Your Customers First Five Minutes

1
Your CustomersFirst Five Minutes
Why Theyre the Only Ones that Matter
Dave Sampson July 2008
2
Whats Wrong With This Picture?
3
Whats Wrong With This Picture?
4
Basic Premise

• A resume is not supposed to get you a job
• Build your software with the same incremental
  selling steps in mind
• Get customers as excited as possible during their
  first 5 minutes
• They will motivate themselves for the next 55

5
Why Only 5 Minutes?

• Heres a profile of a technology customer
• Simply trying to solve a problem or fill a need
• Types a few keywords into a search engine
• Visits half a dozen websites, including yours
• How much time will that person spend with your
  product before moving on to the next?
• Maybe 8 or 10 minutes, but more likely 2 or 3
  minutes
• In any case, probably a lot less time than you
  think

6
Our Story

• We adopted this kindling approach (with market
  research, interface design usability testing)
• Our results
• sales immediately up 3x
• dramatically increased conversion rates
• better reviews
• much higher word-of-mouth referrals
• permitted positive ROI on ad campaigns
• established valuable distribution partnerships
• eventually led to an acquisition

7
About MixMeister Express

• A consumer-class product for people unfamiliar
  with audio production
• A cut-down version of our pro audio products
• Used by dance music fans, wannabe DJs,
  choreographers, group fitness instructors, etc.
• Your market is undoubtedly different
• But most of these underlying lessons can work for
  many tech products services

8
My Impressions of this Product

• If you asked me in 2004
• It's so easy to use!
• Customers love it!
• If you asked me in 2006
• "It's so easy for us who work at MixMeister
  Technology to use."
• "Customers do love it, but we have no idea what
  our non-customers think of it."

9
The 4 Lies We All Tell Ourselves

• Customers want to use our product
• The truth They just want to solve a problem or
  accomplish a task
• Customers think like us
• The truth A few do, but for every customer who
  thinks like us there are probably 99 who don't
• Customers want to learn
• The truth They won't bother to learn until they
  see a likely payoff for doing so
• Customers will read instructions if they need
  help
• The truth You have to give your user an
  incentive to want to read it

10
Our First Uninstall Survey
11
How Could We Be So Wrong?

• The product really was easy for US to use
• Our existing customers had self-selected through
  a filter
• They were tech-savvy and motivated to master our
  software
• Learnability vs. Usability
• Understanding the difference is crucial
• Our product truly was usable, but not very
  learnable

12
Creating Your Kindling

• Put the exciting features where users can't miss
  them
• This doesn't always mean your most important
  features
• Perhaps the features that are easiest, or the
  ones that are the most fun
• Call them things that people will understand
• e.g. File, Create CD Recordable vs. a big green
  Burn button
• web forms that say Submit or Apply vs. Go

13
Zen and the Art of UI Design

• Less is more
• By simplifying, you get customers to use complex
  features later
• You can have complexity under the surface, but
  keep it there
• Motivated users will find it, but they have to be
  motivated first
• "Perfection is achieved, not when there is
  nothing left to add, but when there is nothing
  left to take away.
• This is a Zen-like principle, and very hard to
  achieve in practice
• After we defeatured the main screen we actually
  had more people using advanced features
• Remember the goal is to create self-motivated
  users
• Light the kindling first, and let that kindling
  do the job of setting the big logs on fire

14
Your Least Competent User

• Least Competent User the level of competence
  below which you willingly forego sales
• Similar to user personas, with a different
  purpose
• It's critically important to identify your LCU in
  detail
• Our example for MixMeister Express
• User already knows how to rip from CD
• User hasnt done more than play songs in a media
  player
• User has never edited digital media files
• User unfamiliar with standard terms like crop
• This sets formal targets that drive your dev
  decisions

15
Affordance

• This is a term from the world of industrial
  design
• Examples

16
Sex Appeal

• Before and After which of the following products
  would you be more likely to buy?

17
(No Transcript)
18
(No Transcript)
19
Beauty Real Money

• Design is worth paying for
• This is hard for quantitative people to
  understand
• But so many products claim to do the same thing
• An ugly UI means you may never get a proper
  evaluation
• Users are happier and so functions seem more
  pleasant
• More patient and willing to figure something out
  when they get stuck
• An ugly UI means this app sucks, a good UI means
  that function must be in here somewhere
• Users are more willing to refer friends or
  colleagues to sexy products

20
Usability Testing on a Shoestring

• 50 x 10 the best 500 you'll ever spend
• Dont recruit your own customers!
• We got 200 Craigslist reponses in one morning
• Prequalify them with questions that identify
  their competence
• Make absolutely sure you get people who represent
  your LCU in addition to power users
• Identify the critical tasks for users to become
  self-motivated (all other tasks are secondary)
• Give subjects written tasks in simple language,
  and watch SILENTLY (this can be excruciatingly
  painful)
• Save some time for qualitative interviewing
• You dont need a 12,000,000 usability lab
• Book a conference room at a community center, a
  library, etc.
• Use a PC with 2 monitors and a tripod-mounted
  camcorder

21
Putting Results into Action

• Be willing to make hard changes at the last
  minute (even though it hurts)
• Put this development time into perspective
• There may be no coding you will ever do that
  gives you more bang for the buck
• Have a contingency plan for retesting if you have
  to make lots of changes
• My new mantra "test early and test often"
• Zoom slider example

22
In-Product Tutorials

• Even with all our improvements, some customers
  still get stuck or frustrated
• So they fall off the path to becoming
  self-motivated
• We built an animated 3-minute tutorial overview
• This is NOT supposed to teach them everything
  they might want to know
• Only the essentials that they must know to become
  self-motivated
• Spend time, money and effort to make this great
• Be aggressive on the first execution of the
  product and let users turn it off later

23
Our Uninstall Survey, Revisited

• I had trouble figuring out how to use it.

24
Our Results, Revisited

• Sales of this product were triple those of the
  previous version
• Most of the improvement came from a much higher
  conversion rate
• Also
• Better word of mouth, better reviews, positive
  ROI on advertising, new distribution
  partnerships, acquisition

25
Takeaways

• Never assume your user thinks like you
• Dont forget to talk to non-customers
• Do whatever it takes to get in their head at the
  moment they reject you
• Usability is great, but learnability is better
• Use kindling to create self-motivated users

26
Thank You
Dave Sampson [phone] davexsampson_at_gmail.com