Limpid

Milestone 1

Problem description

We believe that time is the most important resource one can have. That’s why you should not use it for cleaning your home, but for doing what you like. Finding a trustworthy person to clean your house or office is usually time consuming. Besides of that, you can never be sure if the person you contact will do their job properly. Out of a desire to have more time for yourself, we created Limpid.

Solution

Limpid is a platform where cleaning persons can join and you can book them. On this platform you will be able to pick your favorite person based on the reviews. You will be charged on square feet based on the levels of dirtness.

Customer segment

Our target customers are busy people, who don't have a lot of free time and want to make the most out of it. In other words, they don't want to spend time cleaning their homes.

Competition

Advantages over the competition

The main advantage we have over the competition is transparency in the sense that our clients can select the cleaner for their house based on the reviews. Every cleaner will have the option to set his own price for his work.

Key metrics

How many people join the platform as cleaners?
How many new people book a cleaner?
How many people reuse the platform?

Cost structure

The cost structure will consist of fixed and variable costs.
Fixed costs:

Promotion and advertising of the platform
Site Domain and Platform Maintenance

Variable costs:

Cloud Services for database
Other taxes

Revenue streams

Commissions from booking services

Milestone 2

Identifying the problem

The first step in identifying the problem was a brainstorming session with the team where we tried to identify an important field which needs a change.

From our experience, there is a problem in finding a suitable person for cleaning our houses. This is caused by the lack of exposure for housekeepers. The cumbersome process of finding a housekeeper made us consider this issue as one of substantial interest which needs solving.

In the past, the communication between the two parts was intermediated by cleaning agencies which compile CVs of several housekeepers. Recently, the market suffered changes leading to different demands. This way of finding and booking services became inefficient and customers crave a new way of doing business.

Global digitalization trends have made their presence felt in this field as well. Nowadays people find housekeepers by searching through Facebook groups or on other platforms such as OLX. There is a lack of platforms designed to encourage communication between the two parts involved in this type of business.

Market research shows the inefficiency of existing platforms, which do not provide transparency in choosing a housekeeper. These provide a rudimentary allocation process which only focuses on meeting supply and demand without accounting for particularities between customers. Such a process usually assigns subpar services to picky clients generating dissatisfaction.

Limpid seeks to meet the quality standards the existing customers demand. Our goal is to achieve this, while also reaping the flexibility improvements a mobile application provides.

Initial Solution

In order to create a middle ground between housekeepers and customers, our proposal is to develop a mobile application where cleaning persons can join and one can book them.

On this platform one will be able to pick their favorite person based on the reviews. They will be charged on square feet based on the levels of dirtiness, but the price will be set by the cleaning person, not by us.

Plan for customer discovery

two different parts:

On one hand, we wanted to validate the fact that customers cannot easily find a housekeeper. Also, our goal was to discover what other major problems they encountered when working with different house cleaners.
On the other hand, we wanted to research if the house cleaners would use our application to have their services booked.

Customer Validation

We reached both segments of clients by creating an online questionnaire to help us identify their problems. Based on their experiences and needs, we will create the features of the application.

Facebook was the principal method to reach the people in need for this service. The questionnaire was posted on several groups intended for cleaning services.

Here are some proofs:

We managed to collect 146 answers to our survey. 60,3% (88 answers) of respondents are searching for cleaning services and 39,7% (58 answers) of respondents are housekeepers.

The part of the survey dedicated to those in need of cleaning services included several questions to get to know their needs and problems better.

Firstly, we wanted to see the age distribution of our survey subjects. The majority of people who answered our survey seem to be young, with ages between 18-24 years. However, 3.4% of respondents are in the age group of more than 55 years. This shows us the wide interest of people disregarding the age group.

We wanted to find more details about the persons in need for this service, so the next questions show us information about their place to live.

This question aimed to highlight the budget of the person in need for this kind of service.

The price of cleaning services depending on the surface of the house:

Our research shows variance amid the cleaning habits of our respondents. Even more fascinating is the balanced spread between the once a week, every two weeks and once a month options.

Some of the possible clients added new intervals to our question: every three months and once a year. This is one reason why we want to offer flexibility in application and many options for them to choose.

From the chart below we can conclude that people are still willing to turn to new housekeepers if the person they usually work with is not available.

An important question in our form is about the problems respondents encountered when they worked with a housekeeper. We can see that many of them are interested in this kind of service even though they haven't used it yet.

Based on this research we found out a common problem among them, the quality of the services is not the expected one. Another important issue is regarding the availability of the housekeeper.

