JOIN USRe-imagining user experience
A typical e-commerce problem that companies face is the conversion of the number of visits to a website to the number of purchases. Bengaluru-based User Experience (UX) design start-up, Redd is helping companies spike their conversion and business growth through problem-solving by design.
Redd is the brainchild of Sharan Grandigae, who started his first software development firm in 2000. He went on to work in Adobe as the Design Manager for India from 2009-13, where he specialised in the field, which paved the way for him to set-up the start-up in 2015.
“I have always been interested in UX design but I wasn’t aware of the term until Adobe happened. We only knew we were building beautiful software. I got a call from Adobe and they asked me to come and help design their platform. I had never worked for anyone and was intrigued by how the big boys get it done, so decided to get on board,” he said.
Redd has completed 75 projects till now. The start-up has been growing 100% Year-on-Year (y-o-y), and expects further growth this year.
What is it?
Sharan defines User Experience design as the task of organising touchpoints of a company to help achieve business growth. He believes UX to be one of those spaces that require business knowledge, technological expertise and design knowledge in equal parts.
Talking about the ecosystem in India, he says, “We were one of the first companies in the country that began as a pure UX company. Before this, there were marketing companies or software companies with graphic design skills, but there were no companies solely focusing on UX design. I’m glad there are a lot more entrants in the field now.”
Not just aesthetics
Grandigae mentions that a lot of firms in India approach UX from an aesthetic point of view while Redd approaches it as a nuts and bolts business.
He says, “Design is about finding a solution, it’s not about expression. Aesthetics are important, I’m not discounting it. But many come with a communication perspective or a graphic design idea, to tell the story better or to make it look good, but ending the story there doesn’t solve the problem. We believe that an app has to work well, solving actual business problems and that’s exactly what we do.”
How it works
When clients come to us, says Grandigae, they tell us about the issues they are dealing with. He explains, “One of the companies had trouble with conversion. This is a problem statement, so now we figure out the way to solve it — we may have to change how their app functions, change the language, integrate voice, among other things.”
Presently, Redd is working with a payment company to reduce the hurdles users face while making payments.
They claim to have helped to have aided conversion rates for Lenskart and jewellery start-up Bluestone, by increasing the number of products a customer is exposed to while scrolling their websites. The team got the idea while working for Bluestone and decided to use the same technique with Lenskart.
“When a person walks into a store asking for Kundan earrings, they show you a number of trays of different kinds of earrings. The industry people understand the customer’s psychology. We observed it and did the same thing online. It worked,” says Grandigae.