Vezeeta is a healthTech startup based in the Middle East, and largely based out of Egypt. The startup has a number of different medical products - including an ePharmacy, clinic management software, a scheduling application for doctors, and most importantly, a mobile application for patients to book doctors.

According to the WHO, approximately 82% of all deaths, and 67% of premature deaths in Egypt were due to non-communicable chronic conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, and cardiovascular diseases.

A number of risk factors were found in the Egyptian adult population that made them more susceptible to acquiring chronic conditions, including:

• Egyptians are one of the most overweight populations in the world, with 66% of women overweight, and almost 3/4 of the population not involved in any sort of physical activity

• The average daily salt intake is double that of the recommended allowance, resulting in 40% of the population having hypertension

• A 24% of prevalence of smoking, with increasing usage of Vaping and Shisha-smoking

Statistical data reference:

World Health Organization, (2022), "Egypt, Noncommunicable Diseases" Retrieved from https://www.emro.who.int/egy/programmes/noncommunicable-diseases.html

Through additional research, we found that high temperatures, an absence of walkability of streets, and cultural reasons all played a role in limiting people from going outside to walk or exercise. However, applications that allowed users to workout from home were extremely popular, and consistently trending on both the Apple and Google play store, communicating that many people, were in fact, open to improving their fitness.

With these insights, Vezeeta decided to carry out a brand activation project which aimed to incentivise exercise and walking combatting chronic conditions, whilst also engage meaningfully with potential and existing customers and users.

From a business perspective, Vezeeta also had some other objectives, including:

1. Improve patient (or customer) acquisition
2. Increase customer LTV
3. Increase the average monthly number of sessions per person to enhance "Stickiness" of the product

Background

Our strategy - Vezeeta Move and Earn

We went through 3 steps to formulate our product strategy - namely:

Part 1: Research on behavioural design

I conducted extensive market and literature research on behavioural design for fitness - these were some of the insights we had found:

1. Studies had proven that in order for incentives to drive fitness goals - the incentives were more powerful when tangible and not only intrinsic. In a study conducted by Katy Milkman and Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, incentivising participants to exercise was most effective when coupled with a micro monetary reward per session.
2. From user research, we found that many individuals who engage in fitness activities enjoy sharing their activities on social media platforms, including on Instagram. Some applications who had doubled down on this include Nike Fitness Application as well as Rashaqa, which created a special visual to allow users to "share" their progress with users
3. Users enjoyed to be able to see data - and specifically - notice trends in their progress.
4. We also learnt that due to covid, there was a surge in downloading applications to allow users to exercise at home (with such applications occupying the top 3 positions on the Apple app store and Play store.)

With these insights, we designed and developed a product strategy, with a feature set to address these insights. These included:

1. A widget on the home screen of the patient app to track a users footsteps on the mobile app - integrating with a user's mobile

Mobile users made up about 90% of our users, so we needed to adopt a mobile first approach. Additionally, conversion rates on our mobile application were higher than on mobile web, and so, this initiative was to be rolled out on mobile app only.

2. An integrated loyalty program to serve as the incentive for users Product backing: In order to generate engagement with our products as well as serve as an incentive, we integrated the Vezeeta Steps counter with the loyalty program. Thus, when users would perform a certain number of steps, they would be awarded with a certain number of loyalty points, which they could then use to order products from Vezeeta's ePharmacy.

The result? Increased order values, increased cross-pollination between Vezeeta's products, and most importantly, meaningful engagement with users.

3. The ability for users to share their progress with others Research backing - from our user research, we found that extrinsic motivation played a large role at helping users achieve their fitness goals. That is, users often benefited from social validation, and so would choose their fitness goals with friends. Embedding this finding into our product, we decided to incorporate a Share feature into the product with a customized visual.

Some other design decisions made from research include:

-→ Setting the daily step count to 5000 steps (instead of 10,000 steps) - as 5000 steps was a high enough target for a country where walking was minimal.

→ Deciding not to incorporate leaderboards in the MVP, but instead showing a customised ranking visual to the top "walkers" in a city. This was to reduce technical complexity, whilst minimizing development effort.

Part 2: Prototype, design, and launch

We then set out to prototype our designs through Figma - trying out many variations of data visualisations, icons, and UX flows. These were then evaluated with potential users, as well as with development teams to understand constraints and feasibilities.

Part 3: Launch and Impact

Our project was incredibly successful, and led to a number of key results:

1. Session times on our mobile app increased to 3x their length
2. The loyalty program not only led to an increase in the number of ePharmacy orders, but also a great increase in the order value
3. Most importantly, the campaign was very successful at generating user engagement, as the company was seen as creating social impact. Posts were found all over social media celebrating the program, and the company's innovative approach to delivering health benefits to the public.

Our biggest challenges

• Issues with development, particularly for iOS
• Extremely tight timeline → a massive campaign was being launched, and so the development needed to be completed on time before the launch
• There were minor changes between design and development → so the design was not implemented as planned

How we addressed them

• A decision was made to launch the code no-matter-what by the campaign release, and so Android was developed before iOS. This made sense from a business perspective - as around 80% of our mobile users possessed Android devices.
• The development teams - instead of liasing through a product manager - were able to directly be connected to design teams for fast iteration and "fixes"

The project was also featured on Cairo Scene - a popular online magazine for young Egyptians.