Based on the answer below, the most used method to reach a new house cleaner is by asking a close person. This proves that the application is necessary and will bring value to this domain.

Based on the answers, we can conclude that the previous experience of other people is very important for other clients. This made us believe that the feedback section for every cleaner would really help the clients to choose a person for cleaning their houses.

The research shows that the respondents are willing to use a platform to book this service instead of using the inefficient method of searching on Facebook groups or OLX. More than a half of the answers were for 4 or 5 options, which encourage the potential of this kind of mobile application.

The part of the survey dedicated to those who offer cleaning services included several questions to get to know their needs and problems better.

Most people who answered our survey as housekeepers are in the age group between 35 and 44 years. On the second level come the group with age between 45 and 54 years and then the group with age between 25 and 34 years.

Since time is the most important resource one can have, we thought the time of housekeepers is an essential aspect we should know about.

We can recognize the balanced spread between all the options. Our respondents are willing to work 10 to 20 hours per week, assuming this would be an additional source of income. The next percentage is for those who can allocate 30 to 40 hours per week, the time for a full time job. Moreover, some of the respondents would work more than 40 hours per week.

This is a proof of diversity for housekeepers on our platform.

The flexibility of housekeepers is shown by the huge percentage for the option of going where is necessary for a client.

Most of the housekeepers are constantly looking for new customers.

Given the need for new customers, the most used method of finding them is through recommendations from current clients to other people. This method is not efficient and the process of finding new contacts is hampered by the lack of exposure for housekeepers.

Dissatisfaction is also observed from the side of housekeepers. The most frequent problem is the inappropriate behavior of the clients. Another significant issue is the clear evidence of miscommunication between the two parties.

There seems to be a multitude of reasons for which house cleaners choose to stop providing their services and the top ones share the same root cause. Issues like rude behavior or incorrectly reporting house size stem from a customers’ behavior.

Service providers need information about this prior to accepting a job. Such a feature would help in checking if they meet a certain standard, avoiding surprises.

Even if the age distribution is diverse, we see that the majority are willing to use such an application. This means that even the older age groups are open to use a platform in order to get new clients

Insights

We are pleased to see the interest given to complete the questionnaire from both categories of potential users of the application.We had the chance to get answers from people in every age group, from young adults to seniors.

The results of the questionnaire made us realize the major problems of clients are miscommunication and lack of information about the person they will be working with. We want to offer transparency to both parties. Customers and cleaners will have a review section to share their experience and rate the contracted person or the person who contracted them for the service. Using our application their communication will be improved and bad experiences will be reduced.

Although we decided from the beginning that we will have such functionality for our application, the research proved this element can make us stand out amongst our competitors.

Are we ready?

We can proudly say we are ready to move on to the customer validation stage.

The research shows that the respondents are willing to use a platform to book this service instead of using the inefficient methods. Even if the age distribution is diverse, we see that the majority are willing to use such a solution, which encourages the potential of Limpid.

Milestone 3

Balsamiq Wireframes
Landing page

Milestone 4

Interviews

Persona – client

Persona – housekeeper

User stories

Client:

As a client, I want to be able to have options to select a housekeeper so that I can decide faster who suits me best.
As a client, I want to be able to see information about the housekeeper so that I can decide faster who suits me best.
As a client, I want to be able to rate and review the services provided by the housekeeper so that other users can see these reviews in the future.
As a client, I want to be able to contact the housekeeper so that I can talk with him in case of a problem.

Housekeeper:

As a housekeeper, I want to be able to accept or decline an appointment so that I can choose my clients.
As a housekeeper, I want to be able to see all my appointments so that clients can make an appointment right after the current appointment ends.
As a housekeeper, I want to be able to contact the client so that I can talk with him in case of a problem.

User flow:

Milestone 5

User Tracking

During this milestone we wanted to see if our landing page is design properly for our potential users. In order to do this we have used three tools: Formspree, Google Analytics and Hotjar. With everything set up we have spread out project landing page link on different social media platforms.

To collect contact information from potential users we have added a "Sign up" field where they can leave an email to get the latest news about the app. We have collected more than 50 email addreses using Formspree.

We spend the most time of our lifes on the internet so we know the importance of a well made site. That's why we used Hotjar to see how our users interact with the landing page.

Heatmap-click

Heatmap-move

The data provided by Google Analytics have shown us that 80 people were interested in seeing what our product has to offer. We have noticed that most of them were from Bucharest but we were also surprised to see that our platform was accessed from abroad, even outside of Europe. The think that thrills us the most is that 96.3% of the users accessing our platform were using mobile devices, which validates our decision of making our product available as a mobile app.

