Goodbye, RedMart; Hello Lazada: Product decisions in M&A
It’s been little over a week since RedMart, Singapore’s preferred online grocery delivery service, officially migrated its mobile apps and website to Alibaba-backed Lazada. After being a loyal RedMart user every single week, the Product Manager in me felt compelled to analyse the whole switchover incident. It may be too soon to say whether the migration has been beneficial to the parent company, but there’s a definite opinion from a user’s perspective.
First off, let’s look at how the news broke out — even though Lazada bought RedMart back in November 2016, it was only on Jan 31st, 2019 that the migration was announced officially — but that’s for those of us who keep close tabs on the tech & startup scene in Singapore. For all customers, the entire communication was rolled out well in advance:
· 2 waves of emails (really loooong, see for yourself) went out to existing customers in the 1st week of Feb from the founders.
· It also incentivizes the users about unlocking upto $25 credits on Lazada once they link their accounts.
· In case you missed it, because who really reads such emails — and industry open rates are realistically close to 20%, there were prominent banners on the RedMart website in the entire 6 weeks leading up to the migration.
And here’s where it gets interesting: ‘Opt in to copy your order history and account information to your Lazada account’. The wording suggests that we can choose if we want this or not; whereas the reality of course, is that it’s a forced migration. Sneaky move, content writers. :)
The Good:
Now we’ve read about it, linked our accounts and received credits in our account as a ‘reward’ for doing this.
· Pretty smooth transition experience, credit where credit is due and hey, free money for a few clicks!
· On 15 March, Lazada app shows the familiar RedMart categories and thousands of products. Considering this very large catalogue, that’s a huge migration handled deftly.
· For those LiveUp users who didn’t get to the account linking on their own, Lazada takes care of it for you, and saves you a step!
The Bad:
Once the usual weekly grocery order was placed (or even during the process), the reality of the move starts impacting.
· Imagine the confusion a regular customer of a tiny, local grocery store would feel for the very first time when stepping into a large multi-storeyed supermarket. Where are the groceries? Which aisle? What floor? Which brands? Lazada felt exactly like that. Opened up the app, searched for eggs, and got results for egg holder trays and egg boiler machines. Ugh, this is gonna take much longer than anticipated. Took a few clicks of fumbling around to realize you had to find the RedMart “channel” within the Lazada app and conduct your business there — which is like 2% of the real estate on the home page.
· Credit card information could not be ported over due to data privacy laws, they say in a tiny section in the Read more page. Sneaky again. So what would have been just a breeze through the checkout process, requires yet another detour of saving card details before placing the order.
The Ugly:
Even though the founders promised that ALL the features & convenience of RedMart would be available after the migration, I feel cheated. And rightfully so.
· The erstwhile RedMart app was — in 1 word — simple. Ordering groceries via Lazada app is anything but. Fonts are much smaller, it’s harder to find the items you need, and you’re taking longer for what’s supposed to be a quick, efficient task.
· RedMart had a fantastic feature of choosing a 2-hour delivery slot, and they would stick to it! On Lazada, I had to hunt so very hard to find this option before placing the order, and only because I KNOW they offer it, but I couldn’t figure out where to choose this!
· Just found out today that we’ve lost the very important ability to update the order with additional items after placing the order! Hey Lazada, do you know how many times we’ve all forgotten items and wanted to quickly update our order?
But was ALL this really required? Let’s take a step back and see how some of the popular products around the world have balanced their acquisitions and user experience:
· Could Lazada not have continued to maintain both brands & products — and let users decide where they want to go? Facebook certainly seems to have followed that approach, after acquiring Instagram in 2012 and Whatsapp in 2014. There are millions of common users across all 3 platforms and it’s still working in everybody’s favour for the last few years.
· Could Lazada not have silently unified the catalogues & operations from behind the scenes, to make it more efficient for themselves, but continue to accept orders from both apps? The latest news is that Facebook also plans to integrate the underlying tech infrastructure for all 3 products; but they at least assure that the services will continue to be offered as 3 standalone apps, letting the user decide if they want to availof this added benefits of cross-channel messaging. (This move raises several data privacy & security concerns, but that’s a whole other consideration).
· Could Lazada not have enabled groceries within its own app for a few months while keeping RedMart alive; allowing a softer move for everyone to learn and iterate during the switchover phase? Atlassian followed (and is still learning from) this method for their refreshed look of JIRA, making way for a cleaner interface. This nifty approach allows users to ‘See the old view’ on a particular issue, in case they can’t find what they need. Sure, there are a lot of users out there who are unhappy and want the old view, but they’ve also tried the new version and are very vocal about why they’re switching. I’m being optimistic here and hoping that dedicated product managers and UX guys at Atlassian are using this time to learn what’s not working well for users, and integrating them all into the new design.
Although, let’s be fair — we users never deal well with product changes. There’s always reluctance to learning new stuff on our favourite products just because we’ve already gotten used to what we have, almost to the point of muscle memory. (Remember the terrifying horizontal swipe gaffe on Instagram, just a few months ago?) We’re comfortable swiping left and right on Tinder, but heaven forbid it should spill over to another product. Our first reaction is, nope, sorry, cannot. Dare we explore the new path for a while and see if it’s scenic? Change is good, and it’s about time we get with the program.
But I’m by no means the only user who’s feeling less than happy about this. A quick online search revealed lots of views from other fellow users who are unhappy with the change on RedMart’s Facebook post and have taken the trouble to actually voice their concerns & feedback. Most of them have the common theme, bring back the old app! (Some passionate users have listed ALL they things they were unhappy about, and how Lazada could improve). And although they’ve all got the standard, automated response from the social team, one can only hope that their product team has been monitoring this free user verbatim coming in, and planning to act on it soon.
Because if not, I can see a lot of others doing what I did today: search for what are all the grocery delivery options in Singapore. Yes, that’s right — RedMart just went from THE go-to option, to ONE OF the many options. Lazada, time to act is now. Listen to your users. Tick tock…
Disclaimer: Opinions and views expressed belong solely to the author only.
