"Summarize and organize" the three directions and three products of the rental product business---from "Everyone is product Manager"

Rethinking of pioneering products: from disassembling meta-requirements to product positioning Everyone is a product manager Community Posted in 2018-10-08 08:56:31 report Hits: 466

?? 10 people, 10 months, 1 million, 3 products, we have made some explorations in the changeable renting field, made a lot of mistakes, also learned some experience, hope this article can be helpful to you on the road.

disassembling META Requirements

First, let's use a word to define the meta-requirements that the team needs to solve---make renting easier

Hear "Rent" two words, everyone in mind the first to think of the product is what? 58 with the city, the chain home freely.

There is no doubt that in the early stages of the Internet, the rental platform, represented by these two products, does make renting a "simple".

Where is simplicity?

• The landlord said goodbye to the era of small ads all over the street, at home just spend a cup of coffee time, you can publish information for rent.
• Tenants of the efficiency of the search room greatly improved, just on the work of the subway slide finger, you can filter out the two-digit listings.

As the efficiency of information docking increases, the match between landlord and tenant also increases simultaneously, so in the early stage, 58 of the same city did solve the "efficiency" and "quasi-degree" of the two core issues, so that the rental to become "simple".

So why is today's rent no longer "simple"?

the cost was pushed higher.

Over the past 10 years, intermediaries have undoubtedly been one of the main enablers.

What did the intermediary do?

• Intermediary through the capital monopoly of the first-tier cities, most of the high-quality housing, which led to the direct result of the user in any one rental platform to find the room is not the intermediary of the "Fingers Mountain."
• The vicious competition between intermediaries. In order to monopolize and expand, continue to erode the rights and interests of tenants, rents rose again.
• Intermediary daily on the network platform to publish a large number of listings information, dilute the quality of housing information to achieve the purpose of monopoly information.

Overall, the current intermediary experience is not very good. From the perspective of the intermediary, for their own development needs, naturally want to serve more users, to earn more remuneration.

But while charging high service fees, it does not provide a matching service.

Let's look at the limited options tenants face:

• Pay high service fees, save time, buy listings from the intermediary, and assume the risk of intermediary run-off.
• Spend a lot of time on a rental platform to filter listings and take chances.

And look at the landlord's choice:

• In the intermediary of the telephone offensive to hand over the house, take rent, but to bear the housing is reformed and intermediary run risk.
• Post information on the rental platform. The approximate rate will be overwhelmed by the flood of information in the intermediary, thus incurring losses.
• Use your local connections to rent.

The first-tier city rental market can be said to have been in the "Seller's Market", in the current markets, intermediaries in the dominant position, the choice of tenants and landlords are limited, and tenants are at the bottom of the food chain.

Now the housing market is facing a more complex situation than the early stage: In addition to the original "efficiency" and "quasi-degree" problem, but also increased the "information monopoly" "high cost of renting" and so on.

We want to re-comb the relationship between "intermediary", "Landlord" and "tenant" around these issues, and here are some of the explorations we have made so far on our products.

Three stages of product positioning

First of all, let's take a brief look at some project backgrounds.

Founder: A long-term rental apartment operating director, in the long-term rental apartment area has a certain amount of resources accumulated.

Investment capital: About 100w

Pilot City: Guangzhou

Next, we will show you the 3 product positioning that our team has given at different stages.

First Stage

Time: 2017.12-2018.3

Positioning: "Search for the first-tier urban tenants of the navigation site"

Through research, the market in addition to 58 and freely, there are a number of "small and beautiful" rental platform, according to the long tail theory, if we increase the exposure of these small platforms, can improve the efficiency of tenants to find the same time, the completion of the initial drainage task.

The ideal situation is: the user through our site in each rental platform between each other to achieve the purpose of finding a house, while navigation can provide users with high-quality content, in order to increase the viscosity.

Every year in March is the first wave of rent, we choose to launch products at this point in time. But as far as the results are concerned, the data is poor.

Let's use the simplified version of the Kano model to find out where the problem lies:

In the Kano model, the drop in user expectations and product experience is at a glance:

Tenants generally think that in the navigation site to find a house "very laborious", because the entrance of the listing in the navigation is particularly deep buried, coupled with the page logic is also problematic, which makes users in the site is particularly easy to "lost", and there is no good way to allow users to smooth between the various platforms "migration", The user leaves one of the platforms at the same time the approximate rate will jump directly out of the navigation site.

Users can not collect specific listings, can only collect platform URLs, resulting in low product viscosity.

The team's intention is to solve the tenant pain point from "efficiency", but now it seems that this form of navigation is "ineffective" type of solution, not only not to improve the user's search efficiency, those "small and beautiful" platform also did not get more attention, the user's focus is still on that a few traditional platform.

The basic needs of the user to find the room is still "housing", we have neglected to do the product of this point; when users come in and don't find what they want at first glance, frustration and departure are understandable.

