Product managers often struggle to impart their product vision to developers.
The outcome of the miscommunication is usually a product muddled by two competing visions. Clearly explaining the requirements for a product is an integral duty for product managers. Stopping them, writes product management strategist Steve Johnson, is a lack of context. By adding context to the requirements, a developer can better understand how to create a product. It’s the context that removes the opinions from the equation. Adding context is accomplished by asking three questions: are the users clearly defined; what is the major problem…
Eloquently explaining why your software produced an error isn’t easy.
But that doesn’t mean that you have to regurgitate the cause of the error at the code level to the user. To the contrary, this should present an opportunity for you to devise an effective way to soften the potential blow and perhaps offer ideas to avoid a frustrating cyclical tango, writes Joe Rawlinson, e-Commerce strategist. In a recent post for Return Customer, he explains that your efforts should begin when the software stops. Rawlinson himself recently encountered an error that left him…
In customer service, far too much time is spent tending to unnecessary customer contacts. Through his research, Bill Price of Driva Solutions has found that 35 to 40 percent of customer contacts are unnecessary. In other words, the company shouldn’t be wasting time resolving inquiries that will never arise. Pinpointing their origins and finding a way to resolve these contacts is the challenge. Billing systems can often be the source of these frustrations, Price explains. If there are differing prices on a bill or the invoice description is unclear, that can prompt a customer service contact. Addressing this is at the core of this…
Forward-thinking founders usually understand the importance of registering variations of their corporate domain name.
But did you know that there’s actually a security factor at play? In a recent post on VentureFizz, Dave Broadwin, partner at the Emerging Enterprise Center at Foley Hoag, concedes that it’s impossible to secure every variation of your domain name. But by registering the appealing alternatives, you can make it harder for cybersquatters to take advantage. Hoag suggests registering all the popular choices: .net, .org, .biz and .info. He also adds that the Columbian extension, .co, is…
Bundling software can be a reliable business and sales strategy (think Microsoft Office). But it can also be challenging to include in a startup business model.
As part of a series on business models, Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann analyzed the benefits associated with bundling software. (Previous posts in the series have covered a breadth of issues concerning other business model subjects.) In the case of bundling, Eisenmann defines the process as one that takes individual elements that could potentially be sold independently, but instead are strategically sold as a bundle. He presents the example…
What does minimum viable product (MVP) really mean?
There are a few different definitions out there. But as Marty Cagan puts it in a post on the Silicon Valley Product Group site, in its most basic form, the MVP needs to exhibit three traits: valuable, usable and feasible. Identifying the minimum viable product holds a number of benefits for a business. The most obvious one is that a company won’t have to spend eons developing a product with every feature a customer might want out of the gate. Instead, they can use…
How do your website load times affect your company’s bottom line? In more ways than you may think.
A new infographic posted on KISSmetrics demonstrates how sluggish loading times for websites directly correlate with conversion rates, and more importantly, miss conversions. Potential customers simply don’t want to deal with any hassles above what’s to be expected, and a slow site is one hurdle you don’t want to make them jump over. In the post authored by Sean Work, he explains exactly why slow load times can have disastrous effects on bottom lines. One particularly disturbing statistic…
When a large oral health care company came to general manager of IDEO Tom Kelley looking to improve their line of kids toothbrushes, Kelley immediately said that field observations would be necessary. Despite some worries from the company, the decision to conduct field observations was made. And the discoveries found during the process ended up radically changing the future appearance of kids’ toothbrushes. In the end, Kelley and his team were able to use empirical research to overcome what was, at the time, an unknown design limitation. As a result of Kelley’s findings, the hiring company was able to become…
Most with-the-times organizations understand the value of metrics and the direct correlation to product success.
That much has been well-documented. But the problem is that most metrics are usually dedicated to following visitors to a website and how that feeds into a content marketing strategy. The product isn’t as often the direct target of metering. And in many ways, this creates gaps in the picture that some metrics are creating. The ultimate goal behind using metrics for products is to improve your product positioning. This is accomplished by following…
Your product needs a definition. But what’s the definition of product definition? SVPG explains: Product = Holistic User Experience = Functionality + Design + Monetization + Content Here’s the breakdown: Functionality: The product’s capabilities. Design: The resulting blend of interaction design, the visual design and, for physical devices, the industrial design. Monetization: The revenue strategy; it might be some of the various forms of advertising, subscriptions, or transactions. Content: Original, user generated, or aggregated. A few additional points to remember: You can’t separate form and function; you must look at the…
