Product Market Fit — Are you targeting the wrong users?

“You can always feel when product/market fit is not happening. The customers aren’t quite getting value out of the product, word of mouth isn’t spreading, usage isn’t growing that fast, press reviews are kind of ‘blah,’ the sales cycle takes too long, and lots of deals never close“ — Marc Andreessen

What makes an idea profitable? One could say that all thriving businesses around the world have sprouted and flourished thanks to the needs they fulfilled for their customers.

Understanding how a service or product could be beneficial to your user is one of the key factors in determining whether your idea is “it”!
And while there is no dearth of creativity in the startup realm, what divides the successful from the unsuccessful is hitting the sweet spot of Product-Market Fit (PMF).

So, what exactly is this PMF concept that potentially improves business performance?
According to Marc Andreesen, who coined this term, the concept means “being in a good market with a product that satisfies the market.”

But how do we measure the Product market fit ? How do we know that we have created something that the users love.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING?

Every business offers a product or a service to its consumers. The way businesses work is that they mostly understand a demand and come up with a solution to supply for that demand. Or understand human behaviour to even predict demands to which you can cater to.

PMF helps in making your product or service so efficient that your audience simply cannot reject it. Over the years Businesses have tried to come up with various ways of how they predict the right PMF

Let’s look at the most common way to measure PMF.

The first step always is to decide on an indicator metric. This could be a variation of a CSAT question.

Ask the user a simple question, example:

“How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [goods/service] you received?” Give them these options:
1. Unsatisfied
2. Neutral

3. Satisfied
4. Very satisfied

OR

“How would you feel if the product/service is not available to you?”.

And the options: 1.Very disappointed 2. Disappointed
3. Neutral

Once we have the responses, we almost always focus on the unsatisfied users .

We try to understand our shortcomings basis the feedback from the unsatisfied users.

We go back to the product and make some changes.

We repeat this process till we have achieved a certain percentage — about 40% — of users who are satisfied with what we offer.

This process and focal group initiative ends up taking months or even more to reach the desired rate of percentage of satisfaction. Sure, it probably worked for many, But we believe an alternate approach could work wonders here.

LET’S LOOK AT IT DIFFERENTLY!

Instead of the traditional approach of focussing on the unsatisfied users, What if we focused on the users who love our product. The users who always choose the “very satisfied” option

The following 3 step process describes a different approach to arrive at the right PMF.

1.WHO ARE YOUR “HIGH EXPECTATION CUSTOMERS” ?

“The high-expectation customer, or HXC, is the most discerning person within your target demographic. It’s someone who will acknowledge — and enjoy — your product or service for its greatest benefit” — Julie Supan

This is the category who would happily spread the word within their communities. These would be the best salespeople.

The high-expectation customer are the product’s biggest supporters. These are the users who understand the product and have ideas for improvements. If your product exceeds their expectations, it can meet everyone else’s.

Examples of HXC from the industry leaders are :
Airbnb: This HXC is invested in being a good global citizen, and doesn’t want to simply visit new places but to belong. It’s the guest who wants to ‘live like a local’ and experience Paris as if they are living there.

Dropbox: The Dropbox high-expectation customer is actually a person who wants to simplify his or her life, and not just share files.

Crucial Insight:

Instead of changing/editing your product or service to please the “unsatisfied” group, you may in fact end up losing your best feature of the product which is already loved! So only focus on your HXC and they will be your salesmen!

This exercise helps us identify the perfect target users for us. We have now identified our “High Expectation customers”.

We also define a profile of the users who are love our product.
Are these developers, founders, marketers, managers? We focus only on these profiles and work on their expected improvements.

2.MAKE THE “NEUTRAL” USERS TO START LOVING THE PRODUCT

We now proceed the research with the HXC users. We probe them further with questions like

• What do you think is the best feature of our product?
• What is the biggest benefit of our product?
• How can we improve our product?

These will give us a clear indication of the core strengths of the product.

Now we need more segmented analysis to understand the feedback from the Neutral users.

• Do these “Neutral” users want some completely new functionality?

OR

• Are they unhappy with some existing features?
• Could these features be tweaked or enhanced in some ways so as to make the “neutral” users cross the fence?

Crucial Insight:

Identify the “most loved” features of the product and analyze how these features could be tweaked effectively to benefit the users who responded as “neutral” during the first survey.

