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About WedHaven

​WedHaven is an events tech startup focused on simplifying the management for the Big Fat Indian wedding. It provides an App, Web & WA based experience for the operators (hosts, vendors etc) as well as the guests invited to the wedding and uses tech to smooth out the day to day operations of pre-wedding and during wedding management.

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Core Value Prop: Guests & Logistics management - Being able to upload & manage guest lists, collect information from guests automatically over multple channels, updating their stay, pickup, dropoff information and having it all being notified at the right time via the right channels.

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All offerings : Everything else is built around the current CVP to either simplify things for the hosts or improve the guest experience, they have -

• Guest lists & groups: Adding guests, dividing them in groups, using groups to control what they see about the wedding e.g. Add people to reception-only group so they are invited to reception only.
• RSVP collection : KYG (Know your Guest) before the wedding - are they coming, who all are coming, how are they coming, do they need stay ? etc.
• Logistics : Collecting Id's for hotel rooms, assigning rooms, sharing pickup and drop off information.
• Schedule & Itinerary sharing : Create events, add their details and share with the right folks.
• Photo Collection : High quality picture sharing by hosts and collecting them from guests and filtering.
• FB like wall personalised for their wedding, to engage with guests before and during events
• Automated and Manual updates via WA, email and SMS for guests
• co-hosts : No need to manage alone, add as many cohosts as you want.
• Social interactive features like - Couple story, live baraat tracking, Wishes & Thank you's etc.

Additional Context :

Product stage: PMF

Revenue : early revenue

TTV for customers : 60-90 days (they approach us about 3-4 months before the actual wedding)

ICP & JTBD

Customer Calls Data

We got in touch with 12 of our paying customers to better understand their journey from discovery to onboarding to paying and finally referring to f&f (in some cases)

Question Asked

Following are the questions / points discussed with existing / recent paying customers -

1. How / Where did you come across WedHaven app? (for some customers we had this data, so we skipped asking again)
2. What were you looking for when you came across WedHaven app?
3. What drove you to install the WedHaven app?
4. 1. probe a little here for what was their exact pain point.
5. Once installed, what were the first few steps you took & why?
6. 1. if recall is an issue here show the logged out LP screen to user
7. After creating the wedding, what did you do first & why?
8. 1. really dig deep to understand their psyche with the app, show screens where necessary
9. What & How did you validate before paying?
10. At what point did you feel "this is worth it, lets pay" ?
11. Who all did you consult before making the payment?
12. After paying, what features did you end up using?
13. What made you recommend this app to your friends and family?

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Customer profiling

A quick note to better understand the customers we had a chat with.

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Responses Summary

This section shares a summary of responses to each question we asked above. Its a little rough but readable and conveys the point

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How / Where did you come across WedHaven app?

• Online ad : 5
• Personal network (Our friends or friends of friends) : 4
• App store search : 2
• WoM : 1

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What were you looking for when you came across WedHaven app?

• Guest RSVP collection service : 3
• Wedding Website : 2
• Wedding Invites: 3
• Wedding planners : 3
• Discussing wedding with friend, got recommended : 1

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Interesting Comment : " I was not looking for WedHaven or any online tool, I was looking at planners so that its easier to manage guests, somehow came across your ad, and called you up right away"

What drove you to install the app?

Note: people said multiple things here, so the math won't add up.

• Curiosity (looked new, looked interesting, looked cool, wanted to know what this is.. ) : 11
• Guest management features (Id collection, rsvp, messaging, WA messaging): 10
• Social features (photo collection, baraat tracking) : 4
• Wedding website : 3
• Wedding invites : 6 (Note: this is not a service we provide....)

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Verdict : First mover advantage is definitely a thing to get past the first hurdle - app install. Guest management features are a real pain that customers are trying to do better and hence end up using the app.

Interesting Comment : " It was something new and description was interesting, was curious ab yeh kya aa gaya, thats why I installed"

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Once installed, what were the first few steps you took & why?

