Is WAYN.com Really Working?

Here’s an interesting case for anyone looking to build a new service online…

Wayn, (Where Are You Now), is one of the UK hopefuls in the race for social networking dominance.

Founded by Peter Ward in 2005, it targets young single people with freedom to travel.

It is now gets 6.5 Million visitors each month, and has an Alexa rank of 835. It grew from nothing by using Google adwords to attract its initial signups, and by offering free international SMS texts.

In doing so, it was reaching out to its intended target audience by providing the very thing it knew they were looking for (even though they didn’t know what WAYN was yet).

Part of the difficulty it seems, with many web businesses, is that what they offer is a service no one thinks they need because they don’t know what it is.

Then, once they realise what the service is, and how useful it is, they begin to wonder what life can have been like without it.

So here’s a good answer to the question about how you attract people to your business when they don’t know what your service is, and when they can’t envisage what it will do for them:

Offer them something they need instead.

In WAYN’s case it was free international SMS texts.

Whether they needed WAYN or not, WAYN’s users definitely needed free international SMS texts. This, then, was the bait. Its what WAYN offered in its shop window knowing it would draw in people who would also like the service they were offering.

Now they’ve got to know what WAYN does, they realise they need it too.

WAYN.com recently changed its model from paid subscription to free (with VIP upgrade available), on the advice of Brent Hoberman, an investor in the business, and its current Chairman.

Like MVS and most Web 2.0 sites, WAYN’s growth is due in no small part to its use of automatic contact form signups. This is when you enter your username and password at the top email service providers and an email is sent to all your contacts inviting them to join too.

Sites vary on how they use this viral trigger and in Wayn’s case, the option not to use it is especially difficult to find.

A further point of interest, perhaps reflecting on the UK’s more relaxed Anti SPAM laws, is that no verification email is sent following signup.

Certainly a welcome message is sent, and an invitaion to download WAYN desktop - presumably a method of communication direct from WAYN without needing email -… but they never confirmed my email address to know that it is valid.

Perhaps we’re moving away from email contact - perhaps this is a sign of what is to come…