Able is a platform product catering to teachers, parents, doctors, psychologists and children with special needs. The platform enables all its stakeholders to learn to manage the skills and abilities to enable the growth of a special kid. The skills in the platform includes but is not restricted to memory retention, reading, anger management and emotion management.
Below is a study of the product when it was in its developmental stage and found a product-market fit. The product opened up tonnes of space where it could be improved and become the ‘Masterclass’ for special needs education.
In my product study, I have highlighted a high level plan for a few features that would aid the development of this product, below.
This list will comprise of all the items to be tickmarked before the product is launched. The phase generally happens in the last 2nd sprint of the development cycle and ensures that users have a good experience.
Content
Proof read content
Check for spelling errors, image meta tags
Opt for SEO optimization
Check for incorporation of early user feedback from MVP
Technology
All sign offs have been made including performance testing, white box testing, cross-browser testing, acceptance testing
App is compatible with different devices/OS
There are no test pages, dead links, default pages or any irrelevant content
Monitor any support downtime during the release
Operations
Ensure support team has adequate product knowledge and is reachable
Legal
All legal disclaimers are in place
Potential legal risks are identified
Marketing
Check for customized content for social media
Publish a press release
Drive organic growth via referrals and status updates pm social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest
Monitor if the metrics being generated in the sandbox are accurate
Write blogs and work with partners to have partnership content
Finance
Do a financial risk assessment
Monitor the total cost of infrastructure & operations due to surge in traffic
Catalogue
Curate the products that needs to be displayed to the users when website is launched
Create a post launch product update / addition plan
Customer Support
Ensure that the customer FAQs are ready and the team is trained to answers those questions
Make sure that the Chat functionality is enabled on the websites and the CS mobile number is working
Product Release Plan
Product Positioning
“For tech savvy & busy young professionals that need to buy wonderful & low cost products from AliExpress, is Thieve.co that shows to you a bunch of curated products listed on AliExpress, so that avoid the pain of searching products themselves on that website.”
Content Creation & Distribution
Product Adoption & Retention
Stage
Activity
Evaluation Channels & Process
Reach out to popular websites in New Zealand that are related to Product usage/ reviews and get featured in their Home page (e.g. https://www.hometesterclub.com/nz/en/, https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/beauty/product-reviews)
Adoption
1. Give away discount coupons (single use) to the users who joined the wait list 2. Can run a flash sale on certain popular products on Ali-Express with a promise to deliver the items quickly & reliably 3. Incentivise the users to create their videos of how they found out a wonderful product on Thieve.co and promote them on Social media (Facebook, etc.)
Retention
1. The products curated in Thieve.co must be consistently better than what customers can find themselves 2. The redirection experience to AliExpress website must involve minimum number of steps
GOALS
SIGNALS
METRICS
Happiness
Delight the customers by surprising them with wonderful products
Customers like the products listed on Thieve.co
NPS must be higher than 402. Product details page drop offs must be <10%
Engagement
Users must be able to interact with the website seamlessly
Users do not bounce off when they visit the website
%drop off for the purchase funnel i.e. visit on Thieve to re-direction to AliExpress must be <20% at each stage
Adoption
Users who shop on AliExpress must be able to try out and use Thieve.co
More people are sharing and buying recommended Thieve.co products
1. organic growth increment of 10% week on week 2. # of visits on the website must grow by 5% week on week
Retention
Have stickiness in the product
Users have Thieve.co on top of their mind when it comes to buying something on AliExpress
1. Social media mentions per month must be > # repeat customers 2. DAUs must be at least 15% higher than the # of new visitors / day
Task Success
Users must be able to successfully purchase the products that they like
Technical error rate (i.e. 404 pages, Server errors etc)
Tech error from Product Search initiation to Search completion must be < 2%
Risk Mitigation Plan
Type
Potential Risk
Mitigation Strategy
Reputational Risk
People criticize Thieve.co in Social media / appstore if their experience on the website is bad
Take measures for continuous monitoring & quality assurance on the website experience
People criticize Thieve.co in Social media if their experience with AliExpress is bad
Empathize with customers and share feedback AliExpress to improve customer experience
Liability Risk
The product listed on Thieve.co might be fake or of bad quality
1. On the website it must be clearly mentioned that Thieve.co does not take any responsibility of the quality of service provided by AliExpress 2. Work closely with AliExpress and get their assurance team on the quality of products that are ordered via traffic from Thieve.co 3. Have the above details updated on ‘Terms & Conditions’ legal document and get it added as a separate page on website
The product listed on Thieve.co might not be delivered to the Customer
Ensure to have a tracking mechanism and feedback mechanism with the logistics team.
Demand Related Risk
Out of stock products on AliExpress due to high demand
Regularly validate that the promoted/ highest selling products that are listed on Thieve.co must not be Out of stock on AliExpress. In case they get Out of stock then recommend similar products
A large promotional campaign is run that brings in huge traffic all of a sudden to the website and its server crashes (causing business loss to the company)
Do a ‘stress testing’ of server/ DB. Also make sure the architecture is scalable (e.g. can use serverless architecture provided by AWS)
The GTM for Thieve is to give its users a delightful shopping experience with UI/UX and high quality content. Though Thieve provides unique and unimportant products to its users, its marketing strategy has much to influence its buyers. Once you have created your GTM strategy, take the approvals, coordinate with the stakeholders and execute.
What is a KPI? Key Performance Indicator or KPI are used for measurement of the success of a business to know if goals are being achieved.
Data, metrics, KPIs, charts, trends!
