FishAngler
FishAngler is a mobile app that exists on both the Android and iOS platforms. It’s a great assistant for fisherman as it provides tools like a logbook, weather forecasting, tidal info, Solunar tracking, and others. It also has a robust social component that is similar to Instagram in a sense that there is a feed where users can show off all of there catches. One of the main golas of this app is to bring the fishing community together and help the industry step into the digital realm. We have over 850,000 active users and are we’re seeing growth every quartrer. I’ve been with this company for over 2 years, and there are many projects we worked on. Without revealing too much, here’s a quick peak at some of the things we worked on.
Goal: One of the main goals of this app is to bring the fishing community together and help the industry step into the digital realm.
Improving Our Registration Process
So we notice we're getting a lot of our drop-off during the registration process. It's one of the things we're currently working on improving. Setting your Fishing Region (mentioned) above is an extended part of a registration process thats already too long.
We're still actively testing and redesigning these flows.
To better understand successful registration flows, we came up with a competitive analysis of Instagram, Snapchat, and our biggest competitor FishBrain, and their registration flows. Comments about each screen are highlighted in green above.
Instagram Registration Flow 07/2019
SnapChat Registration Flow 07/2019
Fishbrain Registration Flow 7/2019
So there are some different things we see in the analysis that we like. Things such as username autogen (snapchat), improved account verification strategies (Instagram) can effectively gather the info we need while shortening the registration process as a whole. We'll have to do some further research and testing to verify.
Here is an example of our mobile registration flow created with InVision
FishAngler example when user verifies via phone, and needs to verify email.
Setting Fishing Region
FishAngler is all about bringing local fishing communities together. To get the best.out of FishAngler App and all of it’s features, it’s best to have location services on. That way, our mapping, forecasting etc. tools can pull the most accurate information relative to your location. Keeo in mind that some people are extremely private and guarded when it comes to an app knowing your location. It understandably makes people uncomfortable. The bigger problem is that using FishAngler App without
location services on severely hurts the user experience.
Problem: Users are compaining that their feed isn’t showing local content. ex: users in south florida are seeing posts from users in washington , then are getting upset because Washington isn’t local so it’s not relevant.
We had to fugre out a way to make sure the feed shows local content regardless if user location services are on or off.
Solution: We decide to add a “Set Your Fishing Region” piece to the initial registration. This way, upon registering every user can set a mile radius (by mi.) from their current location.
Pros
1. Users should feel much more comforable setting a mile radius as oppsed to an exact location. This allows the user to keep their location private if desired.
2. The feed will only populate with posts within the radius the user selects, This solved the issue of the feed showing irrelevant posts to users
User Email Verification
User data can be a tricky topic, especially after some of the issues Facebook was having. It’s also a very important, and potentially lucrative piece if you are creating an app. While we don’t ask for too much personal info, we do ask for a viable email address. This allows us to better communicate with our users, track information easily, and make necessary adjustments. It’s a crucial marketing piece.
Problem: Users were registering to the app and either giving invalid email addresses, or just flat out not verifying.
Solution: We need to remind the user to verify email so that they can use all of the functions with in the app and have the best experience possible.
Here we tried to use something non-intrusive
Advertising within the app
FishAngler has been around since 2016. Since then, there was never any revenue gained in that time period because we are focused on remaining a FREE app for our users, That alone seperates us from our top competition. While being great for users, it’s terrible for the company…how are we going to make money?
Finally we are planning to allow companies to create ads interanlly and externally. Ad revenue is a viable way to keep an app free, just look at Facebook!
Groups
Research has shown that recreational angling is very social, in other words, anglers like to go fishing in groups of friends. Prior to FishAngler adding the “Groups” feature there was no real way for a group of friends or fishing clubs to kind of interact with each other in a private setting simialr to a group chat. Here are some of what we used to build out the groups feature which is currently fully active on both iOS and Android
Basic flow of how to create a group starting from the ‘More’ menu.
Some issues we ran into while creating the Groups feature:
1. How will the search function work? what will results look like?
2. Upload photo and take photo should work like other areas of the app.
3. Define action to remove group. Open dialogue to confirm?
4. Should we use “Remove Group” of “Delete Group”? (we use “delete in other areas of app)
5. Define activity push notifications
a. Activity Messages
i. Group event posted
ii. You have been accepted into group
iii. Someone in group makes a post.
6. How do we deal with posting a single post to multiple groups on newsfeed and user feed?