VILLAGEHUNT

COMMUNITY DRIVEN PRODUCT REVIEWS

I quit my corporate job at Expedia to venture upon my startup dream. And even though this dream turned out to be the hardest time in my professional career, I have absolutely zero regrets. For building my own startup has taught me a great deal, more than I could ever have imagined. Despite the many challenges — probably, in fact, because of them — I have improved immensely as a designer. I wrote more about what I learned here and here.

VillageHunt - OverviewVillageHunt - Overview

VillageHunt is a place where new moms can share recommendations and useful information about products, and help each other with purchasing decisions.


● Company of 2 co-founders, 3 employees. I was co-founder and Chief Design Officer.

● Our Private Beta grew 25% MoM in the first 6 months.

● Of the 2K moms that were in our private beta, 54% rated, reviewed and recommended products (compared to 1% in online commerce).

● This data enables personalized product search based on what worked or didn’t work for a mom, for her friends, and for other moms like her.

The Problem:
How do you know which product to buy?!

Shopping for a product that is new to you is extremely hard and time consuming. Any product search brings back tons of options and information. And for new moms it’s especially hard because they shop for so many products that are new to them in a short period of time, and it’s not like they have time!

Now, product reviews haven’t changed in more than 15 years. Back then smartphones were barely mass market, social media was a fraction of its current size, and ecommerce was not as crowded and overwhelming as it is today. Despite the changes over the years, we still read product reviews that are long, not personalized, and without knowing who wrote them or why.

Amazon 2002-2018Amazon 2002-2018

The Vision:
Community Driven Product Reviews

Product FlowProduct Flow

Research

Reaching out to people to talk about their pain points wasn’t easy for me in the beginning. I had to ask people for their time without being able to pay them, and without anyone knowing who we were. It took many tries to tell the right story. I learned how the same idea can be described in a bland, uninspiring way that leaves people wondering “what’s the point?” or be presented in a compelling way that gets people yelling “I need this, how can I help?”.

MVP

To validate the magnitude of the problem, we launched a Minimum Viable Product. We invited moms from Seattle to join. The idea was very simple - rate products you’re familiar with to help others, see top products among moms in Seattle.

The goal of the MVP was to check two assumptions: 1) That moms will come to this kind of content. 2) That moms will share from their own experience.

MVP - Help Mom ChooseMVP - Help Mom Choose

We made 6 posts in mom groups on Facebook and within one week, we had 400 users, 69% of them rated products and 47% wrote reviews. By the end of that week a mom in Seattle could read 627 recommendations for baby products from other moms in Seattle!

FeedbackFeedback

Private Beta

After getting validation from the MVP we built a private beta for moms in Seattle, a place for them to share product recommendations, help each other and discover great products based on what worked or didn’t work for them, for their friends and for other moms like them.

VillageHunt ScreensVillageHunt Screens
VillageHunt ScreensVillageHunt Screens

Results

🏡 We started with a private beta for moms in Seattle. The word spread, and VillageHunt was used by new moms in more than 20 US states.

👍 54% of our users rated, reviewed and recommend, on average 5.5 products per session. In retail sites ~1% of consumers rate products.

😍 78% of users were engaged by searching, saving, sharing, asking or discussing products.

🕗 The average time users spent on the site for their first session was 8 minutes.

📈 In the 6 months we focused on bringing users to the site, our posts were exposed to 10K potential users. 39% of them registered with their Facebook account, and in that time we grew 25% month over month.

Positive FeedbackPositive Feedback

On social networks moms were using words like 'addictive', 'fantastic resource' and 'exactly what I was looking for' when talking about VillageHunt.

Two local publications, ParentMap and Seattle’s Child found VillageHunt very interesting and chose to write about it.

PressPress

The story isn’t over

This is the start, of getting from an old fashioned and faceless review to being able to see exactly what high chair is most recommend among my friends and moms around me.

VillageHunt vs. AmazonVillageHunt vs. Amazon