Angi teams up with Studio Science to define new products and services for revenue growth
When Angie Hicks founded her paid subscription service in 1995, there was no other way to verify customer reviews of local service contractors like plumbers, electricians, and house painters. The internet didn’t work that way yet.
Twenty years later, there was a proliferation of ways to vet a service provider; online review sites and social networking tools made it easy to find free recommendations. By 2016, Angi faced an ultimatum: innovate or die.
Angi recognized that they didn’t understand the home improvement and services ecosystem outside of the features of their product. Angie’s List needed to get inside the minds of potential customers to identify and create new revenue-generating opportunities. Focusing on homeowners who had recently completed home improvement projects, Angi collaborated with Studio Science to perform the first end-to-end journey mapping research in the company’s history.
We took a design research approach to document what people do, say, think, and feel in real situations. Many of the findings were contradictory to the assumptions the company used to guide the business. By analyzing and synthesizing data, we were able to identify unmet needs that represented significant new business opportunities for Angi.
Studio Science facilitated a day-long business innovation workshop with leaders of the User Experience, Product Management, Marketing, and Technology teams at Angi to evaluate and prioritize these new opportunities for revenue. The workshop resulted in prototypes for nine new products and services that enabled a business transition to a freemium model and useful web and mobile experiences for service providers.
Angi fully embraced the new opportunities, overhauled their approach, and continued to leverage the research across the business. As a result of their reorientation, the organization was acquired by IAC in 2017.
“Working with Studio Science gave our team a new perspective on the people we serve. With a better understanding of our customer’s needs and experiences, we were able to start identifying new opportunities for product and business growth.”
Anand Tharanathan Vice President, User Experience at Angie’s List
