enlaguia.online
What is it about?
enlaguia.online is a digital platform that offers a commercial guide, targeting the shops and services providers in small and medium cities of Argentina.
Together with Natalia Varela we started this project as soon as the Pandemia kicked in Argentina in 2020, hitting hard the small and medium size shops. We wanted to provide a platform where the shops and service providers could build up their digital presence easily and with low budget. At the same time we identified the need of people to find shops and services in small and medium cities of Argentina, while being locked down at home. An online commercial guide was needed.
This need was addressed by other platforms in big cities like Buenos Aires or Córdoba, but the information in smaller cities was not updated or not even existent.
How did it start?
We started small to test our idea with a some friends and family, some of them owners of shops or service providers, in small cities in Argentina. We confirmed the need of this platform and fine tuned the business model with the feedback collected. We quickly built up a platform listing the shops in three cities: Carhué (10’000 inhab.), Necochea (90’000 inhab.) and Junín (120’000 inhab.).
Vision
Create the best online commercial guide of shops and services of the small and medium cities of Argentina.
Mission
Provide shops and service providers in small and medium size cities a platform to help them build up their digital presence so that they can be easily found online. Provide a commercial guide of shops and services of small and medium size cities.
Result
Check it out! www.enlaguia.online
Instagram @enlaguia.online.ok | @enlaguia.carhue | @enlaguia.junin | @enlaguia.necochea
My role
Co-Founder. UX designer.
Activities and responsibilities
As the only two starters of the project we both took all the responsibilities related to start up a business. We only outsourced the development of the digital platform to a web developer. On this project I had the chance to collect experience in the following areas:
Branding and visual design
- Design of the name, logo and different visual assets.
- Corporative communication.
- Branding guidelines.
Marketing
- Community management. Facebook and Instagram accounts.
- Content generation. Visual and written content for social networks.
- Media marketing campaigns.
Product Management
- Understanding our market needs.
- Shaping a solution addressing our customers’ and users’ needs.
- Defining the vision and mission for our product.
- Prioritising our product features and developing an MVP.
- Defining the technology to develop the MVP.
Product development
- UX design of the platform.
- User testing.
- Data analysis.
Observe. Understand the need. Start small. Adapt fast.
Key learnings
- Start small. Be ready to pivot and reprioritise.
- Partners are crucial. Find good partners to complement your skills.
- Understand the context of your users (small cities, mobile first, bad network, no app).
- Local presence (local instagram account for each city, usage of local codes to engage users).
Any thoughts on this? Have you done something similar? Any ideas of how to improve it and make a bigger impact? Let’s talk about it!
