Historically, LeafLink has relied primarily on the sellers on its marketplace for revenue. In an effort to diversify revenue sources, the company dedicated resources to experiment with using retail data insights to build a marketable product for retailers.
Our goal was to build an inventory insights product that would leverage the customer point of sale data we accessed through APIs. We would use that data, as well as our own platform’s data on inventory levels, sales velocity, and pricing, to show our retail customers actionable data on which products were performing well and which were not pulling their weight. Retailers could use this data to inform ordering practices as well as identify low-performing products that should be replaced, repriced, or discounted through negotiation with the seller - with the end result of increasing their margins and profitability./p>
My first step was understanding the ideal customer profile we would target for this product. Mom-and-pop retailers lack inventory management maturity and the willingness to pay for an inventory insights data product, so I leveraged our customer-facing team and internal resources to identify existing customers who were inventory managers or general managers at larger multi-store retail chains.
“I rely on the ‘eye test’ - going through what’s on the shelf, we still don’t need anything from this vendor.”
While the product manager had a distinct vision for what retailers needed and would get value from, I wanted to conduct user research to validate our assumptions and help shape our priorities. After performing background research to better understand inventory management principles, I scheduled interviews over Zoom with some of our retail customers who fit our ideal customer profile.
After writing a research plan and interview guide, as well as creating a competitor analysis artifact, I conducted interviews with target customers. We validated many of our existing assumptions, but also found that the primary user pain point wasn’t lack of data - it was the lack of a single source of truth, or a way to bring data from multiple disparate sources (point of sale as well as individual solutions like Headset) together in a coherent, actionable way.
We initially thought to monetize our offering with a monthly SaaS fee, but during our research learned that even our ideal retail customers were resistant to paying for a product without proof it would increase their profits. We pivoted to a free trial model, and also started working toward other monetization options - making data insights actionable within the platform in ways that would drive value to us through transaction processing fees.
I worked with our data engineers to style the reports being generated in Sigma to be more user friendly and consistent with LeafLink’s look and feel. This was relatively easy to spin up and display using iframes, but we couldn’t monetize actions taken within the Sigma report, and couldn’t track user behavior within the iframe. However, a significant number of users signed up for the free trial and appeared to be visiting the insights page.
Having validated interest with the Sigma reports, we moved on to building a native version that could be trackable and could provide users with actions based on data that we could monetize. I worked closely with data engineers and front end engineers to balance thoroughness with ease-of-use - sometimes with limited success. I continued scheduling check ins with customers as we added new features.
I was using a Figma prototype to validate one feature that our product manager felt strongly about (suggesting replacements for underperforming products) when the customer noticed another feature we were still considering. This was a one-click way to draft an email to a vendor asking for a discount on an underperforming product, including comprehensive data on that products performance, margin, etc. The customer was extremely excited about this, and we ended up prioritizing this very popular feature for our next sprint.
“That is awesome. I would definitely use that… Companies are always asking how things are and everything and if you can send them an exact ‘hey this is everything that's been going on’ - like that's actually perfect!”
While the feature itself is only available to paid customers, you can read more about it here.
While the retail data insights project has been paused while the company focuses on replatforming and customer retention among sellers, I consider this project a success. We tested our hypotheses, and learned that the majority of retailers are either too immature in their inventory management practices, or too price sensitive to pay for a service they feel they can replicate in house with spreadsheets.
We now understand the competitive landscape and primary customer needs, and know that in the future we need to build a product that delivers enough demonstrable customer value to persuade customers to upgrade while also providing revenue for LeafLink.