4 digital products disrupting their industries
Product management is seen by some as providing a service via a digital platform to a consumer, however there are many brands going above and beyond this basic principal and disrupting their industries completely. Digital products can change the way a consumer sees a particular sector and shape their expectations for any future experiences in that sphere.
In this article we’ll run through 4 examples of brands that are using their digital presence and products to enhance customer experience and mould their respective industries.
- Lenda — The mortgage industry
Lenda is disrupting the mortgage market by bringing down the time necessary to complete a mortgage application. A traditionally paper heavy and exhaustive process, Lenda’s goal with their online platform is to drastically cut the time it takes to have a mortgage application approved.
Lenda’s app allows applications to be processed 3.5 times quicker than normal meaning start to finish could take only 17 days in comparison to the industry standard two month turnaround. Lenda’s algorithmic systems allow them to assess a consumers suitability and offer real time insights into their likelihood of being accepted. The whole process is conducted entirely online and removes traditional banks and third parties making the application a more streamlined, straightforward affair.
By simplifying a burdensome and confusing industry such as this Lenda’s example could provide interesting insights for similar sectors such as insurance and personal loans. If the chore of applying for a mortgage can be made simple and a pleasant experience for the consumer then there will surely be more digitising of financial processes?
2. Bumble — Dating
Building upon the success of early dating app pioneers, Bumble took the process of swiping right and left and honed it to be a less awkward, more social affair. Once a match is received, the onus is on the woman to send the first message and thus turning the traditional gender dynamic in dating on it’s head.
With around 30 million users currently signed up to Bumble, the brands growth has been rapid. The product has a number of buy-ins that are incredibly popular with users such as the ability to extend the time to reply to a message.
One thing you immediately notice with the Bumble app is the beautiful functionality of it and the vibrant yellow colour scheme that runs through the whole app. The team at Bumble, not being content with turning the dating industry on it’s head recently added a career networking function to their platform called Bumble Bizz which allows users to create a LinkedIn-style profile and deploy the same ‘swipe left/right’ function on potential career connections. Staying true to Bumble’s core focus of empowering women the decision of whether to send a message is still the woman users.
Bumble’s digital product has allowed them to carve out a large niche in a marketplace littered with start-up failures and behemoth competitors and provide a clean, highly-functional product that could force competitors to raise their own standards.
3. Tictail — eCommerce
Tictail have made a splash in the eCommerce space through their democratisation of product-selling and providing small brands a platform to sell direct to consumers. They have pitched themselves as “ a one-stop destination for fashion, art, and home decor from small businesses around the world” and also allow brands and consumers to communicate directly regardless of location.
What has set Tictail apart is the focus on their mobile strategy, their apps for iPhone and Android are a great example of clean design and the functionality is optimal. Not content with just being an online selling platform, Tictail have also added new features around video features for sellers products, personalizing the homepage after just one visit to the site and integrating Instagram with their app.
In an exclusive interview with Incite Group that can be found here: https://bit.ly/2zVtxpF Carl Rivera the CEO of Tictail discussed how he believes that “personalization is a large part and benefit of our marketplace. The tools that we’ve created with machine learning assist our shoppers in discovering new emerging brands that we know they’ll love”.
4. Strava — Fitness
Strava’s basic use is not necessarily new and groundbreaking, the tracking of runs and cycle rides has been done numerous times. What sets Strava apart is their combining of these functions with the premise of a social media platform and also allowing you to extract data from a number of external partners.
Strava users can track their activities and once uploaded these will show up on a users feed along with their connections activities. Connections can give kudos to each other and comment on posts, much like a Facebook news feed. As well as seeing your connections activities users can also track what other athletes are doing, able to see a heat map of where fellow Strava users have run/cycled/swam/hiked and compare their own times with them on that particular stretch.
The Strava platform supports 300+ compatible devices and more than 20,000 third-party apps. Data from products such as Garmin and Fitbit can be synced to share your exercise data with Strava solving the longstanding issue of having multiple touch points for your exercise logs and no way of combining them. Strava can provide a central hub for your well being and fitness tracking.
By solving the simple issues and combining the basic features of an activity tracking platform with the functionalities of a social media site Strava have grown their database into the tens of millions and changed the way we track and utilise our fitness data.
(Above) Strava’s news feed where you can track your friends activities and give kudos and comment.
Conclusion:
The core principal of product management should be developing a product that is useful to its consumer. For brands addressing the needs of their customer and ensuring they have a positive connected experience can be what differentiates them from competitors in heavily saturated marketplaces. The above examples are just some of the brands currently carving out their niche in huge industries.
All four of the above brands will be participating at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco (November 27–28) along with 500+ senior digital experts from the US’s top brands. For more information on how to join them please visit our website https://events.incite-group.com/oms/