To make an analogy:

Lao Wang is hungry to eat, into a new restaurant ready to order. At this time the waiter brought a map of the city's restaurant location marked with a map. Lao Wang Nu: "Where's the rice?" "The waiter's smile was innocent, and he pulled out a dictionary so thick brochure" We have all the other restaurants in the introduction Oh, first Sen understand ~ "Lao Wang angrily and leave."

Now it seems that "rental navigation" is between "basic demand" and "pseudo-demand" between the positioning of ambiguous products, and the interface is not friendly, low content quality issues, the failure of this product can be traced.

Phase II

Time: 2018.3-2018.6

Positioning: "Information publishing tool for first-tier city landlords"

There is no doubt that we are in an era of "no community, no business". Corresponding to the birth of the small program is born with social genes, cumbersome "castrated app" should not be the play of small programs, we think the small program should be efficient to solve the landlord problem, and experience must be lightweight, relying on the "community" in the user to adhere to the same to cultivate the user's usage habits.

We hope that the landlord can use our tools to efficiently solve the "display house" and "tenant repeat inquiry" The two pain points, so that the landlord with a small program to generate a listing display card, this high quality information card can be two times spread, in the community and friends in the circle to share, so as to achieve the purpose of initial dissemination.

We hope that at the end of the product, through the accumulation of property information and landlord data to reverse the screening of high-quality housing, as a point of entry, and gradually solve the intermediary "information monopoly" problem.

After a period of promotion, user research reflects a lot of problems, the most serious problem is that the landlord reflects the slow rental, and finally rely on the 58 rental platform to solve the problem. We found that the problem was with the "community" for three reasons:

1. The community member base is small, the listing exposure is low.
2. Low community viscosity, unable to continue to output value for users. Renting is a high-cost low-frequency event, most users will directly jump out after the problem, and the time span to generate demand again is very large.
3. The community relies solely on the operation of human drainage, weak hematopoietic function.

The result is that most users cannot solve problems in our community. Although there are some positive feedback, many landlords reflect the product experience is good, release information more intuitive, but also very easy to use.

The small program gives the experience is "product + community", even if the applet itself as an information publishing tool experience is good, but the user really solve the problem of the scene or in the community, the community can not provide the high exposure of the property, users naturally feel "rental slow."

3 months after the launch, the project was halted by management.

Phase III

Time: 2018.6-2018.10

Location: "Youth apartment discount booking platform"

We hope to increase the occupancy rate of long-term rental apartments, while reducing the cost of rental.

Assuming that the cost of the traditional apartment is 700 yuan per unit, then, if we can be 400 yuan for the price of customers, and then 500-600 of the price of the customer docking to the apartment, we have a profit margin of 100-200; This part of the profits can be used to subsidize users, and so to obtain a certain amount of user, Can rely on traffic and value-added services for monetization, which is the initial business logic.

The advantage of a centralized, long-term apartment is the abundance of shared facilities and social attributes, relative to ordinary rental. And the information structure of our products and the spatial structure of the apartment logically formed a correspondence relationship, and strive to users to the apartment in the field before the house, has been in the cognition of building the concept of the apartment model, we hope to maximize the value of the long-term apartment display to the user.

After the product has been running for some time, we find that the data is completely out of line with expectations. So we started to re-reel business process, finally according to the operation of the feedback from the user information, we determined that the problem is at the end of B (b terminal for the use of the apartment side, the main function is "Confirm appointment" and "release Information"). Apartment parties often bypass the platform and the user privately signed, do not make reservation confirmation, to save costs.

the appointment process at that time was: users in the youth Home platform reservation → The user contact method to the B-terminal →b to confirm the appointment. The new process is modified to: Users in the youth Home platform reservation → notification B-end reservation information, hidden user details →b-End Confirmation appointment →b End View User Contact

After modifying the process, the data recovers a lot.

It turns out that it is difficult to be physically bound by business partners by purely commercial ethics.

The follow-up business and model of this product is still in the exploration, I will share first-hand experience to the small partners, please continue to pay attention to me oh.

Conclusion

10 months, 3 product directions.

I believe you have read the article has produced a lot of questions.

1. Since the founders have the genes for "apartment", why do we not directly do the apartment-oriented products in the first phase?
2. In the second phase, would it be possible to trigger social fission if the cost of the next "community" was invested? What is the reason for the call?
3. The third stage of the product, is it possible for the "apartment", "tenant" "platform" three-party win situation?
4. What is the basis for changing the product direction frequently?

As a result, some decisions are not optimally solved under the current resource conditions. Space limit, in this series (entrepreneurial product rethinking) in the next article, I will be a startup company fresh products from the perspective of small white to interpret these questions, I hope to be helpful to everyone.

If you are in a rare holiday, still willing to take the time to read my article, please feel free to communicate with me Oh (=^ω^=)

If you are particularly interested in our products, you can also direct messages to me, students in Beijing Welcome to the base (*/ω\*)

This article by the @ Big North original release in everybody is the product manager. No reprint without permission.

The graph is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol????

"Summarize and organize" the three directions and three products of the rental product business---from "Everyone is product Manager"