As I browsed through the responses from the Share My Spots survey, a few thoughts went through my head.
Ohhhh danngggg it… I didn’t realize this particular group of people all were in the same age group!
Need more dude data.
Probably should seek some people outside these demographics to validate that people with high school educations or vocational training do find travel recommendation sharing and researching important. If that hypothesis is not correct then we may have better defined our target market.
Below “Yelp” is “Google Maps or similar location based app”
Below “Google Documents” is “Word”
Below “Calendar Application” is “Pen / Paper / Physical Notebook”
Below “Google Keep” is “Notes in IPhone, location feature in pictures”
Yelp… that’s surprising. Is Yelp even that popular abroad? Who uses it – Americans? Probably should get some international people on this survey.
Pen and paper huh? I wonder if these users would find print functionality important. Or even a way to jot handwritten notes down. Scanning photos or notes, etc.
Checklists – good idea.
IPhone location feature for pictures – brilliant! Could this be our unfair advantage or a unique value proposition?
Ok… so no to genuine curiosity – that makes sense.
I wonder if there is a way we can group or recommend itineraries based on location and walking distance. Maybe I can slide in super casual car rental or hotel recommendation while users create itineraries based on the data.
Trust… did not think about how important this is. I wonder how we can establish that? Reviews… voting… travel experts? This could also be a barrier to engaged users if trust isn’t established with early adopters.
Seems like organization is a huge pain point.
What if there’s a way for you to visually see if someone has used your recommendation? Like a “check-in to this recommendation” feature. Or upvoting / downvoting… going back to trust here.
Love this idea of being able to attach location data to photos. Maybe actively encouraging users to use this while vacationing. New user type?
It may make sense to have “taste profiles” so a user can filter by “adventurous” “relaxing” or “honeymoon”. Also another great way to target recommendations or advertisements.
I don’t know why I feel surprised that most people said “yes”. I thought it would be a harder sell. Also great idea about ad-free.
So What Did I Learn?
A lot actually… in my opinion. Talking to actual users or potential users is a great way to define what’s important to them and what they find valuable. Obviously we want to sell them on the app and get them to download it initially but we also want active and engaged users. This survey gave me a few new ideas to keep them coming back.
A personal belief – what sets highly valued products apart from their competitors is that they don’t chase.
Of course, competitive analysis is important. You must be aware of what your rivals are doing so that you can challenge your product and adapt to meet new user demands or expectations. But NEVER should you just blindly follow a competitor’s list of features, carelessly assume they make sense for your users and implement them without a question. That makes you a copy-cat. That makes you (and this is a technical term) super lame.
Next Steps
After doing a little bit of research on some of the questions I called out above, I’ll be feeling pretty good about making some user benefit statements. However, since we brought up competitors… let’s do a little snooping.