Scaling up through UX
Hamal (חמ"ל) - News app
2018
Product & UX Lead
Mobile Native app | UX | News & Media | UGC
iOS | Android
The Challenge
Hamal was a young product in the highly competitive Israeli News & Media industry.
It offered an innovative experience, offering 1st-from-the-scene user-generated content, with backing of professional news editors form the veteran media giants Walla! Communications.
The product has had a promising potential, but early days failed to live up to the expectation, and it did not manage to scale up.
We set out to drastically improve Retention and Engagement rates, as a validation of the product's potential, and as preparation for a massive Acquisition campaign
Planning for maximum ROI
Using product management methodologies, we’ve pinpointed the exact user journey milestones that would potentially provide the highest ROI in terms of improving our target KPIs.
(See Full case study for more details on the process)
Solutions & Wireframes
Our planning phase led us to focus on 2 key features that should provide the highest impact:
1. The 2nd conversion challenge - We addressed that by creating a designated funnel for users accessing via push messages, that increased the chance for a 2nd consecutive conversion
2. Increasing engagement - We enabled discussion around specific content items and topics, providing more engagement opportunities for our users; Also adding related sub-features to it that leveraged the increased engagement to improve also the retention rates
For more details on the process, see full case study:
External push before n after
Comments section
Designs
Converting our wireframes to designs, in a live product, is a delicate task; We need to make sure new screens and features integrate seamlessly along with the existing screens, so the new screens do not feel detached.
Results
The impact had been quick and extremely positive.
We could already see fast-paced improvement, even considering
Some of the features (e.g comments) were launched just several weeks before writing these lines.
Some of the standout improvements included:
+470%
DAU
The number of users regularly visiting the app on iOS and Android risen significantly, breaking the set DAU goal 2 weeks before our target deadline. Average DAU improved by 470% over the 5 month period, on path to grow even more by a wide scale acquisition campaign
+38%
SESSIONS
Daily Average # of sessions per user had increased by 38% over 5 months. Users were visiting the app more frequently, and engaging with it much more as specific features' engagement tracking indicate
+13%
APP STORE RATING
User feedback improved significantly;
App stores' rating climbed from 3.8 on both stores, to 4.3 in the google play store, and 4.1 on the Apple store within 4 months, without taking any external measures.