Product Case Study - Pratilipi Literature

In this Product Case Study, I will be looking at the main components of the Pratilipi Literature mobile application - India's largest storytelling platform.

Introduction

Pratilipi is a platform which brings readers, writers and their stories together. A platform’s real value lies in providing mobility and a superior user experience and this one of the foremost missions (vision) of Pratilipi. Currently, Pratilipi supports 12 languages : Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, English, Urdu, Punjabi and Odia.

Statistics

Currently, Pratilipi Literature has 2.5Cr+ readers, 27L+ stories and 2.7L+writers on their platform.

The stories have an average content lengths of 2500 words.

They onboard 5L new users / month.

90% of the users have organically grown from readers to creators, over a year.

Components

The main components of the application can be divided into two parts - the reader side and the writer side. The user flows for both these will be different (as shown further below).

Component Functions

The home page contains Must Read, Pratilipi Picks, Short Stories, Daily Series and the Discussion forum. The discussion forum provides a platform for users to engage with the community and share their opinions. Possible Pain Points - Personalized Feed for readers.

Possible Suggestions - Asking for genre choices during initial onboarding itself and not from profile.

The library contains a list of all content read as well as favourites. Downloaded content can also be accessed from here.

Possible Pain Points - Searching for downloaded/read content in case of multiple content.

Possible Suggestions - Keeping the search bar in the Library Page.

The writing component offers a basic text editor with an option to add title and images to the content. The post can be saved and previewed before publishing it in the platform. This component also features tutorials on how to write as well as a dedicated leader board and Author Dashboard. Possible Pain Points - Embedding links/content from other platforms. Possible Suggestions- More attachment options.

The view more section contains recommendations on the most read, newly published stories as well as blog posts and podcasts from Pratilipi.

Apart from this, Updates tab provides notifications from the authors followed or messages. The same tab has the settings menu, from which the frequency and nature of notifications from the app can be changed.

Users can change their display picture, add a short summary about themselves from the My Profile icon. The number of followers, referral link, collections and discussion posts can be accessed from here. Other Possible Pain Points and Possible Suggestions are given below.

User Personas (Writers)

Frequent User

Value Seeker

Passive User

Wants to share his/her works with the community.

Focused on learning things first, then writing.

Feels that he/she isn't creative enough.

Wants to share links of his stories with everyone. Can write on a daily basis.

Follows other writers. Can write frequently/on a part-time basis.

Not confident in developing own content. Reason - Likes might be lesser.

User Personas (Readers)

Frequent User

Value Seeker

Looking to gain knowledge, learn about art/culture etc. through stories.

Focused on learning things first. Mild/occasional reader.

Maintains a collection, shares stories with others.

Follows other writers.

User Journey

For representing the ideal workflow, two cases are considered - one where a user signs up to be a reader and the other for writer. The workflow for the second case is highlighted.

Accordingly, two major pain points can be identified:

Writers want the best possible writing experience (UX).

Readers want to stay on the platform for the best content (stickiness).

Possible Pain Points and Suggestions

Pain Points

Suggestions

Help & Support

Improve UX

Other uses of coins

Offer exclusive stories/deals on books. (Long Term)

Retaining readers

Episodic content with cliffhangers tend to be followed more - should be focused upon.

Genre matching

Optimize first-time onboarding experience. Can include guided steps as well.

Sharing stories

Creating reading groups, where multiple people can take a challenge to read X books/month. Can have a discussion feature as well.

Quality content (long-term)

Collaborating with prominent authors.

Features to Prioritize

To prioritize the features listed as possible suggestions, the MoSCoW framework is used. MoSCoW stands for four different categories of initiatives: must-haves, should-haves, could-haves, and wish to have. The features are divided accordingly -

Must-Have - Improve UX of Help & Support and Search bar in Library tab.

Should- Have - Improving first time onboarding experience and More attachment options.

Could-Have - Reading groups and Personalized feed.

Wish to Have - Collaboration with authors and exclusive deals.

Metrics to measure

The following metrics of interest should be carefully observed and analyzed to gain actionable insights from the application:

North star metric (measure of growth) - Content read/active user (for readers) and Content written/active user (for writers). These should be the most important metrics and all other KPIs should align with this.

Retention - D1, D7, D30 or any ratio among these.

Discovery & Personalization - Number of new reads/month, number of genres explored/month.

Engagement - Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU)

Churn rate.

Vanity Metric - Number of authors based on gender.

Prepared by - Prashanta Purkayastha prashanta.purkayastha@gmail.com +919101007489