As humans, we often struggle with focus. Our brains are usually so busy thinking about a million things that it’s hard to gain clarity. In the world of Product Management, this often translates into not finding the time to think about your optimisation strategy and which areas of focus / features could deliver the most value. Through my career as a Product Manager, I have worked on methods to increase my clarity and effectiveness. These in turn have allowed me to create amazing online experiences. I’m going to share with you one of my favourite frameworks that helps to create clarity when generating your optimisation strategy.
When I first started out as a Product Manager, it was difficult to decipher the best opportunities to grow online sales and how. There were so many requests from the business, loads of ideas and projects that were already committed to. I very much spent my time in delivery mode, working out the best way to implement something and how to manage stakeholders, without having a clear way of focussing on what the core opportunities for growth were or how to understand these.
A lot of PMs and businesses are stuck in the same rut. They’re constantly on the hamster wheel of delivering value and there are always so many ideas out there that they’re never short of something to work on. This often means that we’re at the mercy of everyone else’s opinions on what we should do next. The consequences of this are that companies aren’t always working on the most important thing. They’re often not optimising their website in the most effective way to deliver the most value and generate the most revenue.
One of the most important things for any product development team to achieve is the ability to think about the most effective ways to improve their online experience. This ability allows you to make sure you’re delivering the killer features that will grow your online sales and keep customers returning to your website because you offer the best experience.
Often, carving out the time and the thinking space feels like a huge problem, because you don’t know where to start in this process. There are so many ideas that it can be overwhelming. What you really need to help you focus, even when you only have an hour or two spare, is a clear framework. A clear framework allows you to think through the problems clearly and follow each step to know you’re doing the right thing. Frameworks are also an amazing tool to explain to stakeholders what you’re doing and why, and get their buy-in to deliver your best work (the most valuable things).
As I moved through my PM career, and worked on different products, I found an approach to my thinking that helped me make sure we were delivering the functionality that would add the most value to the online experience. This framework is the product optimisation pyramid.
The Product Optimisation Pyramid
The product optimisation pyramid follows three simple steps. Once you have executed on the first step, you can move on to the next layer of optimisation to deliver a successful website.
This framework allows you to build your whole product effectively, from getting the foundations right to customising the experience effectively.
All customer facing products require these three areas to be optimised in order to be successful in growing your online sales:
1. Usability. You need to have the right foundations in place. Customers must be able to use your website without any issues.
2. Desirability. Your website must be appealing. Customers must know why they should book through your platform and want to do this.
3. Customise. Your website can then look at how you can solve real customer problems. There are many ways to achieve this from optimising your funnel to launching new products.
Using this framework gives you a clear way to assess your website and see where you have opportunities to improve. As you move through each step of the pyramid, you can make sure you’re creating the right value in your online experience, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction and higher revenue.
1. Usability – make it work
Why is this important?
How often have you needed or wanted to do something, but haven’t bothered with an experience because it’s hard work?
We all do it. We put off tasks like phoning our broadband company because it’s too painful. We don’t go into a shop if there’s a queue. We leave websites when we’re just about to purchase because their payment form creates friction. In each tiny moment that we experience friction, we have a moment to think about whether the product is something that we really need.
Even then, if the product is something that we really need, we still don’t want to deal with any friction. There are so many websites offering the same products, that customers don’t need to stay with an experience that feels like hard work. They will happily leave and find the products that they want elsewhere.
This means that all websites and apps need to function, and they need to function well. You need your user to be able to navigate the whole site easily and not experience any moments of frustration that could ultimately stop them from purchasing from you.
How can you improve your website?
Key things to look out for at this stage:
- Does a user know how to progress through your journey?
- Can they find the products and information that they’re looking for?
- How often do they get errors when filling out forms?
- Do features such as filters and links function as the user expects?
There are some easy enough ways to figure this out. You can:
- Conduct usability testing (this can be done with friends and family if needed)
- Use tools such as google analytics and microsoft clarity to help you understand where users are struggling to navigate your site
- Conduct your own heuristic analysis to see what makes sense to a user
Now this doesn’t mean that your site needs to be perfect. There is a big difference between a website being usable and being pixel perfect. As long as customers can achieve the above factors then you’re in a good place. Some users will still get errors, not every single customer will spot a secondary CTA as easily as another, and that’s OK. You want to focus on making sure the majority of customers can achieve the things that they need to.
Think about the principle of diminishing returns. Once you have optimised for usability to a certain point, then you will start to see less value from focussing on this area. Once the website / app works well enough for the large majority of customers to navigate, your job is done.
If you’re starting out using this framework, you might want to review your whole site using these tools and spotting where you have gaps that can be improved. If your website is already pretty usable, then the key is just to remember this principle when you’re delivering any new features. How do you make them as easy as possible for the customer to use?
2. Desirability – make it appealing
Why is this important?
Once customers can navigate your site easily, you need to make them want to purchase with you. They’re on your site for a reason, because you can help them to fulfil a need. But, wherever there is competition, customers need to know how you can best facilitate their needs.
We’ve all visited websites and bounced from the home page. Sometimes this is because the brand isn’t appealing, sometimes the home page is confusing, or you’re not 100% sure what the website offers. We’re also prone to browsing several websites before we make a purchase to get the best value. That value might be a lower price, flexible returns or effective customer service.
In each of these cases, we’re assessing desirability. We’re seeing if the business is desirable and can offer what we need. We’re assessing if the product is more desirable on one website than another.
