CHPTR:
User Segments Research

Introduction

Chptr.com is a mobile-first memorialization platform to gather, share, and hold memories for a lost loved one’s life for generations to come.

The purpose of Chptr is to create a community that celebrates and honors the lives of those we’ve lost. They have a site and an app to be launched. The main goal of our collaboration was to define the User segments which should approach first (from a marketing perspective).

Regardless of our scope of work being to create User segments, we decided to follow and analyze any insight that would appear for the product part (as it is still in the development stage, and the Client is open to any suggestions).

 

The Discovery phase findings

We do not start a project without fully understanding what the Client’s expectations are. It takes time, but it can change the whole picture from the initial Job description ) 

Its team defined Chptr as a platform for memorialization. It will offer the possibility to create profiles/pages for deceased people. So, the first finding was

• The platform will have three types of users: Creators, Contributors, and Browsers. Our most considerable interest was in Creators. 

The fact of losing someone is very sensitive. That is why

• We’ll focus on quantitative data/ When and if we need qualitative data, we’ll involve an expert in the grieving processes

There are legal terms to be respected when “talking” about the deceased. 

• We’ll research just the US market as a start. Other markets will be analyzed as the business scales up.

 

The Challenge versus the Opportunity

We discovered two challenges to face:

1. It’s a huge market. Around 3 million people die every year in the United States. People who suffer from these losses (family, friends, relatives) are at least twice more. They are very different, their needs and grieving process are different. So it is very complicated to define the User Persona, and we proceeded with User Segments.
2. The competition is also big. We found tens of platforms and groups for memorialization (which we categorized as direct competitors). But we looked further. We have focused on Job To Be Done, leading us to other “players” who solve the same job (e.g., Facebook groups and pages). And here, we were able to see real potential users.

 

Our solution and tactics

The market challenge

These are the steps we followed and the conclusions we came to.

1. We’ve created categories and subcategories of deceased by age and cause
2. Based on the structure we got, we’ve created segmentation criteria
3. Following the segmentation criteria: we’ve built User Segments
4. We took each segment and described it: demographic data such as age, region, occupation, income, and education, but also how big is it, what’s common here, how and whom they lost, what’s their process of grieving (if & how they go through the loss of someone), etc.
5. Here we prioritized the segments and eliminated the irrelevant ones. 

The data & resources

We are in love with data! And to be sure in the data we provide, we check it. Here we used gov. sources, Wikipedia, independent sources and users, traffic, features, and value propositions.

All the inputs cold information for experts (the complete list of links is under the NDA).

 

The results

We defined five significant User segments and highlighted the first segment to be approached. The Client got a list of “Jobs to be done” hypotheses and next steps recommendations.

 

How do we know we did great?

We’ll know 100% sure when the product is launched. But at this stage, we see that we delivered what was expected and more because we agreed to continue the collaboration.

 

So, if you need help with research or Customer discovery, you know where to ask for help. Do not guess your Customer, don’t waste time and money. Book a call here and let’s go through our proven process. 

 

www.chptr.com