MVP without FUE? DOA.
OK – you did your customer development homework. You found a market who knew they had a problem and were willing to invest time and/or money in solving it. You built a product that aligned with your customers’ pains and priorities –
…but somehow, people still don’t seem to be very excited. What went wrong?
MVP without FUE = DOA.
(That’s “minimum viable product without first user experience = dead on arrival”.)
When you were working with early customers, it wasn’t that important to flesh out the first user experience. After all, they were right there with you, listening to you articulate the value proposition and how your solution would help them with their problem. Those customers had the benefit of your insights, explained through multiple interactions. They share in the curse of knowledge.
But your new customers don’t.
After hundreds of customer development interviews, user testing sessions, and survey responses, I’m going to share with you the single most common barrier to adoption I’ve heard: “I don’t know where to start.”
Consumer vs. enterprise, techies vs. non-techies, it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s organizing their personal finances, engaging in customer research, eating healthier, starting a blog, understanding their web analytics, or organizing their baby photos — this is what blocks people.
The Customer Excitement Lifecycle
People go through a pretty predictable cycle of emotions when they try to solve their pains.
1) In pain: “I really need to start eating healthier – I feel terrible.”
2) Glimmer of hope: If you’ve done a good job articulating your value proposition, the customer sees your product and feels hope: “Can this product can help me to eat healthier? That would be so great…”
3) Leap of faith: Honestly, they’re not reading your ‘about’ page or watching your demo video – they’re just eager to get started fixing their problem, so they click ‘sign up’: “This is the first step towards healthy eating!”
4) Expectations crash: There’s no immediate gratification – lots of links and features, but no guidance on where they should focus their attention. Realization hits: “Hmm… is this really going to help me? This seems like a lot of work, not sure if I have the time and energy to get started…”
If you neglect the experience between steps 3 and 4, your product will wither and die. Yes, you should build a minimum viable product. And your minimum viable product needs to include a compelling first user experience.
Most of us are only ‘selling’ our customers once when we need to be selling them twice. The first ‘sell’ is convincing them to click “sign up” and give you that initial try – and most customer development practitioners are doing that pretty well.
The second ‘sell’ is convincing the customer to continue investing time and thought into your product. If they log in to their dashboard and all they see is “You have no new [whatever]” and a “View demo” link, they will leave and not come back.
Channel That Natural Enthusiasm
When your customers first sign up for your product, they are excited! They are motivated! They have already decided to invest some time and energy in you – don’t waste it.
The best way to manage expectations crash is to channel the customer’s natural enthusiasm into an immediately productive activity. Give them a task that they can complete quickly, that brings them closer to getting value from your solution.
A few sites that do this well:
Daily Burn asks you to set up fitness goals immediately, reinforcing the reason why you signed up.
Lil Grams gives you 3 things to do and 3 things to learn - enough to get you started without overwhelming.
Dropbox encourages you to try features you might not have noticed otherwise (and increases word of mouth behaviors at the same time).
Popularity: 3% [?]
Popularity: 3% [?]
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christopherthorpe
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http://philgo20.com/ philgo20
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http://www.jeffgothelf.com Jeff Gothelf
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http://www.freshtilledsoil.com Alex Fedorov
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http://www.cindyalvarez.com/uncategorized/lean-4-fat-0-some-arguments-we-have-had-at-kissmetrics-over-lean-stuff » Lean 4, Fat 0: Some Arguments We Have Had at KISSmetrics over Lean Stuff The Experience is the Product | Better product management and products
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