Four step model with acronym for customer decision making process
AIDA
- Attention: You need to get the customer’s attention somehow. A snappy email heading, perhaps? A snazzy ad? Or maybe a mention from a trusted friend or website?
- Interest: Now that you have the customer’s attention, you need to get them interested in your offering. What are the advantages or benefits of your product?
- Desire: With the customer’s interest piqued, you need to convince the customer that they want your product.
- Action: Finally, with the customer desiring your product, they take action to purchase the product.
Approach any product design critique by:
- Revealing your design criteria. Cap it to three principles.
- Explaining how the product may or may not meet your criteria.
- Being specific, offering evidence, and contrasting with similar products.
How to get deeper on the reasons that a problem happened
Ask the Five Whys to Understand Unarticulated Problems
For example
- Why does the production line close down every third Sunday?»_space; We have to clean the equipment.
- Why do we have to clean the equipment?»_space; Dirt and dust will damage critical parts, leading to more downtime if it must be replaced.
- Why does cleaning take all day?»_space; We have to disassemble the machine part by part and then clean all the internal parts.
- Why can’t we reduce the cleaning time?»_space; We could if we simply put an inexpensive aluminum foil on the parts that get dirty often.
- Why haven’t covered the easily dirty parts with aluminum foil?»_space; We can’t get the procurement department to approve the purchase.”
CIRCLES Method for designing products, sites, and redesigns
- Comprehend the Situation
- Identify the Customer
- Report the Customer’s Needs
- Cut, Through Prioritization
- List Solutions
- Evaluate Trade-offs
- Summarize Your Recommendation
Dieter Rams (Four) Ten Principles of Good Design
"Good design is: * Innovative * Useful * Easy to understand * Honest Aesthetic Unobtrusive Long-lasting Thorough down to the last detail Environmentally friendly As little design as possible"
Pragmatic Marketing’s Impact Score
“Assign impact score
Selling a Product or Service
- 9999 - Contractual obligation
- 5 - Minimum purchase criteria (evaluator)
- 4 - Potentials lose time or money due to problem
- 3 - Difficult for customers to achieve their primary goal
- 2 - Customers have difficulty with non-primary goal
- 1 - Not in target market segment
Coinbase Impact Scale
- 9999 - Threat to business if not addressed
- 5 - Will or has caused fine/sanction
- 4 - Regularly causes lost accounts
- 3 - Difficult for employees to achieve their primary goal
- 2 - Employees have difficulty with non-primary goal
- 1 - Aesthetic improvement
Impact X Market Evidence (% of the persona who experience the issue) = Priority
Priority/difficulty of implementation = Value for Effort”
Tell me about a product that was designed poorly.
“Talk about dishwasher at Freezing Woman house.
Aesthetics of all silver front prioritized over making it easy to understand or use
It may have had a floor indicator light however…”
REAN model for creating and maintaining customer relatinships
Reach: The customer is aware of your product. Engage: The customer is engaged and considering your product. Activate: The customer takes action to purchase the product. Nurture: The customer has purchased the product, and it’s now your responsibility to nurture this relationship.
Metrics for tracking funnel from attracting users to making money
AARM Metrics
- Acquisition is all about signing up customers to a service. The bar for signing up for a service has gotten lower and lower, thanks to the popularity of free signup and pay later “freemium” models. The typical metric to track here is lazy registrations.
- Activation is getting users that have completed a lazy registration to fully register. For a social networking site like Google+, this may include uploading a photo or completing their profile page.
- Retention is getting users to use the service often and behave in a way that help the user or the business. Key metrics include adding more information to their profile page, checking the news feed frequently, or inviting friends to try the service.
- Monetization is collecting revenue from users. It could include the number of people who are paying for the service or the average revenue per user (ARPU).
Three Loops - Retention Metrics
- Data loop - adding more information.
- For instance, adding a photo or a list of favorite movies is contributing to Facebook’s data loop.
- Compulsion loop.
- This is about checking an application frequently. For example, Zynga’s mobile games ask users to check-in throughout the day to see how their farm has grown or to see how many new tokens they’ve generated.
- Viral loop.
- This is about inviting friends to try the service which often makes it more valuable to the user.
The Three Loops™ also point out how each loop reinforces the other. As a single user adds more personal information to a service, it compels their friends to check the service more often. When the friends see the new information, the friends find the service more valuable, pushing them to invite more contacts. And when new people join the service, they’ll add more data, starting the cycle anew.
Metrics to measure monetization in aggregate
- Average revenue per user (ARPU)
- Average revenue per paying user (ARPPU)
- Average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU)
- Lifetime value (LTV)
- Conversion rate
Metrics for engagement
- Number of sessions
- Session length
- Daily/weekly/monthly active users
- Profile completeness
- % of total or active users who have posted
- # of posts
- # of invites sent
Pros and cons of display ads
Pros:
- Helps users find relevant products if website has enough info to offer relevant ads
- Source of revenue
Cons
- Distraction from purchasing that might increase bounce rate and abandoned carts
- Negative brand perception if the ads are for competitors products
New Market Entry Checklist
Market characteristics
- Market size
- Market growth
- Profit margins
- Market trends, including changing customer preferences and regulatory changes
Competitive environment
- Number of competitors
- Competitor’s resources, including financial, employees, and partner ecosystem
- Competitor’s unique competencies, including differentiated products, access to distribution channels
Company fit
- Expertise
- Economies of scale
- Access to distribution channels
- Good relationships with suppliers
- Related to existing brand promise
Things to consider when choosing a new product to offer
- Profitability
- Customer satisfaction - will they be disappointed if they can’t find a product or delighted if they do
- Product assortment
Adams structure
- Goals & Mission
- User Personas
- - Segment both sides of the market
- – Users and retail partners
- – Operations team and users
- – Users and Engineering team
- – Even participants and event producers
- - Generate Personas for both sides of the market
- - Choose persona to focus on based on goal and mission - Users needs
- - List problems of prioritized segment - Solutions
- - Try to list at least two options and choose between them based on market opportunity and extent to which it addresses there users needs - ID features that need to be addressed in MVP
- – Basic Needs: Does the product work
- – Performance Needs: How efficient is it?
- — Includes bugs and small enhancements, latency, polish etc
- – Attractive Needs: What makes me love it
- – Products with Soul
- — What’s going to help someone really find this useful?
- — What’s going to make them care about it? - Measuring success
User personas demographics
I’ve found that demographic segmentation works most of the time:
Design an app for:
- apartment hunters: students, young professionals, families, older people
- mentorship: mentee/mentor; mentee can be student, professional
- finance app: students, young professionals, familiies, older people
Instances where it is behavioral
- supermarket app: discount shopper, well-planned shopper, quick shopper
- FB messenger: people messaging people; people messaging businesses
INVEST checklist for agile stories
Independent
Negotiable
Valuable
Estimable
