Creator is a beat making tool by LANDR Audio, initially launched in summer of 2020 as an add-on to the platform's Samples marketplace. Creator gives artists already looking to buy samples the opportunity to audit multiple sounds together, right before buying, making this the perfect tool to sketch up quick beat ideas and commit to the right samples for a project.

After the launch of the bêta, traction for the tool was not as was expected. The company's ambition for Creator grew beyond the marketplace into a full fledged standalone tool. As the pricing strategy evolved within the Samples Marketplace, it became evident that the tool could support sales initiatives.

Making sure the solution is integrated with the existing marketplace environment. Incorporating many different entry points, a clear onboarding flow to present the tool and its value for users as a powerful marketing activation for the Samples Marketplace.

Our goal was clear

Extend the discoverability of Creator on the marketplace to existing and new users, while presenting them the value of using Creator in they journey. Reach users that might not have been aware of the tool and promote the tool on LANDR and beyond.

My role in the project

I lead this project from October 2020 until its launch in early April 2021. My role consisted in understanding why did the tool struggle to be used and offering an improved user experience that would make sense within the context of our tech stack while creating value for our customers. I was also responsible to work with the marketing team to create alignment on the positioning of the product.I collaborated with the Product Manager to do X, the marketing reps to do Y, the Creative Director for Z and the front-end developers to build and ship the final product. 

When looking at the environment in which Creator bêta was launched in initially, it became quickly apparent that we could notice a lot of things on the landing page of the Samples marketplace, except for Creator itself. A true example of "If you know, you know." Can you find Creator on this picture ?

Not only is the tool discreet, but it's innundated by very distracting colorful sample packs. In order to open Creator, a user needed to know to add individual samples into the tool manually and manually click open the white bar at the bottom to see the full potential of the tool. Not very straightforward a process. 

EARLY INSIGHTS

The purpose of the tool was unclear to most users

Given the subtle presence of the bêta on the platform, it came to no surprise that only a handful of users noticed it and engaged with it following the launch. 

To further investigate, I partnered with the Customer Success Manager to prepare an intent survey targetted at users who had used the tool at least once. We received close to 350 responses and they all fell into two buckets:

1.

Creator is just a player in the Samples marketplace browsing experience

2.

Creator is a creativity tool for beatmaking

However, no association between those two buckets were clear or expressed by the respondants. The low engagement on the tool could be explained by a lack of understanding surrounding how would Creator benefit them in their creation journey. The confusion prevented most of them to engage with the tool in meaningful ways.

In order for people to see the benefit of the tool in each of their journeys, the way it’s presented and the flow around it must be clear as to what the tool does. 

By increasing the discoverability and visibility of Creator on the Samples Marketplace, we would see an uptick in number of sessions started in the tool. We would also expect more downloads (paid or free purchases) coming from the tool itself, translating into an overall increased conversion for the marketplace itself.

Initially, we started exploring the idea around expanding Creator to be a standalone feature, separated from the Samples Maketplace and elevated to the same level as other tools the LANDR suite provided at the time, such as Mastering, Distribution. 

At the time, the Samples content team was starting to build Creator packs to promote curated samples and get users started quickly with Creator. These packs were to be the starting point of the experience with a Standalone Creator.

This idea leaned more heavily on Creator being solely for beatmaking, but we were losing the connection with the marketplace, and selling the samples.

That did not work

As we went on with the project, we realized that it would be extremely costly to reinvent how we browse for new or existing samples. We decided to correct course and adopt a more conservative approach to the challenge.