The Brief
Paperchase is renowned for its beautiful cards, wrap and gifts, the downside is that you need to purchase these in store or online, get them delivered to your house, write your message and post it yourself. There are many other companies that allow you to purchase a card or a gift online, personalize it and send it. During the pandemic, this market boomed, and we want a piece of it.
The Goal
Paperchase has developed an MVP app for IOS where you can purchase and personalize a card, but we want to expand on it and bring it up to the next level and offer more personalized items. The MVP has shown potential, so it is time to review the project and evaluate how we could improve it.
The Challenges
The MVP was built with only cards in mind, so there needs to be a reshuffle and a rethink to accommodate for all the other possible journeys.
To help streamline the design process and make sure that the design is consistent, we needed to create a design system. We needed to consolidate software products and move from Sketch and Abstract to Figma.
Accessibility was not taken into account when the app was first designed, so a review of the look and feel was needed.
An audit was in order.
The process
Once the audit was complete, we started conducting user surveys and implementing UXcam, so we could monitor user behaviour. We discovered there was an appetite for more personalized features and there were a lot of issues that needed addressing, such as the lack of search function or filtering in cards, the quality of the product and the fact that Plus was not linked to your .com account.
Time to prioritise features
Once we had done our research, gathered business requirements and done a few workshops with the dev team, we were ready to create our game plan for the next year.
We divided the features in to six areas to focus on.
Starting to see results
We were working on two weeks sprints which meant we were constantly seeing features being implemented and deployed, adding to the feedback loop.
By addressing first some of the product feedback (quality, pricing and delivery) we instantly saw a big change in our uptake.
Time to add value
Once we completed the first phase of cleaning up the app, it was time to expand the app to add value, drive conversion and up the sales. We proposed to achieve this by working on a few key projects that included:
Event reminders
Through personalized messaging that makes the lives of your customers easier, digital calendars and event reminders are proving to be a great way to increase customer engagement in a more effective way.
Charging for delivery
As a business, we need the ability to be able to charge our customers for delivery. We are currently losing money. Being able to offer a range of delivery methods puts us on par with our competitors. Dividing the checkout from the basket will decrease errors at checkout and result in a lighter, more streamline performing app.
Refer a friend
A mobile referral program is an additional feature that helps foster customer loyalty and incentive them to share our brand with others. Referral marketing has made an especially smooth transition to the mobile platform. With customers having easy access to all their contacts and social media apps on their phone, the act of sharing becomes virtually seamless. Someone can share straight from your brand app with just a few taps.
Replicating current functionality but with new products
In the case of diaries and planners, it feels like an easy win. We already have everything set up for notebooks (designs, personalization, logistics…) There has been an uptake in search on .com for diaries 2022 meaning there is an appetite from our customers.
The results
After addressing the mayor sticking points and expanding to Android, the app was in a position to be pushed to the wider Paperchase customers. There were still features we could add, new products, handwritten messages and more customization. But unfortunately, the business changed hands and the app (personalization) was no longer a priority. The app soft launched in 2021 and shut down in 2022.
It has been my favourite project that I have worked on so far.
My learnings
This project was driven by the CTO, it was his idea that Paperchase had a space in the market to compete with well established similar apps like Moonpig. These decisions were made without doing any market research and completely separate look and feel to the rest of the brand. It was a project that had its own autonomy and although that came with a vast amount of benefits, it also had huge consequences. I should have seen the red flags... but the team were fantastic and the work ethic and processes we followed were the stuff dreams are made of. Ultimately, I was so happy that I missed the signs. When the CTO left and the business tried to absorb the project, it was a tough sell and ultimately its demise.
RIP Paperchase Plus.