3.DEFINE THE NEW PRODUCT JOURNEY

The new product journey will have two paths :

1) Keep improving the features that the users love

We should keep taking continuous feedback from the HXC users and double down the efforts to enhance the most loved features.

2) Work on new requirements for the users who are on the fence

The “Neutral” users can be made to love the product, if their feedback is correctly analysed and acted upon.

Crucial Insight:

To increase your product/market fit score, the idea is to spend half your time in improving on what users already love and the other half on addressing what’s holding others back.

This is an iterative process where we keep measuring the indicator metric at regular intervals until we arrive at the desired number.

The darkness is gone
The joy of Monotony
I was craving for.

I recently visited a coffee shop with a friend. After placing the order, my friend insisted on paying via Google Pay. However, when the barista informed her that they were not accepting Google Pay, she was visibly upset.So much so that she tried her best to convince the staff at the shop to start accepting it , as it was the easiest (sic.)payment available. At that moment, She was not just a user but also an ambassador of G Pay.

This incident got me thinking. I was aware that Google Pay was gaining popularity as a convenient payment mode but for me it was still just another option. It was one of the many UPI based payments available. However for its 100M+ users, Google Pay rates much higher than any of its competitors.

What does Google Pay do to ensure users keep coming back?

Why are the users not able to resist it?

Why are the users “hooked” ?

The answer to all the above questions is the brilliant application of Variable Rewards, by the smart team of Google Pay.

Since its launch in 2017 (erstwhile Tez), Google Pay has consistently outrun its competitors PhonePay and Paytm. G Pay has increased the number of monthly active users (MAU)from 25 million in September 2018 to 45 million MAU by March 2019.

What is Variable Reward ?

In the 1950s, psychologist BF Skinner performed an experiment, which later became the basis of using “Variable Rewards” to condition behaviour.

He offered lab rats food pellets if they pressed a lever. Lever A would bring down pellets of the same size every time. Lever B, however introduced an element of uncertainty. If the rats pressed Lever B, they would sometimes get a smaller pellet, sometimes a larger one and sometimes none at all. It was observed that the rats which got this variable pellet reward, kept pressing the lever compulsively.

Every time we get a reward, an appreciation or a positive feedback, our brain releases dopamine, the happy hormone.Research suggests that the human brain releases more dopamine in the anticipation of rewards than the reward itself. When the rewards are fixed and we know what to anticipate, our dopamine levels stay in check. But when the rewards are variable, the dopamine levels can lead to addiction.

The technique of variable rewards is often used by UX designers to make the users addicted to their applications.

How does Google Pay use Variable Rewards?

Scratch cards

Every time a user uses G Pay to make a payment, even for an amount as less as Rs 1, they are presented with scratch card. There is no guarantee of any cashback though. More often than not, the scratch card shows “Better luck next time”. However, the smartest bait of this system is that the cashback amount is not related to the transaction value. So effectively the user can get Rs 500 (or more) cashback for a transaction of Rs 10.

Compare this with a fixed cashback of some amount for every transaction at Paytm, and you see the excitement is not the same.

Now that Google Pay had its users addicted to keep craving for new scratch cards, it went a little further by encouraging users to get these scratch cards by other modes like referral invites, lucky Friday’s draw etc.

Variable rewards are the tools to keep the brain occupied and initiate new habits.Starting with an anticipation of a scratch card to ultimately just a habit, the users would look for Google Pay for payments.

Diwali Campaign

For Diwali 2019, Google Pay launched a little alteration of the same game. The users would get a random diya, for every transaction. The aim was to collect all 5 diyas, which could then give the users a fixed sum of Rs 250 and a chance to win Rs 1,00,000. This got the nation hooked. This article correctly stated that Diwali was about fighting over crackers and collecting Google Pay stamps.

Resonating with the general tradition of gambling during Diwali, Google Pay nudged users to collect the evasive diyas. Subconsciously the users would only transact using Google Pay, in anticipation of a diya.

The examples of Variable rewards in websites, specifically social media , are abundant. Notifications, Likes, shares etc are all implementations of this trick. However never before has a Finance App integrated Variable rewards so seamlessly in their design.

Kudos Google Pay!