KPIs provide a clearer picture of any business objective at a given point in time and can call for an immediate reaction to gain advantage. An example includes spike in the total downloads of time tracking apps leading to high adoption rates. This may call for decisions to provide support to a larger audience and may involve development of new features for customer retention. It also helps an organization to plan, prioritize and budget its products.
Difference between KPIs and Metrics
Metrics refer to the numbers like number of visitors, revenue, bounce rate while KPIs quantify if the goals were achieved. KPI may refer to engagement, growth rate, retention rate or even conversion rate
Deriving KPI
You may look at the industry specific KPIs which are available or may create your own KPI which will give an accurate measurement towards your goals. Frameworks like HEART by Google and AARRR use KPI extensively to track the progress of a product.
A few categories where KPIs are used may fall into 1. User growth Organic and inorganic: Organic downloads refers to the the downloading of an app or decision to use a product out of interest in the product. While inorganic refers to the adoption of a product as a result of referral or promotional activity.
Increase in number of users: This KPI tracks how the number of users have changed over a period of time. The period can be defined to be on daily basis or Month on Month basis. The KPI is often classified as DAU (Daily Active Users) or MAU (Monthly Active Users) to find if the users are using the app. A fall in the active users often leads to a churn (un-installation of the app).
2. Happiness How happy are the users with the product? Less happiness may result in user churn, app uninstalls or even competitor advantage.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) This is a widely used metric and measures the customer loyalty. The metric helps an organisation focus on operational processes that maximize promoters and minimize detractors.
The metric is captured from the user after the user completes a task and is shown a form to rate his experience. Based on the input of all the users the score is then calculated in below steps: a. Find the percentage promoters and percentage detractors ignoring the passives. b. Subtract the percentage detractors from percentage promoters to arrive at the NPS Score.
CSAT Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a relatively straightforward way to measuring customer experience. A user is given a question like “How satisfied were you with your experience?” with ratings like 1–3, 1–5 or 1–10. It is a simple approach and occurs generally after interaction with customer support. This score may vary over the product journey with additions and modifications in the features of the product. Although widely used, CSAT measures the short term judgement of the customer specific to a contact.
3. Revenue What is the revenue generated by the product?
ARPU Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) refers to the revenue generated by the product per user. It helps a PM to analyse growth patterns and compare the growth with other companies.
ARPU = Total revenue / # of users
The metric can be segmented based on channel, geographical location, features of product, customer segments to further understand the user behaviour, revenue forecasting and explore opportunities for generating revenue.
MRR Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is a sales metric typically used to identify the growth or de-growth of a product. It is the total predictable revenue a product expects to make each month.
Ways of calculating MRR: a. Add up the monthly revenue brought from each customer for total MRR. b. Multiply ARPU by your number of paying customers.
MRR is further classified into expansion MRR (taking into account the existing customers who upgrade, cross buy or generate colume), new MRR (refers to the revenue from the new customers)
CLTV Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is total value a customer will generate for a product over its relationship with the product. The longer the relation, the higher the value of the customer will be. The KPI also measures the loyalty of the customers.
CLTV = Average Purchase Value X Average purchase frequency rate of the customer
CAC Customer Acquisition Cost is the total cost incurred to convert a potential into a customer. The marketing cost may include all the operational, technical, creatives and publishing cost. While the metric determines the conversion to a customer it may sometimes also be referred for paying customers specifically.
Customer Acquisition Cost = Cost of acquiring the customer via sales, marketing or referral / Number of New Customers Acquired
A reduction in CAC results in higher profit and PMs often look for opportunities to reduce it via different approaches including automation, different ways of marketing like generating inorganic acquisition.
CLTV to CAC ratio is often used to determine the spending strategy for acquiring new customers.
4. Engagement How frequently are the users interacting with the product? It measures the effectiveness of a product.
Stickiness DAU/MAU Often used by the VCs to understand how active the users are for a product over a period, the KPI helps in evaluating traction and potential revenue. It measures how often users come back to the product to use it. # of daily sessions provide a deeper analysis into the
Stickiness = Daily Active Users / Monthly Active Users
Likes. shares. reach. They all change. Social media apps often measure their user engagement with likes, comments and shares. This may also be interpreted to be a save or reach of a product in ecommerce app or shortlist of a stock in a trading app. Changes in all these metrics form the reachability and interaction of the users with these products. These metrics can be measured on an hourly basis or geographically to gaugs the interest of the users.
Page views per session This KPI defines if the users are finding your website useful. A higher number for this KPI will lead to a user looking for multiple resources in your product. It may also indicate that the user is unable to find the resource he is looking for. Such scenarios help a PM to understand the user desirability from the product and the points where it can be improved.
Tools for tracking KPI
There are many tools for tracking KPIs and the below tools can help in tracking the same realtime.
Mixpanel
Google Analytics
Kissmetrics
Are KPIs always useful?
While KPIs are helpful in tracking the overall progress towards an organization’s goals, there are certain practices which may lead to pitfalls in this technique. 1. Too many KPIs may lead to data which don’t move and it is good to consider only those which impact business decisions and move the numbers.
2. Irrelevant KPIs may lead to a different path than laid out in the strategy. It is important to focus only on the metrics which are aligned to the goals and strategy. Each KPI must drive a high level business strategy.
3. Outdated KPIs must be eliminated. A product undergoes a feature upgrade and so must the KPIs
4. Not acting on the KPI. KPIs which do not trigger action or do not give an insight into the happenings in the product may lead to wastage in time and effort as the purpose of a KPI is to make new and track past decisions that drive business.
Every product’s KPI needs to be different as the customers they serve and the product journey they have is different. The KPIs serve as a medium of conversation between a product and its customers on what the customers like and what they do not.