MoveBuddy

Product Manager: Matthew Giesa

Product Designer: Joshua Lee

This project is covered under an NDA.
Some names and design artifacts have been omitted. 

Problem

Storage Vault, a self and portable storage company noticed many of their customers come from needing storage because of a move or renovation. To capitalize on this user group StorageVault decided to create MoveBuddy to help users find a mover.

Goal

Try to find product market fit and see traction with users finding movers on the platform.

Understanding our users needs

We had the opportunity to speak with around 10 potential customers throughout the process through interviews. We found some common pain points people had while trying to find a user. 

  1. Requesting quotes was tedious, each mover had their own method of requesting a quote. It may be an online form, a phone call or even text message but there was a lot of work the user needed to do to get a quote. 

  2. It was really important for our users to trust the mover. Many of our users have heard horror stories about movers who either caused damages or even held their items hostage demanding more money.

  3. Price was important but they weren't necessarily looking for the cheapest price rather they wanted the most value and stress free experience. While costs are a factor for them our users have a lot going on when it comes to a move and the less they can stress about one thing they can focus on other things. 

 

Design Challenge

How might we help reduce the stress of a move and help users find a mover that they can trust so that they can have a great moving experience. 

 

Approaches

We knew we wanted to build some sort of marketplace for our users to help find a mover. They could fill out one form and be presented with movers that they can pick from. 

First Approach

Our first approach was to display many different options for the user to pick from categorized by different service level. Similar to travel booking once a user fills out the criteria of a move they would see a bunch of different movers. One thing we also made sure to include was a ballpark price range as quick as possible to help users decide as well as their google review to help establish trust. 

We decided to test a prototype of this approach with users to get a sense of the UX as well as the value prop the product was offering. During the testing we noticed that people could get through the prototype fine and they did appreciate the pricing upfront. One thing we heard from a user was “Are these movers bidding on my Job”. We probed a little deeper and understood that even though we were presenting a bunch of movers there is still a large mental load for someone to now go in and compare movers to select the best one. The bidding and price was one data point that user was looking for to help narrow down her choices. 


Something Didn’t Feel Right

We decided to take a step back and do some more research around our competition and marketplaces in general. We noticed that what we initially mocked was not that different from our competitors in the space. They all offered some sort of aggregation of movers with ways to compare each and while we could launch with this type of approach we didn’t think it provided a unique enough value proposition to really see long term traction and growth. 

When looking at marketplace types as a whole we came across the different levels of marketplaces as defined here: https://a16z.com/whats-next-for-marketplace-startups/

 

Our Second Approach

What we had mocked and what our competitors had built was more of an unbundled marketplace. If we can automate some of the matchmaking we could move towards a more uber like or managed marketplace. 

For our next approach we decided to help with matchmaking and limit the amount of results we showed. Now when the user completed the form we would present 3 options of movers for the users to select from. 

Since we were limiting choices the user saw we wanted to make sure they felt they had enough trust in the options we were presenting. Working with MoveBuddy we decided to come up with a guarantee to help safeguard users in case of issues with their movers. MoveBuddy would be vetting their movers so the risk of something happening would be reduced. 

Once we mocked this up into a prototype we felt like it was in an awkward spot. We had limited choices but it was still up to the user to decide for themselves which was not necessarily addressing their pain point of having the mental load of making a decision. 

We decided to try one more approach where the user would not be the ones picking rather it would be MoveBuddy would be the one finding the mover for them. All the users would need to do is accept the mover/quote for their selected service. Similar to how when you request a ride on uber you only are making a decision based on service level we wanted to try and have the same approach where you would only have to select the type of moving service you would want a quote for. The biggest risk with this approach would be ensuring that the user trusts MoveBuddy’s matchmaking and  that the mover you are being assigned is appropriate. 

We decided to develop and launch this approach to understand if this value proposition was compelling enough for users to book a move through MoveBuddy.

Impact

After about 3 months of being on the market we saw great traction in the funnel. Having an average funnel completion rate of 12.5%