Before we launched BGlory to the public, we needed to know if the product actually worked for real people in real traffic. So we invited 500 residents of Abuja to take free rides over a four-week pilot. Their feedback changed everything.
The first thing we learned was that our pickup experience was broken. In testing, finding a rider at a GPS pin seemed simple. In practice, especially in dense areas like Wuse and Garki, the pin would drop in the middle of a road with no obvious pickup spot. Riders would wait on one side of the street while drivers circled on the other. We redesigned the pickup flow to include a text description field where riders can add landmarks ("I am at the gate of the shopping complex" or "next to the yellow building"). Pickup accuracy improved by 40%.
The second big lesson was about pricing transparency. Our pilot riders told us they wanted to see the fare breakdown before booking, not after. The original app showed a total fare and that was it. Riders wanted to know how much was base fare, how much was distance, and how much was time. We added a detailed breakdown screen. Booking rates went up immediately because riders felt more confident about what they were paying for.
Driver ratings taught us something unexpected. We started with a 5-star rating system, and almost every ride got 5 stars. That made it impossible to tell which drivers were truly excellent and which were just adequate. So we added specific feedback categories: cleanliness, driving, conversation, and route choice. This gave us much more useful data and helped us identify our best drivers for the Comfort tier.
The fourth lesson was about wait time expectations. Our system showed an ETA, but riders told us they wanted more context. "5 minutes" felt different depending on whether the driver was 2 blocks away in traffic or 2 kilometers away on an open road. We added a live map view showing the driver's real-time position and updated the ETA every 15 seconds. Rider satisfaction with wait times improved by 25%, even though actual wait times did not change.
Finally, safety features. We built trip sharing and an emergency button before the pilot, but we did not realize how important the perception of safety was for adoption. Many pilot riders, especially women, told us they would not have tried the app at all if those features were not prominently visible on the booking screen. We moved the safety features from a settings menu to the main ride screen. First-time rider retention went up by 18%.
These 500 riders did not just test our product. They rebuilt it with us. Every major feature in the BGlory app today was shaped by their honest feedback. When we launch publicly, we are not launching a guess. We are launching something that real people in Abuja already validated.