Ok, this might be a little tricky to read but think of it every "Next steps after any step are indented (meaning mentioned inside the parent) " and "number represent how many people took that path"

• Saw Sample Wedding : 8
• • Logged in : 8
  • • Created Wedding: 8
    • • Free trial - 5
      • • Contacted Support - 5
        • • Took demo - 4
          • • Made Payment - 4
          • Make Payment - 1
      • Contacted Support : 3
      • • Took Demo - 2
        • • Made Payment - 2
        • Made Payment - 1
• Logged in : 2
• • Created Wedding : 2
  • • Contacted Support : 2
    • • Took Demo : 2
      • • Made Payment: 2
• Contacted Support : 2
• • Took Demo : 2
  • • Made Payment : 2

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Verdict : No one made payments before talking to support, there are primarily two reasons for this the onboarding is just inapt and confusing (but desire to use is there O_O ) and other is lack of trust.

Interesting Comment : I am all for supporting startups in India, but could not pay before talking to someone and confirming that you are not going out of business before my wedding

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After creating the wedding, what did you do first & why?​

• Look at all the icons / functionalities : 7
• • "trying to understand the app"
• Add Events : 3
• Explored Guest Management : 6
• • Add guests : 6
  • Add Groups : 4
  • Checked Logitics : 5
• Add Photos : 2

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Verdict: They created the wedding without actually understanding all the offerings, high commitment on their end and bad promotion / on boarding experience from us that they have to click through things to understand it themselves

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Interesting Comment : Frankly I was lost after downloading the app, just clicked around a lot, gave up and called you

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What & How did you validate before paying?

Responses here will not have count but a summary of what they did.

• Called us (wedhaven support) up and took a demo, asked questions before trying out the functionality themself.
• Added a few things (photos, events, info, post) and went to website to make sure its correct
• Added sibling/friend as guest, logged in as them to see the experience of guest
• • RSVP'd
  • Added photos
  • Checked security functionalities
  • Looked for notifications
  • Sent message over whatsapp

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Verdict : People prefer testing out everything before getting others involved in the app, so something like adding an actual guest, adding them to group and messaging are key activation metrics.

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At what point did you feel "this is worth it, lets pay" ?

• After valdating the app does what its supposed to : 7
• After takling to customer support : 5

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Sub question we asked here, which feature when it worked you were like okay lets do this (some people said 2-3 things)

• • Guest List and rsvp : 6
  • Id collecton: 5
  • Automated follow ups / updates over whatsapp : 4
  • WhatsApp Messaging : 4
  • Gallery: 3
  • Baraat tracking : 2
  • Dashboard / overview: 2

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Verdict: Guest Management & WhatsApp related functionality resonated more with the customers (PS: Our CVP is Guest & Logistics management) & CVP seems to be a trigger for payment as well.

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Who all did you consult before making the payment?

• Parents : 10
• To be spouse : 9
• Siblings : 7
• friends: 7
• Team : 2 (These are the 2 planners, they discussed with their team)

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After paying, what features did you end up using?

Answers here have been enriched with customer & guest activity during their wedding which we have tracked.

• Guest Management : 12
• • Guest lIst: 12
  • RSVP : 10
  • Logistics : 9
  • Messaging: 12
  • Id collection: 9
  • Web view of Guest management : 12
• Social features
• • Gallery : 12
  • • Asked guests to upload photos : 8
    • • Guests uploaded decent photos : 5
  • Events: 12
  • Baraat tracking : 8
  • Posts : 4
• Info : 6
• Themes: 5

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Intersting statement : "I bought only for guest management, ended up using everything because it just made sense, plus no reason not to use now that i've paid for it"

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What made you recommend this app to your friends and family?

only 5 people said they recommended to someone else

• Helpful : 5
• Supporting Indian startups! : 2
• Had fun using it : 4
• Guests were impressed : 3

