Gravy Live
A live, synchronous shopping experience that showcases products to an audience each night, featuring a reverse auction format where prices drop from full price to free.
Project Type
Product Design
Contribution
Creative Director, Product Design Lead
Year
2017
Company
Gravy Live
Overview
Gravy was truly a unique live shopping experience like no other. Every night one of our hosts would reveal a hidden product, like an XBOX One for example, then start dropping the price from full down to free in a reverse auction format. Users could buy anytime they felt the price had reached a good deal but the catch was, they had no idea how many we had or who was buying. If they waited too long, the product would sell out and they're out of luck.
During this period in pop culture, HQ Trivia was gaining significant popularity. Leveraging this groundbreaking business model, we aimed to create an e-commerce version of the experience, adding a game show component that would stream nightly at 7:30. In an on-demand society, the app offered a distinctive experience that stood out from the norm.
Design Thinking
The app started as a 0-1 product with a focus on creating a playful and experiential atmosphere reminiscent of a gameshow. The chosen color palette was vibrant and lively, set against a dark, studio-like undertone. Throughout the app, I utilized Airbnb’s Lottie animation component, allowing me to create smooth animations that could be easily integrated by the engineering team using lightweight files optimized for both iOS and Android. By incorporating moments of surprise and delight, I enhanced my motion graphics skills while the app successfully grew its user base.
My Solution
Originally the first version of gravy existed as a live hangout desktop web app. It failed on many fronts so in a last ditch effort I simplified the UI and distilled it down to a wireframe that focused only on a dropping price concept. Since the app was a synchronous experience, we had to rely on a consistent schedule and notifications to get a users attention. Trust was also of the upmost importance, after all, we were selling high ticket items for discounts found nowhere else on the web, it’s only natural that our audience wouldn’t believe us.
The Results
Marketing a synchronous app in an asynchronous world was very difficult. We spent a lot of time and money trying to get users to attend based on our schedule. What we really should have been doing was exhausting those efforts in areas our users already frequented. Giving them the power to decided how and when they visited the app.
The app when through three dramatic pivots during its existence. Originally we focused on tech products but we quickly discovered the tight margins and expensive nature of this vertical. After testing beauty to our existing audience we discovered some promising signs and decided to shift the content completely over. This, however, was too dramatic for quite a bit of our audience and thus created a polarizing environment, ideal for trolls and naysayers.
Influencer marketing is the future, but not the complete picture. If you hitch your wagon to influencers in hopes that they’ll delivery thousands of users tied up in a bow, you’ll be disappointed. In reality, only about 10% of an influencer’s audience is actively engaged and 1% of them will make a purchase.