Finest-5 Product reads #21
Validations tips from expert, obsession with acquisition, and other reads..
Hi! Happy Sunday,
I initially used to believe coming up with great ideas is a super-power. But experience has taught me that if you look around, there is no shortage of ideas. What we need is the diligence to look for the most reasonable idea and validate it, pivot if needed asap.
This newsletter summarizes the best reads from 100+ articles I go through every week with the sole purpose of helping you become better at product with minimal effort.
Validating product decisions: tips from 8 experts
You must know by now, that a majority of ideas we come up with will fail. But, what steps do we take to reduce the cycle of feedback and not go into building something for months without getting a validation from the market? Continue reading..
Key Takeaways:
Whomever the idea comes from, whether it’s the CEO or an end-user, you must validate the idea.
If a feature is necessary, we’ll have quite a few people talking about it.
Beta testing requires finding the ideal beta users and motivating those users to provide regular feedback, but the payout far exceeds the initial effort.
Using video games to learn about product onboarding
No one hates games, and haven’t we just picked up very tangled games. Games market is highly competitive and games themselves can become highly complex. Yet, I have seen every successful game to have the basic quality of making their users learn seamlessly, so they do not see many moments of boredom. Continue reading..
Key Takeaways:
The most successful complex games are ones that have found a way to seamlessly integrate onboarding moments throughout the experience itself.
Expansive games don’t front-load explanations of their mechanics and gameplay, and neither should digital experiences.
Most people “learn by doing”. It’s a basic foundation of games.
Elements of a Customer Journey
We can consider a user journey as a major part of product management. If you can draw and read one effectively, you will uncover opportunities that help you build your next product. Knowing what a customer journey should have can help you do this better. Continue reading..
Key Takeaways:
Customer journey exercise helps you understand workflow better, develop empathy and uncover pain points.
A great deal of user research helps to uncover the most painful points.
Every element of the journey will not have a directly actionable solution. In that case, you can list down open questions that need more discovery and resolution.
Try peak-end rule on user journey map
We all want to elate customers at every step of the user journey, but the world has so many constraints. And, if we also understand what matters most for the user, we find the peak and end experience as the most important ones. Continue reading..
Key Takeaways:
The peak-end rule describes how people usually judge an experience according to how they feel at its peak and end instead of how they feel overall.
In the absence of resources, we can focus on improving the peak and the end point.
Shift the good experience moment to the end of the experience.
Data shows our addiction to acquisition based growth is getting worse
Our generation is obsessed with growth, and the majority consider growth to be synonymous with acquisition. What I am amazed to see is the amount of obsession where 8 out of 10 blogs of growth are about acquisition. We certainly are losing on opportunities from retention and monetization. Continue reading..
Key Takeaways:
We’re barely even thinking about retention or monetization, even though all data shows that these are much more efficient and effective.
As it becomes easier to switch and the increase of ad, content, and social noise has gone up, it’s not only harder to acquire a customer, also to keep them.
Just focusing on acquisition means your bucket becomes so leaky.
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