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Interesting statement : " This app is incomplete abhi its only focused on Guests, but jitni bhi hai was very helpful, add all the features which i told you, then no one can stop you"

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Random other things we learned in the calls

• When it comes to wedding management the roles are some what divided by gender
• • Male predominantly take care of the "management" aspect of a wedding, whether is guest management (once the list of invitees is curated females step away) or budgeting or vendor execution (decor, food, music)
  • Females are more involved in creative things like photographer, gifts, entries, makeup, mehendi
• Information overload is real, if people see too many options people either go away or prefer talking to human (which is what we see in the data above as well)
• There is a increase in interest/excitement in working with startups in India, even during a major event like weddings. This works in our favor, also why there is a high desirability to install app, sign up, create wedding even though our onboarding is as bad as it can be.

ICP

B2C

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Verdict: In B2C the ICPs to go after and optimize for is definitely the Grooms & Siblings, we will focus on these two going forward.

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B2B

These are business in the wedding industry that can utilize our service, currently our onboarding for them is very manual in nature, where we meet/talk -> demo the product -> sign deals.

Verdict : From a pure ICP view wedding planners makes a lot of sense, however the way we approach planners is different from how we approach D2C customers so the onboarding could have differences. B2B being more hands on and personal.

JTBD

Ok, so we will talk about the 3 ICP's chosen above here and identify the primary goal people here.

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Verdict :

Its clear from the calls and above table that our Primary JTBD is the functional goal related to managing guests efficiently and that it resonated across all 3 ICP's.

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As for secondary JTBD we will focus on Personal Goals , the idea will be to use language that resonates with people on an emotional level (given the nature of weddings, messaging that drives emotional responses work better even in our sales call)

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Even though Personal goal's do not resonate with our B2B clients, its okay from an onboarding perspective since B2B clients prefer talking and demoing before exploring on their own, so it makes sense for the onboarding to keep focus on B2C JTBD.

Validation :

We have valiated our Primary and Secondary JTBD by doing two things -

1. User Calls
2. Analytics data on user behavior in the app.

User Calls

We have provided a detailed summary of the calls data above, you will find most of the reasons there (Just read the Verdict and Interesting Statements in that section) , highlighting a few things here :

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• Intersting statement : "I bought only for guest management, ended up using everything because it just made sense, plus no reason not to use now that i've paid for it"

• Verdict: Guest Management & WhatsApp related functionality resonated more with the customers (PS: Our CVP is Guest & Logistics management) & CVP seems to be a trigger for payment as well.

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Please read the rest above, not moving them here to avoid repetition.

Analytics data

We track user behavior post install on the app quite deeply, we are able to trace most of their journey and the actions they took using a combination of common analytics and explicit events triggering to create a bigger picture.

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Sharing a snipped of latest data on user behavior that we track

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One thing we see in most of our data and also this 1weeks data is people really care about guests functionality and try it out before any other aspect, it gets revalidated when they contact us.

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Teardown!

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Onboarding Teardown WedHaven.pdf

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Incase above doesnt work here is a link to the slides -> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bdEGYk3-YZ7UamSmKIHsAHioCmNZzUElcmlQHBuDEh0/edit?usp=sharing

Activation Metric

Now, based on all the work we did above (the calls over 2 weeks, the data we see from existing analytics & jtbd refining) we have come up with the following hypothesis related to activation metrics that we feel are worth tracking.

Please keep in mind that almost all (95% + ) of non paying customers uninstall app in 7 days, so whatever magic we have to do, it need to be done within 7 days and frankly it should be within 3 days after which 50% drop off.

Custom Metrics & their meaning :

Apart from the commonly available metrics like D1, D7 retention, DAU/MAU, source and others. We track a bunch of custom metrics, the below table explain's them.

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Hypothesis!

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PS: please keep in mind these are the activation hypothesis that makes sense with the current state of onboarding and sales funnel (which is a mess btw) once we update some of them might not remain as critical.

THE END

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