“Personalize” to drive Customer Adoption

Today when i logged into ‘blogger’ (where this blog is hosted) i saw a pop-up asking me “if i would update my ‘profile’ to the all new Google + Profile?”. As always, i was curious to see how are they going to convince me (Yes, when your customers have a choice, then you will have to convince them) and hence wanted to give it a try.

When i landed on the next page i saw the following image with some texts that outlined things that will change, benefits and how i can revert back if i do not like the new stuff. If you leave texts (or rather nicely worded words), what stood out was that they had taken some pains to personalize the above to show my profile picture, my profile details and had put the ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenarios very nicely.

Not a big thing, but this little personalization did help them (Google guys) in ensuring my adopting of their new feature. To me this small little change is nothing, but to them it may be of immense value - like having a centralized user profile does helps them to understand what the everything about what the user is doing with blogger, google plus and rest of their products.

Hence, would conclude this post as Personalize/ take care of the small things to drive adoption.

Use Simple Metrics & Flaunt Them !!!

Sometime back on my other blog ( http://allthingsproductmanagement.info ) i had posted the following http://allthingsproductmanagement.info/stay-focused-it-is-all-about-focus-honey-part which was about using metrics to measure performance.

Today, metrics are everywhere, but the saddest thing is that metrics are defined at at every level – individual level, departmental level, product level. The biggest assumption here is that if the lower level metrics track good, then the organizational level metrics like profitability, ROI etc., must be good as well. But that is not always the case. In most cases, the metrics of one product / department works against the metrics of another product/ department.

Let us take the case of QA. Their metrics are heavily tilted towards number of defects/bugs identified during the various stages of a product development. But wait a minute!!! if one has to justify for the existence of QA, does it mean defects/bugs needs to be introduced in the product development process or should the objective must be to eliminate the introduction of defects in the product?

Also, what about other stake holders who view these metrics like investors, partners & customers. How can they quickly understand if the product or the organization is doing good and is on the right track, so that they can decide if they should stay invested (time, money, orders, partnership, future proof etc.,) or not.

Recently, i happen to visit a restaurant in Bangalore and in the waiting area, they had the following metrics displayed.

Very Simple. This is one metrics that can be understood by the customers who visit the restaurant, partners who supply materials, employees, management, investors etc., It gives everyone the confidence if the restaurant is doing good or not.

Being open and bold by revealing such numbers instils confidence in everyone’s mind. What more one wants to thrive?

Achieving Simplicity - in User Registration

Today, i just came across the most simplest registration for a website at www.docstoc.com . Just give your e-mail id and nothing else. I could have used my facebook id and get started, instead wanted to try out the registration experience. Once i gave my e-mail id, i am ‘in’ as a registered user and was able to access most of the features offered by docstoc.com

This is completely in contrast to most website that take the following steps:

1. Fill-up at least 4 to 6 details like user name, e-mail, password, verifyy password, First & Last Name (optional)
2. E-mail verification
3. Password resetting
4. Display account/ profile details and ask for more information.
5. Automatically sign-up for ‘E-mail notifications’ and make the user to opt out (which is the most irritating thing to do)

By following the above processes, most website combined two things in ‘one go’ – user registration and capturing quality user details (authentic details). But, looks like docstoc.com separated the two and just focused on ‘registration’ at the time of sign-up and everything else was kept as part of the next time login.

Its approach does have minuses like if you do not capture the details at the time of registration, then it is likely that the user is not going to provide it at a later point of time. But there are other ways to solve this ‘data quality’ problem like the way linkedin.com does by indicating ‘your profile is 70% complete, why don’t you add a profile picture’ and throw-in incremental features to take the profile completion to 100% level.

Here it is important to note that one of the ways of to achieve simplicity is ‘never combine two or more things into one’.

Just focus on what is the ‘single most intent’ of asking a user to do something and design the solution accordingly.

PS: You will get the above ‘simple registration’ only when you try to download a document. Else docstoc.com does follow the conventional steps for registering a user.

Purple Ideas– Intro

This blog will be about appreciating ‘simple things / ideas’ that i come across during my day to day interactions with people & things.

Also will try to pen my thoughts on how we can approach or solve complex problems using simple ideas or rather ‘purple ideas’

I do hope you will enjoy the journey and do write back to me in case you have interesting thoughts or suggestions.

Srini