Diary study for ShopBack OMO affiliate product — SBMart (part 1/3)
Background
ShopBack has primarily been an online affiliate marketing product, where users simply redirect to partner websites through ShopBack to get their cashback. While the core business continues to grow quickly in our 9 markets, we also constantly experiment with new business models and products in different markets — to find new ways to reward shoppers in their daily lives.
One such product that’s been rolled out in Taiwan is SBMart (ShopBack Mart) — an OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) affiliate product aiming to help users to save on their day-to-day spending at physical stores, such as supermarkets. Users can receive cashback by browsing and collecting offers in the app, then purchasing correlated products at brick-and-mortar outlets of partner merchants such as 7-Eleven, Family Mart, and PX Mart.
Launched in May 2021 in Taiwan after a few months of testing and fine-tuning, SBMart has since seen rapid adoption by a number of users and continues to expand — thanks to the popularity of the brands available for shoppers to earn cashback from. Users in Taiwan can now earn cashback through 7,800 physical stores which have partnered with SBMart.
As we continue to expand the availability of our product, we wanted to understand two things that would help us improve and scale the product even faster. Hence as a research team, we identified two key areas we wanted to understand better:
- How new users perceive the value of SBMart.
- How new users learn how to use SBMart, and how they overcome challenges when using SBMart.
Qualitative vs Quantitative
Our team believes in using mixed methods. This research mainly focused on understanding new users’ learning curves both in terms of behaviour and attitude. We have been looking at quantitative data which was generated by other physical campaigns, but the data couldn’t tell us why users decide not to use SBMart, and what leads to them to drop off.
Why a Diary Study
We decided to use a Diary Study to observe behavioural changes in time series for the following reasons:
- Limitations of the online interview: From previous qualitative research, it’s hard to learn users’ behavior and attitude without physical context.
- New users can only imagine scenarios: Though 1-on-1 interviews and usability testing allowed the research team to observe SBMart onboarding issues, and enabled the research team to implement reinforcement for the user to complete the task within a 60-minute time frame, the 1-on-1 interview can only allow new users to “imagine” how they are going to use SBMart in the future.
- Physical marketing campaign: There was a marketing campaign going on while this study was planned, and the marketing team was keen to understand the effectiveness of their campaign.
Planning for Diary Study
Set the time frame for the user to achieve the tasks
It would be better if the given time could fit into the generic user’s routine. Eg. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly (For example, if the target user is a shift worker, the routine may be irregular). Due to the constraints of the project timeline, and the various forms of data we planned to collect, we had to limit users to complete the task within 5 days, and have users document their shopping trips across both weekdays and weekends to understand them better. This was also needed to balance the data through conditions, such as the days the users were working and days they were not.
Design the user experience for the diary study
Tasks have to be designed to be achievable and allow users to truly express themselves and maintain their authenticity. It’s also important to let users feel a sense of achievement continuously in the process to avoid drop-offs from the research.
Understand the Context
We learned from previous studies that in Taipei, people shop more than 2 times a week at convenience stores or supermarkets in urban areas because various services subsidize the services that convenience stores offer, for example: collecting online-purchased packages, paying for water bills, drinking draft beer etc. Thus, the ecosystem and these services provide an inevitable opportunity for users to enter the store and shop. (reference a YouTuber’s virtual tool of a convenience store here)
7-Eleven in Taiwan offers vegan food, coffee, craft beer station, etc.
After understanding the context we can further rationalize a reasonable number of shopping trips. We ended up deciding to ask users to complete 3 shopping journeys in 5 days.
- Analog v.s digital: The tasks, instructions and materials are intentionally designed in analog.As both SBMart and reporting systems are in-app in mobile environments, we’d like users to be able to reference analog material and instructions, instead of jumping back and forth from one page to another on their mobile phone which can be disruptive to the task.
- Instructions: Breaking down questions we’d like to understand and turning them into digestible words. It’s important to visualize expected outcomes for users to understand what we hope them to document.
- Gamify it: In this diary study, researchers made three shopping trip missions sealed to provide a bit of mysterious ambiance at the beginning. Users are allowed to open the sealed envelope after they have completed the previous mission. Just imagine researchers who have now become game designers and who needed to make participants fully immersed in the process. We not only learned that users need to be encouraged in different phases, users also want to feel a sense of satisfaction, and they are looking forward to completing the next task. The virtual attitude and ambiance we created for users allow them to contribute more data without drop-offs.
- The reporting system for diary study: To make the documentation process more accessible for users, we decided to use the most commonly adopted chat app in Taiwan,Line, as our tool to receive users’ documentation of their shopping trips. Line reduces the learning curve for users and reduces cognitive load while they proceed with the mission we provided.
— to be continued.
