THE EXERCISE: USER LIFECYCLE FUNNEL
TIME TO RUN
1 hour
MATERIALS NEEDED
Sticky notes, Sharpies, paper, whiteboard, list of questions
PEOPLE INVOLVED
Product managers, designers, researchers, engineers, stakeholders
EXERCISE GOAL
Understand the stages a user encounters while going from visitor to lifelong customer.
Tell your team which user they will be creating the User Lifecycle Funnel for. If you need help choosing, there’s more information about understanding who your users are in the next few chapters. For now, you need to pick one single user for everybody to work on. Maybe it’s an end user. Maybe it’s the buyer. If you have a simple mobile app that only really has one type of user, then it will be easy. If you work at someplace like Salesforce, you’ve got a choice to make.
Give everybody a stack of sticky notes and something to write with. You’re going to ask each person several questions and show them some sample answers for a product that isn’t your own. When you ask a question, you’re going to give them three minutes to write as many answers to that question as they possibly can. Each answer should go on its own sticky note.
Each sticky note should be labeled in the bottom-right corner with the question number it answers (see Figure 1.4).
FIGURE 1.4 Label the answers with the appropriate question number.
Participants should not talk to one another during the writing time. Talking comes later.
STEP 1: Ask the Questions
You will notice that all of the questions are in the future tense. That does not mean you get a pass on this exercise if you already have a product. You can easily do this exercise with a real product with millions of users. Just change the wording to the present tense: “How do you” rather than “How will you.”
If you’re planning on releasing a big new feature or a new version of your product, you can also run this exercise on individual features, rather than on entire products.
QUESTION 1: How will you get people to hear about your product or service?
This first question is something that a lot of people struggle with, but they shouldn’t. What you’re asking here is, “Where do people who use my product spend time at the moment in their lives when they might be interested in learning about a new product like this?”
Companies tend to default to easy things like advertising on Google or Facebook, but this is worth thinking about a bit, since different types of products get recommended or discovered in very different places.
Facebook might be a great place to advertise certain products, but is it right for you if you’re selling a new medical implant to surgeons? Or if you’re selling a Software as a Service product to Chief Marketing Officers? Probably not.
Typical answers to this question could be:
• Specific blogs or forums where people talk about the problems your product solves
• Physical spaces like gyms or doctors’ offices
• Conferences where professionals in your space gather
• Specialty publications for people in a particular industry
QUESTION 2: How will you help people learn enough about your product and service to know they want to purchase or use it?
When you think about this question, you’re really asking yourself how hard your value proposition is to understand. Some products are harder to get than others.
If you’re not making toothpaste or video games or something in a pretty clear category, you might need a different sort of messaging and outreach in order for people to understand what you’re selling. If you’re solving a problem people didn’t know they had, you’re going to have to do more education than if you’re solving a well-understood problem.
Typical answers to this question could be:
• An explainer video
• A landing page
• A free webinar or webinar series from an expert
• A blog post from a prominent blogger explaining how they use the product
• An online course
• An in-person sales demo
QUESTION 3: What is the “aha” moment in someone’s first use of the product?
Hopefully, there is a moment for every person when they start to use your product and they achieve something valuable. This is the moment when they accomplish whatever they set out to accomplish.
In a video game, it might be completing the first quest. For a product that helps people send email marketing campaigns, it might be the first time that a user successfully sends out an email to their list. If you’ve got a meal delivery service, it might be the customer’s first delicious bite of food.
You can often find that “aha” moment from watching new users interact with a product. It’s that moment when their eyes light up, and they smile and understand exactly how this product can benefit them.
There is no “typical” moment in products. The only rule is that it should happen the first time a person uses your product, if at all possible, because this is going to be that little hit of excitement that makes them want to come back a second time.
QUESTION 4: How will you get permission and ability to contact users?
The answer to this question may very well be “we won’t.” That’s fine. You can offer value to people without contacting them later. When I walk into a Starbucks and pay for a coffee with cash, they don’t get any data on me, and it’s still a fine exchange for them.
Of course, there are also ways for them to collect my data if I choose to give it to them in exchange for something, like signing up with my email address in order to get a free coffee
