Lime is rolling out a few new features, including the ability to rent electric scooters without downloading the application, with an end goal to pull in more riders.
The micromobility company declared Wednesday a series of product features that plans to eliminate barriers to entry for new users, while increasing accessibility to its vehicles. The new features incorporate free vehicle reservations to 10 minutes, nearest vehicle recommendations and the alternative to see the application in dark mode.
The application less experience is now live in the greater part of Lime’s 130 markets, where engineers have been checking and breaking down its utilization. This component is just accessible on e-bikes. The free vehicle reservations and proposals highlights can be utilized when leasing Lime’s e-scooters and e-bikes — and across each market and language, as indicated by Lime developers.
“We use rider feedback to build out the app or any features associated with it,” senior product manager Vijay Murali told TechCrunch. Application store audits, customer service tickets whining about an element or an absence of it, client surveys and research sessions with riders from around the world all illuminate the direction developers take with new features. On account of these most recent updates, Murali said the group distinguished three objectives their clients were attempting to achieve.
“The first is that many users are ready to try this new form of transport, but they don’t want to download the app and make the commitment,” said Murali. “The second is a price concern for those who ride with us frequently, and the third is about making it easier, especially in a big city, to find the closest vehicle to you.”
Presently when a client open the applications, they’ll be coordinated towards the closest vehicle and offered the choice of holding it for nothing, which Murali said smoothes out the interaction of simply hopping on a bike and helps make riding an every day propensity.
The application less riding highlight is equipped towards the individuals who are new to micromobility, probably won’t have any space on their telephones to download the application or are on a costly worldwide information plan.
To utilize the feature, clients need to scanning a QR code with their camera application which associates with Apple’s App Clips or Android’s Instant App features. Clients would then be able to affirm the ride and use Apple Pay or Google Pay to start riding. In fact, clients are really downloading a fragment of the application — just 10 megabytes versus 100 megabytes for the full application, and just for eight hours. To the normal rider, it simply shows up as though they’re opening a record or application on their telephone, which is much faster than downloading the application, creating an account, adding a payment method and reading a tutorial, which requires around five minutes instead of 30 seconds.
This component will bring about less Lime application downloads, and along these lines less client information. Be that as it may, Lime says it is more inspired by hard deals right now.
“We also see a relatively high download conversion rate,” said another senior product manager, Zach Kahn. “The reduction in friction and needing to choose a payment method or vehicle drastically increases that conversion and makes up a meaningful percentage of our first trips now.”
Kahn declined to provide conversion rates to the individuals who were introduced with Lime by means of application less rides. Murali additionally noticed that more riders in test urban areas started holding vehicles when Lime eliminated the expense. Already, reception was low at around 3%.
“It’s all about ensuring people from different segments of society, in particular underserved areas, have less friction to access Lime vehicles,” said Murali. “In an underserved community, how much a scooter costs to ride is top of mind, so removing these unnecessary reservation fees makes them more likely to ride now.”
Lime, which is sponsored by Uber and Alphabet, is one of the organizations in the running for the pined for New York City pilot e-scooter program in the Bronx, a district with some low-pay networks and travel deserts. Each organization has its own interesting selling focuses. Superpedestrian, for instance, decides to decide in favor top notch security highlights and geofencing consistence. However, Murali says Lime’s advantage comes in its sheer size and capacity to rapidly execute new features.
“We don’t just say we put riders first, but we figure out exactly how to do it, and then we make those features and improvements in the app happen,” said Murali. “That’s what differentiates us; how much meaningful progress we are making, at what scale and how fast. We have this new tech in the form of App Clips, for example, and we tested it fast, brought a product to market and now we’re rolling it out in every market we can.”
In an explanation, Lime professes to be the main micromobility company to present application less riding, anyway Apple seems to have demoed App Clips by renting a scooter from Spin, which additionally reacted to New York’s RFP. A representative from Spin said the organization is working with Apple to bring the App Clip insight to its e-scooters later on.