Death of a Child

The mom broken, dead
A soul taken, way too soon
I hugged my girl tight.

Silent, quiet room
Thoughts echo in the still air
Peace or loneliness?

Death staring, glaring

Waiting to meet, ever so daring

Little Joys, All we have

A Happy Dinner

My Small World, in this Big World

Laughs, Talks, Second servings

Lost and Sad, I came

The Dog saw me, wagged his tail

I saw Happiness.

When we mention “Experience Design” or UX, we often think about the myriad of websites and applications around us, example social media, Banking websites, e-commerce etc.

Somehow we tend to overlook the applications which we use specifically at the workplaces. Applications which may not have a huge user base, but their users have some unique needs in terms of Experience. These are the users who use these applications, not because of their own choices but because they have to. More often than not, these users do not even have a say in the selection of these applications.

However, that means that as UX Designers, it is our responsibility to understand and address the specific requirements of this user group.

Bruno Pedro, API and product Technologist proposed this hierarchy, inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. This can be an excellent framework for any team which is starting with the UX design of an API Portal.

This article focuses on some crucial aspects of UX, when designing API portals for Developers.

Considering the recent developments in the domain of API technologies , it is high time that we start considering API portals as full fledged products. It is consumed by Developers who are technically sound, but that does not make them any less deserving of a premium User Experience. Developers are Users too !

Following are some key aspects to keep in mind when designing for API portals :

1) Spend Time in Designing Documentation

Documentation is the key for any API portal, both for helping the Developers decide if this is the right product and also finding the right resources.

GUIDES : There should be a Guides section that describes what the API does, in plain english. The content should consist of the benefits of the product, Not the features. It should describe the capabilities which help the developers understand if this is the product which they need.

TUTORIALS : This is the detailed , step by step set of instructions, of the various API resources and the ways to manipulate them. The content here is very different from the Guides section.

2) API Reference is Critical

This section is used to document every endpoint and the example codes in multiple programming languages.

As per my experience , Developers generally do not want to adopt unfamiliar technologies. So the aim of the API Reference section, is to demonstrate the usage of the API for multiple client technologies. When the Developers see examples of client codes in multiple programming languages, it gives them the confidence to go ahead and start exploring the product.The Clearbit API Reference is a good example of this.

3) Highlight Use Cases

This is an important step in making the Developers start exploring the API product. Define relevant use cases such as “How to Use our APIs for Designing error free payment transactions” Or “See How Our Customer XYZ, improved their efficiency by 30%, in just 12 hours”. Highlighting the customer success stories is a very effective social proofing method, to instill a sense of reliability in the Users. I recommend highlighting these use cases higher up in the visual hierarchy of the portal.Uber Developers, does this exceptionally in their portal.

4) Client SDKs Lead to Better Adoption

Many API portals tend to ignore this feature. Although it is not mandatory , but it always gives the product an edge, when there are well defined, robust client libraries for different programming languages. This reduces the effort of the Developers when they integrate with the API portal. This is all the more useful for developers who are new to a particular programming language. Twilio implements this feature pretty effectively in their portal.

5) Be There for “SUPPORT”

There is nothing worse than a frustrated user who does not know his way around your product. Therefore, an essential element of designing a good experience for Developers, is to have an efficient, dedicated Support team. We need to understand that Developers accessing the portal are trying to complete a task, which is often time bound. They cannot afford to waste too much time figuring out things on their own. A reliable Support channel coupled with active user communities instill a sense of confidence for the users. Uber Developer is often appreciated for its efficient Support channels.

6) Visual Display

Although the visual design depends a lot on the specific user groups within the Developers, but certain guidelines do help the users in exploring and using the portal effectively.

Visually Highlighting the code samples, as compared to their text based descriptions, make it easier for the Developers to understand the usage. Also, the Developers are more comfortable with “Code” language and find it to be more familiar.

For text heavy sections, like Support or Communities, implement ways to highlight the most relevant content for the particular user. Example, if there are too many answers to a question posted in Community, rate the answers based on user responses. Organize the FAQs according to relevant categories, for easier information retrieval.

Diagrams and other graphical representations are better than verbal descriptions, for explaining complex systems. These should be used in explaining the implementations for use cases or case studies.

These were some of my learnings when designing for API Portals. I would love to hear your experiences !

Designing Experience for API Portals was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.