Scaling an early-stage startup into South Korea's #1 restaurant review app

Funnel failure to #1

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When we first met MangoPlate, they were an early-stage food startup struggling to convert downloads to registered users.

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Through a UX audit and acquisition funnel analysis, we identified pain points in the MangoPlate experience. In a series of short and focused design sprints, we worked alongside MangoPlate's internal teams to grow the product into an invaluable service.

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One year after launching the redesigned UX and rebranded identity, MangoPlate had a 5X increase in their mobile app downloads and a 30% increase in average app usage time. MangoPlate is now the single most popular restaurant recommendation and review app in South Korea.

Sprinting towards viability

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Design sprints help us work quickly to identify user needs, generate concepts, build prototypes, and test our ideas with real users. Our sprints with MangoPlate helped their team get to viable solutions faster.

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Our initial sprint led to key design principles that drove our design. "Less than three clicks to wow" pushed us to remove unnecessary interactions, moments, and screens. "Provide contextual content based on location and personal history" nudged the team to always consider the user's context as they interacted with the app.

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Sprinting leads to real results. Some of our solutions that went into the product pipeline were:

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• Redesigning the registration flow
• Adding mechanisms to increase user engagement
• Creating a new corporate brand identity
• Completely renewing responsive desktop & mobile website designs

In the year after our redesign, downloads went from 400,000 to 2.2 million, the number of monthly active users surpassed 1 million, and monthly page views increased by 1200%, from 1.65 million to 20 million.

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MangoPlate successfully raised $6.1 million in their Series A round from top VCs, including SoftBank and Qualcomm Ventures, bringing their total value to $7.2 million.

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Press

Mangoplate, Korea's Answer to Yelp, Lands $6.1M and Eyes Expansions Across Asia

TechCrunch