What is lokii?
lokii is a local marketplace app to support small businesses in your area.
Our Mission:
Imagine a world where we pumped money back into our communities. Imagine a world where we could buy 99.9% of our goods locally. How would that change our neighborhoods, jobs, and community as a whole?
Our goal at lokii was to make shopping from stores in your city as routine and easy as shopping from Amazon.
My role
As the CEO and Lead Product Designer, I determined business, marketing, and monetization strategies for the company, designed all user flows and wireframes, conducted prototype sessions, and delivered final designs for lokii.
Let’s just say I wore a lot of hats. Acted as:
Product Lead, Researcher, and Designer
Marketing Manager and Designer
PR Manager
HR Manager for all lokii employees and interns
Stakeholder and investor manager
The problem to solve
Shoppers - “I want to support local over big-box but don’t have the time to find and buy products from local stores”
Local Shops - “All of my marketing platforms are over-saturated and it’s hard for me to reach my local shoppers. I feel invisible.”
The Solution - MVP
The initial product linked directly to shops' websites
We received a ton of support and passion for our mission to support local, but…
What we learned
Quantitative
Via data analysis and customer interviews, we identified a leaky bucket situation, with low cohort retention and loss of monthly active users month over month
Macro Trends
I researched macro market trends influenced heavily by the pandemic.
It was clear shopper patterns and expectations had changed. Shoppers expected fast delivery and seamless Omni-channel experiences from their favorite brands.
Local shops did not have the technology to keep up.
Qualitative
I conducted weekly long-form interviews on both sides of the marketplace (shoppers & store owners).
For each interview, leveraged user best practices outlined in "The Mom Test" and Y Comnbinator's Startup School.
What we heard
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"I loved your app but ran into a $10 shipping fee with a 5-day wait time for a store that was only a few blocks away."
lokii shopper
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"To avoid shipping fees I often run local deliveries on my off hours."
Anthony, Little Nomad Shop Owner
Time to iterate
Based on our findings, I developed a sprint brief outlining the challenge, research, roadblocks, and timeline
Lead brainstorms with the cross-functional team to determine potential solutions, feasibility, and launch date
In close collaboration with my Co-Founder and team, we determined local delivery as our next iteration
Solution
Embrace local shops’ close proximity to shoppers and offer fast, same-day delivery. Bringing the speed and ease of big-box to the local economy.
Design Target
By compiling our most active users we were able to identify patterns in lifestyle and values
Working mother
Strong social justice values
lokii helps her support local and find unique, quality goods and gifts in her busy life
Design Exploration
I studied marketplace, delivery, and omnichannel retail design patterns to play off users’ existing heuristics.
MVP Testing
Delivery:
In close collaboration with my cofounder, I designed a low-effort, high-impact way to test our delivery solution
Used Square to collect payment at the door
Used Google Maps and spreadsheets to determine efficient driver routes
Ran deliveries ourselves to talk to users and understand the pickup and drop-off process firsthand
Targeted our end-users through value-centric Instagram posts, PR, and cross-marketing with shop partners
What we learned
Unlike GrubHub, our customers were not hangry and did not need items instantly
Batching deliveries in the afternoon created the most efficiency for drivers
Users were hacking our system to send gifts to friends and family
Seasonal shifts and holidays were big commerce bumps for local shops.
The Launch
Same-Day Delivery
With quick traction from our MVP test, we prioritized multi-store, in-app check-out and allowed to send gifts directly to friends and family. Through the entire app we infuse lokii’s mission with:
Custom categories that aligned with core values
Emphasis on the "shop local" movement
My Designs
Customer UI:
Scope:
E-commerce user flow
Multi-store check out
Same-day delivery
Gift sending with handwritten notes
User delivery Tracking
Bi-directional communication with driver
Driver UI:
Leveraged the MVP spreadsheet to design a custom routing algorithm
Enabled multi-stop pickups and dropoffs to batch orders
Intuitive easy to navigate design to ensure driver’s safety along their route
Shop UI:
Designed b2b landing page
SaaS sales and signup pages
b2b marketing and sales materials
Shop UX:
Synced with shops’ existing inventory managers, like Shopify, for one-click inventory upload, fulfillment, and real-time updates
Offline UX:
I designed cross-promotional materials to be passed out at stores announcing delivery
Designed cards and totes to be sent with gift orders enabling organic awareness and app adoption
Designed and managed social media content, cross-promotions, press releases, photography, employee onboarding
Response
I love this app!
〰️
Love that I can support local businesses
〰️
lokii has given me a sense of community
〰️
I love this app! 〰️ Love that I can support local businesses 〰️ lokii has given me a sense of community 〰️
Results
Post-delivery launch:
Increased average 3-month cohort retention by 220%
Increased 28-day active users by 638%
Delivered 500+ orders in 4 months resulting in $70K sales for small businesses
Always itterating
Learning:
“I love using lokii to discover products but prefer to use pickup over delivery because of theft in my neighborhood and don’t want to pay for delivery.”
Solution:
Leveraging omnichannel and harmonized retail strategies we put the shopper at the center of the channel and gave them the choice of how and when to receive their order.
Learning:
“I am also not crazy about the general browsing. I'd like to be able to Browse by high-level categories and there are either not enough categories (via search function) or they are very specific (ie Facial Serums).”
Solution:
Build more general categories to help shoppers narrow down their search.
