Consulting engagement · ~18 months, within 2018 to 2024
FVilla
Product Management Consultant · Wellness-tech: salon booking, then a B2B salon CRM
FVilla was a salon booking platform for users aged 18 to 25, mostly college students and young professionals, which partnered with unisex salons in residential areas with young populations and later added a CRM for those salons. I worked with its team of six for ~18 months as a freelance product management consultant.
In brief
FVilla, a salon booking platform, had ~1,000 users when I started, and fewer than 10 of them had made a second booking, so retention was the core problem.
Over ~18 months I worked with the team on college festival sponsorships, residential society partnerships, onboarding and funnel fixes, a public salon directory as the first screen, and a B2B salon CRM that I proposed.
Users grew from ~1,000 to ~70,000, the share of users who had made a second booking rose from under 1% to 45%+, and time to first booking fell from over 5 minutes to 3.5 minutes.
The problem
The product had existed for over six months when I started, and retention was the core problem. The team assumed the consumer experience needed more polish but had no quantitative data to test that.
- ~1,000 signed-up users, growing 5% to 10% a month.
- About 20% of users had made a first booking.
- Fewer than 10 of ~1,000 users had made a second booking (under 1%).
- Consumer usage data was thin.
- Revenue came from a 10% commission on bookings.
- Pamphlets near colleges, paid and organic social media, Google Ads and tie-ups with Facebook group owners had all been tried without a growth inflection.
What I did, phase by phase
College festival sponsorships
I recommended sponsoring college festivals. The city has a dense concentration of engineering and arts colleges, and January to March is the peak season for their festivals, so FVilla sponsored coupons at festivals through those three months. Existing channels had taken users from ~1,000 to ~1,500 by the time the sponsorships began. Users then grew from ~1,500 to ~5,000 within three months, about 49% a month.
Retention did not move. Fewer than 35 of 5,000 users had made a second booking, and the few who did took about 40 days to do so. More users left the core problem where it was.
Onboarding and funnel fixes
During the festival growth I studied the funnel and found consistent drop-offs at every step. Each step got its own change and its own metric.
- Landing page
- CTA placement and messaging tested through A/B tests. Conversion to signup initiation rose 35%.
- Authentication
- Phone number plus OTP replaced email, name and password signup, and name and gender moved to the point of booking. Conversion to the user homepage rose 60%.
- Homepage restructure
- Messaging and the placement of navigation elements were restructured. Homepage bounce and drop-off fell 60%.
- In-app nearby-salon sort
- For the first booking, a distance-sorted list of nearby salons (with location permission), filters for rating, time slot and distance, and CTAs tested repeatedly through A/B tests. Drop-offs before first booking intent fell 50%.
The North Star for this phase was time to first booking, measured from account creation across sessions for users who eventually booked. It fell from over 5 minutes to 3.5 minutes, and 40% more users completed their first booking in their first session. The L1 metric, sessions needed to make a first booking, also fell.
Residential society partnerships
The founders and I met the association bodies of residential societies in the target areas. Users grew to ~8,000, about 17% a month.
Public salon directory as the first screen
The hypothesis was that the first screen should be the product itself. The landing page gave way to a public list of nearby salons, with filters and a “Book your slot” button on each listing. Booking took a phone number plus OTP, name and gender, then a time slot, then payment.
- Conversion to signup plus first booking rose 60%.
- 66% of users booked in their first session.
- Time to first booking stayed at ~3.5 minutes, with discovery and booking now in a single session.
- Growth held at 30% to 33% a month for about three months, taking users from ~8,000 to ~18,000.
The salon list worked as a public directory, so the product experience also became the acquisition surface.
Reviews from female users
Analytics showed that over 70% of users were female. Randomly selected female users who had completed bookings were asked for reviews, and these were shown to randomly selected users. Conversion to booking rose about 10%.
Retention
After phases 2 to 5, users making a second booking rose from under 1% to 45%+, and time to second booking fell from ~40 days to ~30 days. Users who booked quickly, with low friction and in their first session, were far more likely to return.
B2B salon CRM
Visits to salons, to add partner salons and collect owners’ feedback, showed a problem that consumer data could not show. Smaller, non-chain salons managed inventory, supplies and scheduling by hand, and existing CRM and inventory tools were too expensive, were not designed for salons, or suited Indian users poorly. FVilla already gave partner salons a free profile, credentials, a dashboard and analytics.
I proposed a lightweight CRM and inventory tool on top of that existing infrastructure, offered in return for salons digitising their existing and walk-in customers. That exchange would give FVilla a new acquisition channel at no marginal cost. Quantitative data was limited, so the decision rested on qualitative research on the supply side, the B2B infrastructure that already existed, and the value exchange with salons.
- Built in a 2 to 3 week sprint covering development, testing and acceptance criteria.
- Priced at INR 499 a month per salon, with discounts of up to 75% for early adopters. The 10% booking commission stayed.
- Salon onboarding rose 60%, from ~5 to ~8 salons a week.
- User growth rose from 30% to 33% a month to 33% to 40% a month, through salon-led onboarding.
- Total users grew from ~18,000 at the CRM launch to ~70,000.
A new North Star
With second bookings common, the North Star moved to time to second booking, which fell from ~30 days to ~25 days after the salon CRM launched.
Over the engagement, acquisition moved from paid channels (Google Ads, paid social and pamphlets) to festival sponsorships, society partnerships, the public salon directory and salon-led onboarding. The estimated effect was a ~40% reduction in blended customer acquisition cost.
Funded competitors then entered with heavy discounting. Branded salon chains declined to partner because of corporate policy, and some franchise outlets joined and then left on corporate instruction. Chains built their own products or partnered with funded competitors. Salon churn rose, the founding team tired under sustained pressure, and FVilla shut down.
Results
- from about 1,000 to about 70,000
Total users, from the start of the engagement to shutdown, over ~18 months.
- from under 1% to over 45%
Users making a second booking, as a share of all users, after the work in phases 2 to 5.
- from over 5 minutes to 3.5 minutes
Time to first booking, from account creation across sessions, for users who eventually booked (phase 2).
- +35%
Conversion to signup initiation, from A/B tests of landing-page CTA placement and messaging.
- +60%
Conversion to the user homepage, after phone plus OTP replaced email, name and password signup.
- down 60%
Homepage bounce and drop-off, after the homepage restructure.
- down 50%
Drop-offs before first booking intent, after the in-app nearby-salon sort, filters and A/B-tested CTAs.
- +60%
Conversion to signup plus first booking, after the public salon directory became the first screen.
- 66%
Users who booked in their first session, with the public salon directory as the first screen.
- ~10%
Rise in conversion to booking, after reviews from female users were shown to randomly selected users.
- +60%
Salon onboarding, from ~5 to ~8 salons a week, after the salon CRM launched.
- from about 40 to about 30, then about 25 days
Time to second booking: ~40 to ~30 days through the funnel and UX work, then ~25 days after the salon CRM launched.
- ~49%
Monthly user growth over three months of college festival sponsorships, from ~1,500 to ~5,000 users.
- ~40%
Estimated reduction in blended customer acquisition cost, as acquisition moved from paid channels to partnerships, the public salon directory and salon-led onboarding.
My role and the team
Product Management Consultant, freelance and embedded in a team of six with no product function. The founders made the final decisions; I presented options with my reasoning and evidence.
Beyond the phases above, I built a user data and feedback collection framework with the team, coached salons on punctuality and courtesy towards customers as part of onboarding, and worked on release notes and internal documentation, analytics and marketing tool integration, analytics infrastructure setup, and campaign management.