Ask HN: Advice on increasing engagement for consumer/P2P app?
When designing the app, we took inspiration from P2P apps and platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Airbnb, Grindr and Tinder. How the app works is that you first set up your profile with info like photos of yourself and your pets, your pet’s info, your usual availability broken down by day and periods (morning, afternoon, evening). Then you’ll see a grid view of all pet parents and their pets sorted by distance, with the ones closest to you shown first. Once you click on their profile, you can automatically shoot them a message asking for their availability to help you pet-sit. Finally, users can request a pet-sit using our scheduling system where they can choose the length of the pet-sit, what day(s) they need it, etc. To help them build a pet parent network, we have a cash-less, time exchange system where users can earn hour credits by helping others pet-sit. Then they can use the hour credits earned to request for longer, more frequent pet-sits.
Understand that trust and safety is top of mind for any pet parents, so we encourage users to chat a little and meet offline first before committing to a pet-sit. We also rolled out a facial verification feature lately so users can verify that they’re a real person. Once they do that, their profile will have a blue check mark badge indicating that they’re verified. But still, not enough people actually use the app. Many of them signed up for the hype from our marketing efforts but probably abandoned the app. Some of them chatted and asked for other’s availability that just didn’t work out, but few people actually scheduled any pet-sits.
What’s missing from our current system? What can we improve on? How can we get more users to embrace the idea of free pet-sitting and use our app more often? We’re actively asking users for their feedback too, but thought I’d also ask fellow founders, developers and people with P2P and consumer tech experience. Many thanks