Product teardown — Blinkist

Blinkist is a professional book summary service that allows users to understand the key insights from popular books in 15 minutes or less. It is also a mobile-first microlearning app that allows organizations to create learning habits in their workspace.

Purpose

Blinkist encourages users to read more nonfiction books by providing cleverly written digests called "Blinks," where books are broken down into their main arguments. Blinkist gives users the choice of reading or listening to books. In addition to books, Blinkist offers podcasts in the form of shortcasts. Blinkist provides a "User Analytics Dashboard" for organizations to understand the detailed analytics of how teams learn, allowing them to make data-driven decisions.

Target Customer

• Individuals who are interested in learning more.
• Individuals who don’t prefer reading or listening to lengthy books
• Organizations who wish to create workspace learning habit

Business Model Canvas

Unique selling point

The majority of the book summarizing services available in the market provide the summary of these books as an article, but Blinkist provides the summary of a book into digestible "blinks," where the key ideas of the books are divided into 5 to 7 engaging "blinks." Blinkist makes it easier for the user to navigate from one blink to another and grasp that book’s key concept or idea in less than 15 minutes. Save your time wisely by investing less time in the books you read.

Competitor Analysis

Storyshots — Direct Competitor

StoryShots is a learning app that provides summaries of the book in text, audio, and animation formats. Storyshots is an approved Amazon Associates affiliate; users are redirected to Amazon if they wish to buy the book.

Scribd — Direct Competitor

Scribd is a subscription service for audiobooks and ebooks that provides access to millions of publications. For a monthly fee, Scribd subscribers can listen to and read an unlimited number of audiobooks, ebooks, and sheet music. Scribd has been dubbed “Netflix for books."

getAbstract — Direct Competitor

GetAbstract has the biggest library, with more than 22,000+ summaries. This is available in more than five languages. For verified students, the student plan starter is free and includes access to over 5000 summaries.

Audible — Indirect Competitor

Audible is a monthly subscription service that gives users access to a huge library of audiobooks via the Audible app. Each month, members receive Audible credits to spend on new titles. Users can build up vast collections of audiobooks over time.

Amazon — Indirect Competitor

Amazon’s ebook shop is the most extensive on the internet. Aside from its large selection of books, other attractions keep buyers returning for more. There’s the Kindle Unlimited subscription program, for example.

Below is the competitor analysis matrix based on the features provided by the products vs the price of the products and a matrix for product features vs market share of these products

User Persona

User 1:

Illustration from Freepik

User 2:

Illustration from Vecteezy

User 3:

Illustration from Dreamstine.com

User 4:

Illustration from Vecteezy

Problems Identified in existing product

Content

1. There is no open feedback system to know the credibility of book summaries in the app. A user can rate the book multiple times even without reading it. There is no option to comment on the blinks which other users can find helpful.

User Experience

1. Even though the app has only 3 pages ‘You, Explore, My library’, It is overwhelming at the beginning of the app experience as there is no guidance provided on how to navigate and what to expect.
2. Difficulty in the discoverability of the features due to visual clutter eg, shortcasts are on the bottom of the explore page but not in the first fold of the page which might be difficult to notice at first glance.

Business Goals :

Note: These are an assumption of what can be the ideal business goals

Activation:

• Decrease the number of users leaving without exploring the app

Retention:

• Increase the number of returning users

Solutions for the identified problems

1. Provide a comment section for the blinks and customise the feedback page based on the rating For ratings of about 4, give the option to comment, and for ratings below 4, give the option to comment as well as send feedback.
2. Create an onboarding guide to help the user understand the app and explore it efficiently.
3. Categorize the landing page into blinks, shortcasts, audiobooks etc similar to the search in explore page for the user to easily discover all the features and reduce visual clutter.

Feature Prioritization

Considering the business goals, prioritize the product features that are overlapping, followed by those that are in line with the goals.

1. Create an onboarding guide to help the user understand the app and explore it efficiently.
2. Categorize the landing page into blinks, shortcasts, audiobooks etc similar to the search in explore page for the user to easily discover all the features and reduce visual clutter.
3. Provide a comment section for the blinks and customise the feedback page based on the rating For ratings of about 4, give the option to comment, and for ratings below 4, give the option to comment as well as send feedback.

Key Metrics

Conversion rate

• It is the ratio between the users who signed up to all the unique visitors.

Bounce rate

• It is the percentage of users that visited a screen but didn’t continue to a second screen compared to all users who did.

Return rate

• Ratio of the number of users at the end of the period to the number of users at the beginning of the period

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