Designing Loyalty Program for Search Engine

Dianne Stinger

ASSUMPTIONS:

– We have a search engine which I will name “ABC” that is similar to google and bing search engine

– ABC do not have any geographical retriction, this means it is useable anywhere in the world

– ABC is owned by a start-up company trying to acquire and retain users/customers.

– ABC is only used on computers, PCs and mobile devices.

GOAL – Customer retention

Next, I will take a look at teh user group. These includes students, professionals, individuals, business enterprise.

I will focus on the student user group. This choice is made because it covers a good percentage of total users, user group are the youngest user group (loyalty can remain for a longer period of time). Also, students are generally more on the lookout for deals, discounts or loyalty programs compared to other user groups.

PAIN POINTS FOR SEARCH ENGINE USERS:

– Advertisement

– Unintelligent search

– too intelligent search

-payment/subscription

– search result taking long

– wrong catalog reporting

I will prioritize a solution for advertisement and payment/subscription in line with the loyalty program

LOYALTY PROGRAM

– discount on subscription

– reduce/eliminate advertized results

– discount on purchase made on the search engine

– bundle program with other Apps

Having in mind the user group which is students, the following will be my recommendation

Solution – features	Effort	Impact
Ensure ABC is easy to download and free for students	Low (L)	Medium (M)
For every search, eliminate/reduce the number of advertised results	L	L
Provide coins/reward points for completed purchase made on the search engine	L	H
Partner with enterprises that provide services heavily used by students. Examples include: cinema theatres, gaming, bookshops to allow points are redeemable at these enterprises	M	H
Allow the option to convert points to visa giftcards	L	H

I will also give users who follow through a 1000 search in a month a specic amounf of reward points (say 1000). Follow-through a search is defined as opening at least one of the search results and spending at least 30 seconds on the page will be regarded as 1 count.

I will prioritize the implementation of M and H impacts.

EVALUATION

I will measure the success of the loyalty program by the no. of customers and amount of points being redeemed.

Kane Morgan

Lets ask clarifying questions

Is the functionality of the new search engine similar to Google & Bing ? Yes
Is there any difference in terms of users we are targeting ? No
I am assuming that the purpose of the loyalty program is to make sure users stick to new search engine ? Yes
Does the loyalty program need to be completely online ? It can be offline as well, need not be online only
Is it okay to assume that we will start the loyalty program in US first ? Yes
Is cost of loyalty program a concern at this point of time ? Initially it is not a big concern but cost can’t be too huge without appreciable benefits
Also I am assuming we are talking about Loyalty program for end users & not for the business side(advertisers for eg) ? Yes

State the assumptions & understanding of the problem

We need to design a loyalty program for a search engine competing with Google & Bing. There is no key difference between functionalities and features of the search engine with respect to Google & Bing. The purpose of loyalty program is to attract more consumers and once they come, they use it more often and stick to it.

Let’s first identify the user Journey

Make people aware about this Search Engine -> Wow users with the experience of the product -> Make them aware about the loyalty program -> Incite & convince people to use the search engine more often -> Reward loyal users

Now, let’s Figure out what we can do for each step

User Flow	Feature	Comments	Priority
Make people aware about this Search Engine	Physical/ATL Advertising with focus on benefits like Loyalty program	Costly	Later
Make people aware about this Search Engine	Online advertising especially across other search engines	Easy to do & budget can be controlled	MVP
Make people aware about this Search Engine	Tie-up with browser providers to make this default search engine	Difficult & we might have to gibe huge sums of money	Later
Wow users with the experience of the product	Appropriate Search Results		MVP
Wow users with the experience of the product	Better & different looking UI explaining benefits		MVP
Wow users with the experience of the product	Manage privacy concerns of the users more explicitly	Easy and can attract lot of users with privacy being a huge concern	1
Wow users with the experience of the product	Ability to add this search engine to browser	Easy to implement
Make them aware about the loyalty program	Develop a UI which explains benefits of the loyalty program & how user can enrol		MVP
Incite & convince people to use the search engine more often	Provide user with Badges. Badges & the name of the badges should be attractive.	Can be done later. Medium complexity
Incite & convince people to use the search engine more often	Give user reward points & design gamification program. Reward user with points for activities like Visiting first time Doing first search Doing subsequent searches Coming back more often Referring friends Downloading app on different devices	Complex but needed	MVP (can start with limited activities)
Reward loyal users	Design a points redemption program for loyal users. For eg Tie up with key online retailers like Amazon Discount coupon against points Use points as credits to do ads on the search engine		MVP (need to have atleast one partner)
Reward loyal users	Develop redemption portal	Needed	MVP

Providing points for doing searches can lead to user trying to hack the system so we would have to put appropriate measures in place like a user can’t earn more than 100 points in a day and credit points only if users click on a link

Summary

First we need to make sure that the search engine performs & provides functionality similar to Google & Bing which means that search results should be good. Once that is in place, we will advertise and reward users with points & badges as per how active they are on the product. Badges would satisfy users who draw more satisfaction from their virtual status on the product which they can share socially & feel great about it whereas point would have a monetary value & can be redeemed against physical goods. We would try to wow users by offering a great first experience by offering a fresh/attractive UI and features around privacy.

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