Iteration is a Powerful Tool

Scraping is a common practice in the classifieds world.

At Pakwheels, we'd freely show seller numbers on our ads. We didn't force sign ups to see this info as it reduced leads. As a result, we got heavily scraped.

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We were grappling with 2 issues at the time:

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1. Privacy: how to protect the seller's number from showing up elsewhere.

2. Measurability: we had no way to quantify how many leads we were giving sellers.

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Our initial plan was to setup a call center & route calls from there to protect the seller's number.

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However, setting that up demanded funds & time.

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We needed a quick win to slow down scraping.

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We planned to reveal the phone number when a JS-based button was clicked on the page.

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This would help measure call intent (leads) - certainly not an accurate number but at least, somewhat indicative.

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We also thought to replace the text-based number with a PNG image of it. (forcing scrapers to use OCR to parse it or employ manual resources)

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This wasn't fool-proof by any means but, at the time, it did halt scraping activity for a while.

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Thus, the "minimum viable product" mindset isn't something specific to new product launches.

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You don't need the best solution from day 1. Iteration is a powerful tool that PMs need to make more use of.