Cloud Phone App

Overseas VOIP services for the Chinese market
Cloud Phone is a VOIP product for the Chinese market. It is mainly used by e-commerce companies that want to expand overseas. Chinese e-commerce companies need overseas phone numbers to contact the platform when selling products overseas. VOIP is the best choice.
Project duration
2023.6-2023.10 (Parallel)
My role
Product manager
UX designer
Marketing
Responsibilities
Competitor audit
UI design
UX design
Iterating
ASO
Tools
Figma
X-Mind
App tweak
The goal
Without making major adjustments to the core functions (sending and receiving messages and making and receiving calls), to design a VOIP product for the Chinese market in a simple and quick manner.
The tasks
Competitor audit
Product design
Network marketing(ASO)

Research phase

➤  The background

Background:

As the epidemic is coming to an end, more and more Chinese e-commerce companies want to sell their products overseas (this trend can be seen in the popularity of Chinese search engines), and e-commerce companies must have an overseas phone number to go overseas. VOIP numbers are flexible and cheap, making them the best choice.
The company wants to use its advantages in VOIP products to quickly create a product for Chinese e-commerce companies. The product design hopes to be revised based on the company's other products, so that resources can be reused to the greatest extent and development time can be reduced.

➤  The Research

The core of market research is to investigate the business scope, product functions, and pricing of competitors.​​

Competitor’s business scope, product features:

The business and product functions of competitors are very rich. They not only provide VOIP numbers for e-commerce, but also provide very comprehensive services, such as browsers with VPN functions, delivery management on multiple platforms, after-sales WeChat groups, tutorials, etc.
As for the telecommunication service, due to Chinese laws, most of them can only receive calls and text messages, but not make calls and send text messages.

Competitor’s Packages and Prices:

Compared with the pricing in the United States and Canada, the pricing in mainland China is relatively high. Similar to China's telecommunications packages, it usually consists of a monthly fee that includes a certain amount of call time and text messages, and a separate overage fee.

E-commerce platform support

Unlike normal phone numbers, it is not easy to register VOIP numbers on platforms. This is because many platforms will mark these numbers to prohibit them from registering. Therefore, it is best to use brand new numbers for platform registration. On the other hand, Chinese law requires these numbers to be registered on overseas platforms in a whitelist manner, which means that platforms outside the list are prohibited from registering. Therefore, it is necessary to research a list of common sales platforms.
After research, there are 93 sales platforms in total.

Please click the links below for details:

E-commerce platform list

➤  Conclusion

The company wants to launch products as soon as possible, so the products cannot be as rich and complete as those of competitors. We only do our core business well and use low prices to bring advantages.

All viable business and product features:

For the first version, based on the MVP principle, we only provide users with the most core services: receiving verification code and answering calls.

Plans and pricing:

I proposed three pricing strategies. PLAN I was a fixed monthly fee + additional telecommunication fee. PLAN II was a Chinese-style monthly fee that included part of the telecommunication fee. PLAN III was to divide the time packages into multiple packages based on the PLAN I. After discussion, we chose PLAN III as the final pricing strategy. Because this strategy comes from our main competitor, the risk is relatively low.

Design phase



Background:

For the first version, based on the research results and MVP principle, I only provide users with the most core services: receiving verification code and answering calls.

➤  Wireframes

1st version

Figure 1

You can see that the first version of the design is a minimalist design. The title on the homepage says "Conversation", which means that all SMS and call records will be displayed here. New users will see a "Buy Cloud Phone" button, and all other settings are in the menu.

Figure 2

Then I considered that many users have more than one VOIP number, and later when there are too many message records, a filter may be needed. So I added a filter of phone numbers, and a filter of message type. This version can be used as a later iteration

More wireframes of 1st version


2nd version

2nd version

After discussing the first version of the design, the superior felt that the development speed was the most important thing at present, so the second version of the design was basically based on PingMe with slight changes, so that developers can complete the task in the shortest time. Frankly speaking, I don’t agree with this decision because it affects the user experience. For an app without the function of sending messages and making calls, this design seems bloated. But I am a professional in the workplace. When I am not the decision maker, I will obey the decision 100%.

More wireframes of 2nd version

➤  Mockups

Log in

Welcome

Permissions

Guide

SMS

My VOIP Numbers

Setting Page

Choose VOIP Number

Choose a Plan

Order

Order Complete

Dialing

Network Marketing(ASO)



Work summary:

I used Apptweak to analyze 8 competing products and analyzed and updated all ASO information of Cloud Phone, including title, keywords, short and long description, feature graphic, screenshots, etc.

➤  Value Proposition



Keywords

Based on the company’s technical situation, I sorted out all the advantages of the product and used them as product promotion information and ASO information.

➤  Screenshots

Cloud Phone

Based on the value proposition, The main promotion of the product is as follows:

  • Selected overseas phone numbers
  • Secure and stable communication
  • Cross-border e-commerce store opening assistant
  • Easily obtain local numbers in the United States/Canada/UK
  • Privacy and security
  • 100% new phone numbers
  • Smooth registration on various e-commerce platforms
  • Multiple mobile phone numbers can also be managed uniformly
  • Cloud service SMS platform doubles the efficiency of information management