🖌️ Takeoff #48: From Yearbook to Design Powerhouse

Welcome to Takeoff, your weekly dose of product deep dives and new learning opportunities. Today, we're diving into the Canva story. Lessgo!

Jul 09, 2023

Canva's journey began with Fusion Books, a project by Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht to help schools create quality yearbooks. Perkins, a design tutor in college, identified a need for a simple graphic design tool. Inspired by her mother's involvement with school yearbooks, she decided to fill this gap. Despite not knowing how to program, Perkins, with Obrecht, created Fusion Books, where students could collaboratively design yearbooks. They reached 400 schools, primarily through cold-calling and sending free samples.

Perkins dropped out of school to focus on Fusion Books. She began promoting it at conferences and meetings, networking with influential people in graphic design. This is how Canva started and slowly gained traction in the graphic design software space. Now, let's explore the strategic manoeuvrers that propelled Canva to its esteemed status as a Design Decacorn.

Identifying the right market

Recognising the emerging trends in 2013, Canva astutely identified a specific market segment that was in dire need of their product - social media marketers and bloggers. These individuals were increasingly required to generate a high volume of visually appealing content, yet they often lacked the necessary design experience. With small businesses gravitating towards Facebook, the demand for professional-grade graphics such as cover photos, flyers, social posts, and event banners was skyrocketing.

Canva, with its intuitive design platform, was perfectly positioned to address this significant pain point. By focusing on this specific use case - individuals needing to create content for Facebook - Canva was able to effectively cater to this slice of the market. This strategic move demonstrated Canva's ability to not only identify but also adapt to market needs, thereby ensuring their product found the right audience.

A great product backed by strong marketing:

Canva's marketing strategy has been a strategic blend of content marketing, SEO, word-of-mouth referrals, and social media engagement. They've created a wealth of resources, including tutorials and design courses, which not only provide value to users but also improve their search engine rankings. This has driven significant organic traffic and user growth. Their referral program, which offers free premium elements to users who refer others, has fostered a strong community of loyal users.

On social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they've effectively communicated with their audience, demonstrating how their product can simplify design tasks. Their website, optimised for user and customer conversions, showcases the options available to paid subscribers, enticing users to try these premium features. In 2021, Canva reported that over 3.5 billion designs were created in that calendar year alone

Balancing Short-Term Efforts with Long-Term Vision:

In the dynamic world of startups, change is the only constant. However, Canva has shown that having a long-term vision of what the product should look like is crucial to making sensible short-term decisions and optimisations. A case in point is when Canva decided to launch in multiple languages. They started with one language first (Spanish), which informed the processes they set up to launch and manage 20 languages later. This strategic move not only allowed them to test and refine their process but also ensured that they were well-prepared for the larger task of launching in multiple languages. This has helped Canva gain more than 10 million users across 179 countries.

Closing Thoughts

Canva's intuitive interface and pre-set templates democratise design, enabling anyone to create stunning visuals with ease. Unlike other design tools such as Illustrator or Figma, which often present a steep learning curve, Canva simplifies the process, making it accessible to all. This user-centric approach sets Canva apart, contributing to its status as a standout product in the design sphere.

🎙️ Malay’s PM tips for you

Episode 5 of 🎙️The Airtribe Podcast features Malay Krishna, Lead Product Manager at Vyapar. Malay and Navneet, sit down together and discuss Malay's motivations to become a PM, the role of mentorship, some common questions aspiring PMs have, India vs. Bharath, and a whole lot more!

This is just part 1 of their conversation. Part 2 drops next week, stay tuned!

You can watch part 1 here

💁‍♂️ Product Jargon of the Week

A/B testing

A/B testing, or split testing, is like a science experiment for your product. You create two versions (A and B) and see which one users prefer or which leads to better results. For instance, Canva might test two homepage layouts to see which leads to more sign-ups. They'd show version A to one group of users and version B to another, then track the sign-ups from each group. If version A gets more sign-ups, they'd use that design for all users.

You should use A/B testing when you want to make changes to your product but aren't sure how they'll affect user behavior. To conclude the test, you use statistical analysis to see if the difference in outcomes is significant.

✅ Become a pro at A/B Testing

Wondering how to leverage A/B Testing as a product manager?

Join us for a free masterclass with Nimit Jain, AVP at Jai Kisan, where she’ll help you understand the fundamentals and best practices of A/B Testing! 👌

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That’s all for today, folks! We hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter. 🤗

Until next week, keep learning and growing! 👋