Today (2019/9/24) I attended the World Interaction Design Day(IXDD) 2019 Tokyo, hosted by Adobe, to gain new service design knowledge. Below are my notes from the conference. This year’s theme is Trust and Responsibility, featuring two talks from Libera Works and Expedia.
Talk 1: How to gain trust and responsibility as a freelance worker
- Speaker: Anzai Hiroshi
- Product: Libera Works. B to B professional matching platform service, especially on upstream process works (design/requirement definitions)
Backgrounds
- No. of freelance workers is increasing a lot.
- How to get a project? The highest answer is from friends and acquaintances (80.4%), next is from a previously enrolled company.
- The biggest problem: unstable income
Key to get stable works
- Your work needs to be trusted
- Confirm the expectation of the client = Output and Reward.
- Of course, you need to have responsibility for your work in order to gain trust.
How to set your reward
1. Set the goal
- Have a conversation to decide on a concrete goal.
- After that, break down to many objectives.
- You don’t need to set an absolute goal. However, it is absolute to write down a goal to create PDCA circle.
2. Know the market
- You need to know how much your output is.
- To the previous employee of any famous consulting farm company: you can’t get the same reward as when you were in the company. Ask your freelance friend. Ask the trusted agency. Ask for your market value directly.
Output
- First-action speed. Be active to reach your client, especially in the beginning period of the contract. Mark a good impression for better contract renewal.
- Do 10% more than the expected output.
- Input the trend. You need to have time to invest in gathering market information, as well as trending services.
Summary
Trust from client = key of freelance success
Talk 2: Designing an online travel program
- Speaker: Kimura Kazuma, Expedia Partner Solutions (EPS) director
About Expedia Group
- Experts in international traveling
- Currently has 20 brands in the group.
- The main profit resource is a “hotel”.
- Every service was created in order to boost hotel sales.
- Expedia definition = world travel IT platform. Not just a travel agency.
- $1.3B technology investment each year
- They are investing in anything in order to urge a purchase. For example, now xx people are considering, now only xx rooms left features.
- In essence, they gather travel demand and supply from all over the world and optimize them.
High-quality contents
- Expedia gathers many high-quality images from facility holders.
- At least 20 pictures each.
- For small facilities that don’t provide good photos, staff will go to take photos to display on the web
Travel industry business model
*Metasearch = A service that searches for the cheapest price across many services
Customer journey
- The emotion of the traveler changes during each phase
- Planning for travel is a bothersome task
- Tips: suggest when a user is in high-tension is proven to yield a better success rate
Price Setting
- Standalone (SA) — standard hotel rate
- Package (PKG) — cheaper hotel rate but need to buy together with an airline ticket
- Member Only Deal (MOD)
- Package purchasers generate better sales in all aspects.
- ADR = Average Daily [Spending] Rate
- LTV is over 200% comparing to Standalone purchasers
Promotion
- Reminder email: send to ask users to book a better (pricier) hotel room
- Package sales: ask to buy an airplane ticket after hotel booking
Panel Discussion Notes
- Amazon also showed the same research that images increase the purchase rate. However, official images can be somewhat fake so they also let users post their real images in review.
- ‘Limited Availability’ theory. People are manipulated by this feeling.
- Metasearch weakness: can not compare additional value such as Rakuten point, T-point and customer service level
- How to promote Japanese customers: They are weak against ‘limited availability’. However, they hate frequent follow-up emails so Expedia reduces email to only the critical timing such as right-before-departure hotel upgrade deals email.
- Morals: Some promotions originated from the USA are disliked in Japan so Japan subsidiary needs to adapt the promotions.
- Libera Works registration: LP (Landing Page) conversion is 10%. Very high compared to other sites (1~2%)
- Ask users why did they register on this site. Create an existing user group for the A/B test and ask them opinions.
- A/B test should be used in the late phase of product development, not the beginning.
- Be genuine to the user: help them achieve their purposes. Not obstruct them by showing unrelated advertisements.
