Building Community Product: Case Study with Sportskeeda
With the onset of the pandemic, people began spending long hours in front of laptops, or were glued to their small mobile screens and scrolling through endless videos — a cynic would interpret the changing human behaviour as us becoming digital hermits. Well, it might not be completely true, for instance, there’s a reason humans are regarded as social animals. And sticking by this very fact, even though the onset of pandemic did confine people in the safety of their homes away from friends and colleagues, it bought them closer virtually, which had been leveraged upon by quite a few businesses around the world (think of all the video call apps whose share prices and DAUs just skyrocketed within days).
Behavioural economics and psychological research have taught us that we fundamentally crave a sense of connectedness, belonging, mission, and meaning. And, Communities deliver these benefits, creating a sense of shared accountability and a set of values while preserving individual autonomy.
If a company can transition from simply delivering a product to building a community, it can unlock extraordinary competitive advantages and both create and support a superior business model. Specifically:
- Enthusiastic members help acquire new members, resulting in lower customer acquisition costs and a tight viral loop.
- Members are loath to abandon the community, resulting in increased retention and therefore improved lifetime value.
- Members support one another, resulting in high gross margins due to a lower cost of service.
The result of this is very real network effects: as engagement grows, the community gets smarter, faster to respond, more globally available, and generates more value.
A few months back, I had the opportunity to solve one of the Product case study challenges hosted by PM School, in which the hypothetical Problem Statement revolved around building a community of sports fan product for Sportskeeda.
Before proceeding, I must mention, I am not affiliated with Sportskeeda in any capacity, and the views for this article are strictly my own.
PS : Find my video here on this very case study for a detailed explanation decoding product case challenges.
Problem Statement Analysis + Company & Competitors Overview
The first and foremost step was to dissect the problem statement and the goal to be worked upon. Company background research, the industry they operate in was an essential step to understand the overall strategy of the company so that our suggestions aligns with the same.
Apart from this, understanding our competitors is crucial for majorly two reasons — why our user is motivated to go to competitors’ platform, and to evaluate the features they have provided so that we don’t copy the same in our solutions just for the sake of it.
Secondary Research
Secondary research means basically Extensive Googling. Before talking to users or coming up with solutions, we should be aware of current trends in the market and industry, where the company stands, and anything under the sun which is required to understand the product, industry and its users better.
Secondary research also helps in removing bias in our heads, and making sure that we at least get an idea of the pain points faced by the user.
The User at Focus — Personas + Journey + Empathy Maps
A user persona is a profile that represents a product’s ideal customer. By creating such personas, companies gain the ability to tailor their efforts and connect with the target audience to meet their needs and solve their problems.
The main purpose of a user persona is to create empathy for customers. Understanding and relating to what matters to the customers is an essential part of product management. This requires ongoing research about target user segments so to build an informed roadmap.
Here are the key benefits of defining user personas:
- Explain the “why” behind product decisions
- Focus on the needs of the most important user groups
- Prioritize features that solve actual user problems
- Implement new functionality in line with how customers will actually use it
For Sportskeeda, through secondary research on online trends and user interviews of users on Sportskeeda as well as similar platforms, three user personas could be created that threw light on the motivations and pain points of users coming on the app.
Talking about user journey mapping, they are usually depicted to understand the steps taken by the customer to achieve their goal inside a digital product.
This mapping for Sportskeeda was hence done during primary research to understand how the user navigates through the application currently.
Lastly, user empathy maps helped to understand the user’s needs while we develop a deeper understanding of the persons we are designing the new features for. An Empathy Map is just one tool that can help us empathise and synthesise our observations from the research phase, and draw out unexpected insights about the user’s needs.
Feature Suggestions
- Prediction & Rewards
Why just watch a sport when you can be a part of it and even earn money — that is what the current sports fan think. This is the reason why Fantasy Sports has been gaining traction, more so since the onset of the pandemic.
This very user insight became the groundwork for suggesting a similar feature onto the app as part of the community product.
2. Merchandise Platform & Bidding
Team merchandising has always been a profitable revenue stream for teams and leagues across the world. When they say “Clothes make the Fan” — they are not entirely wrong. The right merchandise evokes a sense of loyalty and belongingness among sports enthusiasts for their favourite player and/or team.
Inspired by e-commerce platforms and the auctions on eBay, the next feature was suggested. The auctions could make sure that high-value merchandise is sold to the highest bidders to extract higher revenues and evoke the sense of pride who ultimately gets to own such limited, exclusive merchandise.
3. Community Pages
Humans tend to socialise better with others with shared interests. Online communities and blogs have been cropping up for years just for people to discuss anything and everything they are passionate about.
The next feature, inspired by Reddit subthreads, especially made sense since sports fans love to dissect each and every moment of the matches and discuss at length about their favourite sports.
Key Metrics
Metrics is a quantifiable measure that allows businesses to define and track the success of a product or a business activity. Metrics are used by stakeholders, marketers, and the product management team to detect problems, set goals, and make informed decisions.
Today, the biggest issue with metrics is not how to measure them — Google Analytics alone is a valuable tool for calculating and visualizing success. It’s choosing a few key metrics to keep an eye on, spending less time tracking, and more time acting upon the found data.
Feature Specific metrics are significant to measure the success of each feature introduced in the app. However, we also need to take care of some overall metrics to see how these features have positively/negatively impacted the overall product.
Monetization Strategy
The problem statement also included us to monetize the features for Sportskeeda. Each feature along with steps to extract revenues from them has been mentioned.
Communities Built Right!
- Salesforce
While we might think its $140 billion valuation is due purely to its innovation of software delivered on-demand through the cloud, it has also created a community of nearly 2 million members who support each other, organize events, produce content, and are a critical part of its global operations. This community is an international network of minds, talent, and time, all supporting the success of Salesforce. The company’s annual “Dreamforce” conference, which attracts nearly 200,000 acolytes to San Francisco each year, represents a mecca for its ecosystem to convene, build relationships, and advance its corporate agenda.
2. Harley Davidson
Harley Davidson has been the prime motivator for brands to turn to community building. It has created more than 1,400 local chapters around the world for enthusiasts to get together in person and discuss their bikes; Fitbit, which has a community of more than 25 million members, who share and refine their exercise regimes; and HITRECORD, which has brought more than 750,000 artists, writers, and filmmakers together to collaborate on productions.