Milestone 6

Target market

The global cleaning services market size was valued at $55,715.0 million in 2020 and is projected to reach $111,498.8 million by 2030. The floor care segment was the highest contributor to the market, with $12,293.8 million in 2020, and is estimated to reach $22,820.2 million by 2030.

About market in Romania

The cleaning services market reached about 2 billion lei last year and belongs to Romanian investors.

The 10 largest companies in the local cleaning market accounted for 16% of the industry's total turnover in 2018 and are 100% owned by Romanian individuals and legal entities, according to the latest KeysFin analysis.

Regarding the geographical distribution of the cleaning business, Bucharest is on the first place, with a turnover of 531 million lei, representing 29% of the total, Cluj County on the second place, with a turnover of 133 million lei and 7.3% of the total, and Prahova ranks third, with a turnover of 101 million lei and 5.5% of the total.

In total, the companies registered in the first 5 counties concentrate over 50% of the total turnover of the cleaning services market in Romania.

As for those who deal with cleaning, in 2018 there were 27.4 thousand employees, 2.6% more than in 2017 and almost 9% more than in 2009. A positive result of this market is also the doubling of productivity employees, from 32.9 thousand lei in 2009 to 66.6 thousand lei in 2018. At the same time, the average cost per employee increased by 140% during 2009-2018.

Competitors

We found 3 competitors with no clear monopoly over the market segment:

Cleany - 1K downloads on Google Play Store (Android)
Homerun - 10K downloads on Google Play Store (Android)
Zumzi - 1K downloads on Google Play Store (Android)

Conclusion

What will differentiate us from these already existing solutions, from the point of view of businesses, will be the ability to rate and review housekeepers. Based on this system clients will have the opportunity to choose a housekeeper. Also, the housekeepers will do their services right, not to have a bad reputation.

Milestone 7

MVP

Using the results from the validation process of the problem and the solution, we decided that our MVP must have the key functionalities implemented to meet the preferences of the most possible users.

Currently, using Limpid application, clients will be able to:

Create an account
Authenticate into the account
Specify and edit the address and the dimension of their house
View the housekeepers registered on our application
Make an appointment choosing the housekeeper, the date and hour
See the status of the appointment
See the history of appointments

The housekeepers will be able to:

Create an account
Authenticate into the account
Specify and edit the price
View the appointments made by clients
Accept or reject an appointment
See the history of appointments

Next steps

Currently, we are focusing on implementing the elements which will represent the differentiators between Limpid and other existing solutions.

Some nice to have features for clients and housekeepers are:

Chat in application to make the communication easy between the clients and the housekeeprs
Rating and feedback system
Online payment

At the same time, we try to get as many feedbacks as possible for the new functionalities in order to get the validation for the new features. We want our application to remain simple to use and intuitive for our users.

Demo

Milestone 8

Even if the application is not in the final form, we decided that we need to ask the opinion of potential customers.

Thus, we gave this prototype to customers to give us feedback based on which we will find out if we are on the right track.

User Feedback

The application is a useful one, but I would like to be able to see more information about housekeepers, so that I can easily choose the right person. It would be nice to have the option to authenticate with a Google or Facebook account.
The design of the application is quite simple. More attention should be paid to the visual aspect. The application should have the option to provide some feedback about the housekeepers. Otherwise, its purpose is a good one, because the people who work in this industry, need a platform on which to expose their services and facilitate the search process for those interested in cleaning services.
The idea is a very good one, because over time I have faced the difficulty of finding a suitable person for cleaning. Through this application, I can directly see the price of each service and I can choose from a larger offer. I thought it would be useful to have a chat function, to communicate with the housekeeper directly and to discuss the details.

Housekeeper feedback

Finally, an application where I can find customers. Until now, the exposure of the services has been quite difficult because we did not have a specific platform for us, and we had to use different methods. I like the application because it is simple. It's easy to use. All I have to do is create an account and receive requests for cleaning that I can accept or not.
I like the application because it is simple, it’s perfect for a person who is not so used to use technology. I would love to see a more grouped history of the clients I have had to know if they are loyal customers or not.

Taking into consideration all this useful feedback, we consider that our product is on the right track, the business idea is a valid one and solves a real problem. Moreover, the MVP is good and contains all the needed categories, structured in a clear and useful way. We will implement the elements which will represent the differentiators between Limpid and other existing solutions.

Milestone 9

Limpid Presentation