If your website/app isn’t desirable, then your potential customers will end up purchasing with competitors, or not purchasing at all. It isn’t enough to just offer a product, you need to sell the benefits of this product and why your business is the best one to provide this to a customer. If you get desirability right, it is one of the most effective ways to grow your online sales.
How can you improve your website?
You want to assess your website’s desirability by seeing if you’re providing customers with the right information so they want to purchase with you.
Making your proposition desirable
You need to make sure customers know why they should purchase through your site.
- What is your value proposition?
- How do you differ from your competitors?
- Have you won any awards? Do you have any testimonials? Do you have product reviews?
- You should build trust with your audience so they can understand what you can offer them above and beyond others.
Using social proof to make your products attractive
You should use social proofing to help customers understand what they should purchase. Social proofing comes in many forms:
- Reviews and ratings
- Highlighting your desirable products using data
- Highlighting how many customers you serve
These techniques help customers to understand what products they should buy, why and their quality. Customers are more likely to trust others that are similar to them and typically trust the crowd’s opinion.
Valuable products are desirable
Highlight the value that you offer. Customers love value and perception of value often works as a stronger motivator than using techniques like lowering your prices. This can come in many forms. Common forms are:
- Discounts
- Promotions
- Added value – put simply, free things
- Ease and flexibility of purchase ie. ability to cancel
The key ways to understand how you can improve in this space are to:
- Review your own website and assess which of these techniques you’re using, how prominent they are and how you can improve
- Speak to your customers and potential customers and understand why they think it is appealing to purchase with you and understand what is appealing about purchasing with competitors
From years of experience AB testing optimisations for different websites, it’s safe to say that making sure customers know why they should book with you and creating confidence that they’re getting a great deal is one of the biggest driver’s of strong conversion rates.
3. Customisation – solve customer problems
Once your website works and is appealing for your overall audience, you can start looking at specific areas of your website that you can improve and understanding how you can solve real customer problems.
The top pillar of the optimisation pyramid is about understanding what your customers really need and using this insight to deliver the killer features that customers love and return for. In this phase, you want to discover specific areas that create growth for the business. This might be through adding new products, enhancing the journey for a specific type of offering or adding new payment types to appeal to the market in which you’re operating.
Why is this important?
We all have our preferred websites for different things. Trainline make it super easy to find the most cost-effective journey in the UK and abroad and purchase tickets on the spot. ASOS excelled in online fashion through their wide range of products and free returns. Rightmove provides easy filter criteria to allow you to find the perfect property for you. If you think about the websites that you always use and rarely use their competitors, ask yourself why. What makes their experience better and easier than anyone else’s?
By understanding what the customer needs and delivering the best features to cater for this, you will create a sticky product that customers keep returning to.
Solving these problems can take many forms, and it is important that you understand which areas of your online journey to optimise, which opportunities will add the most value and work out the best features to build create this value. When you execute on these key features, then you are sure to increase your sales, revenue and conversion and give customers a reason to keep coming back to your brand because you make their lives’ easier than anyone else.
For example, at TUI, one of our value adders was offering a free child place for your holiday. You would pay for the adults, and your child would travel for free. This desirable offer generated thousands of sales, but it was hard to find these deals on the website. To solve this problem, we built a free child holiday finder and dramatically increased our sales of these holidays. Customers then knew that it would be easier to find a great deal on our site than anyone else’s and would continue to book with TUI in future years.
How can you improve your website?
In the customise section of online optimisation, you first need to consider what the problems are that you want to solve. You need to do this through:
- Identifying the problems / opportunities to grow
- Prioritising the areas with the most value
To help you do this, you can assess each one of the following areas and see where you think you have opportunities.
Optimising your current experience
Look at your value proposition and understand:
- Which elements of our product are important to customers? & how could we make it easier for our customers to experience this online?
- What are customers currently struggling with on our website? & how could we improve this experience?
- Which of our products do we generate the most sales from? How could we specialise further in this area and continue to grow?
- Which of our products do we make the least sales from? Why aren’t customers purchasing these products now? How could we improve the experience for them?
New customers/new markets
You might even want to expand into a new market, or offer a new product to your customers to increase your growth. For each of these, you want to understand what is important to your potential customer and how do you create an online experience that facilitates this.
Segmentation
You could also look at particular customer segments and understand how you can solve their problems. Your customers might be:
- Families
- Young couples
- Price sensitive
- Quality driven
- Last minute shoppers
You can dice segments in many ways, and each segment will need something different from your experience. You don’t even have to go down the personalisation route of customising your online experience to solve this. You might be able to offer your products in different ways or create different journeys in your online experience optional to cater for each one’s needs.
Once you’ve worked out where you want to focus, you need to understand how to optimise for the areas that you’ve selected as having the most value.
For each area, you will be able to generate loads of ideas to improve your customer experience. You should work through each opportunity in priority order and then move on to your next area of growth.
Each time you work to customise the experience, you still need to make sure you tick off the first two pillars of the optimisation pyramid for the new concepts to be successful. Make sure they are usable, and where relevant, sprinkle in desirability.
Every time you get the odd hour to focus on your optimisation strategy, start working through the optimisation pyramid to understand how to create the most effective features. Use this framework to communicate with stakeholders why you’re working on certain problems and building certain features. It really will change your attitude on having time to think and help you step away from the hamster wheel of constant delivery and dealing with requests so you can deliver killer features that really are going to benefit the customer experience.
I can help you to work through this process, get in touch to see how I can help your business become more effective.