Finest-5 Product reads #37
B2B product innovation, churn, Novelty effect, etc.
Hey,
I was going through the book ‘Don’t make me think’ and a simple lesson that comes out is: it’s not the number of steps that matter, but the amount of thinking a person has to do before achieving value; that makes the difference.
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The B2B Innovator’s Map - idea to your first ten customers
Many B2B companies short-circuit the innovation journey because they believe they already know what the market wants or they don’t have the skills and processes to be customer-centric throughout the development process.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding your enterprise customers means understanding their desired business outcome, as well as the people, processes, and tools involved in achieving that outcome
The first step in understanding your enterprise customers is identifying the three categories of people involved: Champion, Users, Buying Committee
The B2B Innovator’s Map is organised into six distinct stages: Strategic Alignment, Market Discovery, User Discovery, Solution Planning, Prototyping, Early Adopter
Trying To Reduce Churn Rate? Avoid These 3 Common Myths
Many have an obsession with reducing churn. However, it’s not as easy as we think. Simply finding where people are dropping and improving/eliminating the step is not enough.
Key Takeaways:
Reducing churn is frustrating because most product teams approach it incorrectly: They see all churn as bad and avoidable, they myopically focus on customer resurrection, and they assume churn is the end of a journey
If you see a bunch of churn from populations who don’t match your target customer profile, that’s unregrettable.
Reclassify churn as a problem that spans the entire customer journey. This includes acquisition, activation, retention, and monetization.
The Pageview Paradox: How Great Results Cause Poor Performance
Performance metrics are great examples of where we do something for short-term advantage without focusing on the big picture, mostly because numbers seem attractive enough to showcase impact.
Key Takeaways:
Pageview paradox: many of the things that we do to improve our marketing metrics actually hinder long-term business growth.
Performance metrics look like solid choices — but the harm they cause is invisible. We don’t see the frustration and quiet resentment we create.
We have chosen the convenience and false confidence of readily available data at the expense of meeting people where they already are.
Designing A Better Back Button UX
Back button seems simple, however it is complex enough to understand. We all believe the back button is plain enough to put and behaviour will be understood.
Key Takeaways:
Users generally don’t have trust in the browser’s “Back” button. Sometimes the “Back” button just didn’t work as expected.
Whenever a user is likely to lose data by going “back”, e.g. returning from an overlay, it is definitely a good idea to prompt users to confirm their action
The “Back” button differs from the “Previous” button, yet often in testing users perceive them to be similar,
The Novelty Effect: An Important Factor to Be Aware of When Running A/B Tests
The novelty effect is the idea that the people who interact with your website or service may notice what you’re testing, and specifically interact with the feature just because it’s new.
Key Takeaways:
Launch your AB test and ensure it stays live long enough for repeat customers to no longer be surprised by the new feature.
When you are launching your test, ask yourself how external factors of seasonality might affect your test and increase the impact of the Novelty Effect.
Stephen Delaney brought up a great example of another way to protect against the Novelty Effect; looking at different customer cohorts.
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