analysis and opinion?” The user went on to show a page where all the economic data was published.
- Industry Trends: Another example that someone shared was, “Can phonepe.com/pulse
like industry numbers be published?” PhonePe publishes macro numbers on payments and insurance. In 2017, even Housing.com
had similar dashboards.
- Explain The Business: “No one explains the dhandho (business) deeply. For example, how does the entire copper trading business work? What are the risks at various points? What instruments are available to mitigate those risks? Who are the different suppliers? Is it a buy-side or sell-side market?” Allegedly, EquityMaster
used to explain it long back. Hearing this, another responded, “Do this for all listed companies so we have better awareness of their risks and opportunities.”
- Exclusive Information: Next, someone opened up TheInformation.com/org-charts
and showed the various organization charts for big companies. She went on to say, “Can reportage collapse into knowledge instead of stories? I don’t want stories. I want actionable lists.” Another quipped, “Acchaa, she needs andar ki khabar (secretive information)” and the lady responded, “Of course, I want exclusive insights that I cannot find anywhere else.” Another exclaimed, “A good way would be to scrape out all publicly available strategic job postings of companies and their competitors and add it to understand where they are putting their manpower and effort.”
- Guesstimates: A major concern for professionals in the lending space is ‘credit cycle’ forecasting, which is tied to estimated incomes. Considering the fact that news companies observe reality (reportage, government data, etc.) so closely, can they build a model to triangulate the credit cycle by district, SEC, job function, or industry?
Data and Charts
Data and charts play a critical role in the life of all BFSI professionals. However, they aren’t able to use the data and charts that news companies have already created. Overwhelmingly, everyone agreed:
- “Can they embed live charts from a news product into their Microsoft Word and Sheets (or Google Docs and Sheets)? Can they create charts on the news product and then embed them? If a story or video has charts, can they ‘grab that chart’?”
- Some also asked for live and accurate data feeds into Excel or Google Sheets so they can build their own trading strategy models.
Dashboards
“Good che? Bad che?” A Gujarati trader explained that all news websites should allow adding a benchmark at the site level, for example, Nifty 50, to see if any of the stocks or mutual funds are beating it or not.
Forum
One mentioned that a key professional development for young professionals is to build judgment about a stock or sector based on the information available to them. What if there was a ‘Notebook’ feature that allowed them to Long or Short a company or sector, for what period of time, and put in all their evidence (news articles, information, data) and then sit and wait to see if their prediction turns out to be true or not. If it is public, then others can comment on it or follow it.
Pricing
Most were willing to pay more provided they had more features.
- “I pay ?2000 for my mobile phone subscription every month. I can pay the same amount monthly for news if it helps me professionally.”
Conclusion
“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
This is the famous Alan Kay quote that Steve Jobs used when introducing the iPhone. The equivalent of this for Internet Products is:
“People who are really serious about user experience should make their own targeting AI models.”
Most of the issues discussed cannot be imagined or handled by humans. However, we will bucket things that will eventually decay as reality keeps moving forward.
I am looking to host more ThinkIns on any topic that interests 5 nerds. DM me. Exquisite green tea or coffee is on me.
Want to republish it? This post was released under CC BY-ND — you can republish it as is with the following credit and backlinks: ‘Originally published by Ritvvij Parrikh
on The Times of India
. The author retains the copyright and any other ancillary rights to the post.