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(中文版) ShopBack 日誌研究: OMO聯盟行銷 — 發票回饋 (Part 1/3)
背景
ShopBack 過去主要是線上聯盟行銷起家，用戶只要簡單的透過ShopBack跳轉到聯盟夥伴的網站，即可得到現金回饋。ShopBack這個商業模式持續成長，漸漸地成長到九個國家; 為了回饋用戶的支持，我們也在不同國家實驗新的商業模式型態和產品。
舉例一個ShopBack近期在台灣的實驗性的產品：發票回饋 — 可以幫助用戶省下日常生活實體消費的OMO聯盟行銷產品。用戶只要透過ShopBack發票回饋瀏覽實體店面的優惠商品，領取優惠後去實體商店（像是小7或是全聯）消費該商品，即可得到現金回饋。
2021年5月發票回饋首先在台灣市場發表，在數個月內中快速的迭代更改了品續多細節，因此在這期間前後累積了為數不少的用戶。截至目前為止，用戶可以利用ShopBack發票回饋在全台灣超過7800間的實體店面並且得到現金回饋。
當我們正在快速的成長還有擴張的路上，我們想要了解兩個問題以讓我們進步並且快速成長：
- 用戶對於發票回饋的感知價值(perceive the value)是什麼?
- 新用戶如何學習使用發票回饋？ 他們如何克服他們面臨的挑戰？
質性研究 v.s 量化研究
我們的研究團隊相信使用混合研究方法 — 本次研究的主要目的在於學習新用戶的學習曲線，和新用戶的態度以及行為。我們看過了前次實體行銷的量化的數據後，發現這些資料不足以讓我們了解：
- 為何用戶決定不持續使用ShopBack發票回饋?
- 什麼原因造成用戶流失?
為何使用日誌研究
為了瞭解行為在一段時間內的改變，以下是我們決定使用日誌研究當作我們的研究方法的原因：
- 線上訪談的侷限：由於ShopBack發票回饋是一個線上整合線下的產品。在之前的線上訪談中，在沒有實體情境的情況底下，很難觀察出用戶的態度以及行為。
- 新用戶只能想像未來的使用場景：雖然一對一的訪談/Usability測試，這兩種研究方法可以讓研究團隊觀察用戶怎麼一步一步開始學會使用ShopBack發票回饋; 除此之外，這兩種方法還創造了實驗室的環境，要求用戶在60分鐘內完成我們指定的任務。但在ShopBack發票回饋這樣的產品，用戶只能用想像的去完成他們實體消費的那一段旅程。
- 實體行銷計畫：在研究初步計畫的同時也有實體行銷也正在計畫，因此，行銷團隊也想要用質性了解實體行銷的成效。
計畫一個日誌研究
設定一個時間區間讓用戶完成任務
如果研究團隊有時間的話，設定的時間區間符合用戶的例行時間軸（routine cycle)是會是更好的選擇。舉例來說：一週，兩週，一個月。然而因為研究的時間限制和資料搜集的多樣性，我們決定犧牲縮短日誌研究的時間到五天。為了平衡工作日和非工作日行為的資料，用戶需要在平日和週末間回報他們三次的購物旅程，
設計日誌研究的使用者經驗
日誌研究中的任務需要被設計得可以讓用戶達成，並且讓用戶可以忠實地表達自己的感受。日誌研究過程中讓用戶感受到”持續的達成感“可以減少用戶在研究中流失的風險。
了解情境
研究團隊在前幾次的研究中，發現台北市區的用戶每週至少到實體超商/超市購物超過兩次，原因來自於超商/超市的整合性服務，像是寄領包裹、帳單繳費等等。因此這個生態圈讓用戶以一種幾乎是難以避免的方式進入實體商店。 (如果你不住在台灣，歡迎你參考這位Youtuber的影片介紹）
了解了情境後，我們可以逐漸合理化我們規劃給用戶的任務執行天數。最後我們決定了要求讓用戶在五天內回報三次的購物旅程。
- 實體 v.s 數位：紙本的任務介紹和任務指令是當時刻意做的決定。原因是ShopBack發票回饋和回報系統(LINE)都是手機中的App，而我們希望用戶可以在操作產品的時候依然可以參考我們的任務說明和介紹;避免讓用戶不斷的在手機頁面中跳轉頁面打斷了他們正在做的事情。
- 指引：將我們的問題轉化變成更能理解的文字，並且清楚地表達我們想要搜集資料的樣貌，將它視覺化。
- 遊戲化：在這個研究中，研究員將三個購物旅程的指令封起來並且創造了一點神秘的感覺，當用戶完成了對應的任務後，才可以打開下一個封住的信封。想像我們變成了遊戲設計師而且要讓用戶沈浸在這個過程中，我們學習到用戶在不同階段需要被持續的鼓勵，用戶想要在這過程中有認同感以期待完成下一個任務。這個創造出來的環境氛圍可以幫助用戶持續地完成避免用戶中途放棄。
- 日誌回報系統：為了讓用戶可以更快速容易的回報他們的購物旅程，我們決定使用台灣最普及的通訊軟體Line來當作我們主要的工具。Line的使用可以讓我們減低用戶對新工具的學習曲線，幫助用戶可以更專注在完成任務上。
— — — — — — — 更多內容請期待下篇。
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❗❗️ 或者… 對我們感興趣？(對～我們希望你是! 😂)
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