Whatsapp’s entry into E-Commerce

I have been fascinated by customer-centric apps the moment I started working for one, during my 2-year stint with Accenture Solutions.

While pursuing MBA, it was an obvious step for me to move into the direction of Product Management with my previous background of Information Technology and my specialization in Marketing, currently.

PM School, a Linkedin Community of product enthusiasts, is where my journey began solving real-life case study challenges and to understand the nuances of this domain better.

One such challenge posted by them was to build a Whatsapp E-commerce MVP leveraging their existing capabilities to empower small business owners by helping them create online shops, order placement, customer support, etc., named “Dukaan-Tech”.

Competitors in India

The first step was to research upon the market, identify the platforms that could directly or indirectly compete with Whatsapp’s Dukaan-Tech and to understand in depth what their current offerings were.

Addressable Market

One of the top reason for a startup to fail is that there was no market need for the product, in the first place. For an MVP, if there is no market for the particular product offering, either we are too late in launching our product, or too early into the market and have identified an incorrect need of the customer that is not a priority to be met, at present.

For Whatsapp Dukaan-Tech, the addressable market size could be defined as approx 110 Mn users. Hence, the MVP seems to be a viable idea to go forward with.

User Personas

They are a technique to gather the team around the shared understanding of who the target group is, to bring empathy for the users’ problems, to facilitate storytelling once the project starts, and to help prioritize the backlog and product roadmap based on insights. This is especially true when the companies are greenfielding a new solution.

For Dukaan-Tech, users fell into two categories — Supplier side, i.e, the vendors, and the Demand side, i.e, the Customers.

To understand the needs of the user better, it was imperative to understand the buyers’ and sellers’ journey on the application, as well.

Wireframes

Wireframes are the backbone of the design, containing the functional elements of the final mobile or web product. In other words, it’s the draft version of the application. Imagine how a house is built. The contractor wouldn’t be able to start building before getting framing plans from the architect. The same needs to happen to build a mobile or web application. Engineers can not start building a website until they receive the wireframes, otherwise, they may miss an important product element.

Wireframes, may not provide the complete details of the product, but it does provide a solid representation of the final design so that important pieces aren’t missed. By creating a wireframe a path is being set for the whole project and for the people — developers, visual designers, project managers.

For Dukaan-Tech, since there are two different users to be targeted, firstly the wireframes on how the app will look like to customer is built.

The Seller Account will be a bit different, and will only be visible to vendors who sign up exclusively for such an account.

More details regarding orders and transactions will be visible in the Accounts section as per the users’ profile.

Metrics

Metrics is a quantifiable measure that allow 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 your success. It’s choosing a few key metrics to keep an eye on, spend less time tracking, and more time acting upon the found data.

For Dukaan-Tech MVP, the metrics were taken into consideration keeping in mind that the backbone platform is already live.

Any suggestions as to how to improve my approach and if I missed anything in the entire process, are most welcome.