Belly Buds Case Study: Listen and Learn
Company: Belly Buds
Company size: 1-25 employees
Services used: Qualvu DIY
Business owner: Curtis Williams, CEO & Co-Founder
Business Background: Sharing audio with a baby in the womb helps positively stimulate a baby’s development. Belly Buds allows expectant mothers to expose their babies to stimulating audio through iPod buds that are attached to mom’s belly, and customers can use the Belly Buds website for a free recording platform. Entrepreneur (and expectant dad) Curtis Williams launched the company in December ’09.
Business Challenge: Belly Buds realized they needed unbiased qualitative insights from potential customers to determine necessary product refinements, and strategies to optimize their messaging. The objective: To increase sales and satisfaction of Belly Buds. While Curtis and his team had developed an elegant product and knew the product worked and that there was a burgeoning market, what they didn’t have was direct, truthful reactions from potential customers about their product, packaging and messaging – feedback that they knew would be crucial to making key tactical decisions about design and marketing. They realized that qualitative research would give them that feedback, but as a start-up with limited resources, focus groups were unrealistic given the steep costs.
Solution: Qualvu DIY seemed to be the perfect fit to meet their challenges. The pricing was affordable, and it would allow them to go right into expectant parents’ homes, and the Belly Buds team would be able to watch as potential customers reacted to the product and packaging, and talked candidly about product expectations and usage.
Methodology: Belly Buds knew what they wanted to ask and who they wanted to ask, so they logged into the Qualvu DIY portal and set up their qualitative research project. They selected their sample size to meet their budget and ensure the right amount of feedback, were able to select pregnant woman as respondents via the self-serve screener creation wizard, and drafted the questions they wanted to ask. Once they submitted their project for review, Qualvu research analysts quickly helped refine their questions to ensure that they would prompt unbiased and rich responses. For example, Qualvu suggested not asking yes/no questions. Instead, the questions were phrased in such a way as to prompt the desired feedback to deliver the information Belly Buds would need to make accurate and actionable assessments on their product. The video sessions would allow the Belly Buds team to witness consumers’ initial reactions to the product packaging and messaging, as well as consumers’ usage of the product as they used Belly Buds in various scenarios. Most important was the fact that the participants, all pregnant, and from different areas of the country, had the convenience and flexibility of responding from their homes. (Imagine the difficulty of trying to get women near the end of their pregnancies to travel to a focus group location!)
Result: The feedback generated via the Qualvu platform and approach proved invaluable to the Belly Buds team in a number of different areas. As Curtis analyzed the data and used the search and editing features provided in the Qualvu platform, some of his suspicions were confirmed – the instructions, for example, needed editing so that product application was optimized. “It was very clear that some changes needed to be made to the instructions, and the feedback from the women was instrumental in giving us a perspective on that,” Curtis said. What Curtis saw and heard from respondents affected the product’s packaging as well. Feedback also showed that his messaging needed improvement – what he thought he was saying wasn’t what respondents were hearing. Curtis was even able to re-purpose some of the feedback. “There were some great clips we were able to pull for marketing purposes. It was great to see the excitement from participants using the product,” he said. And it was a great introduction to the quality of Qualvu research which Curtis can use in the next stages of Belly Buds’ development.
