Finest-5 Product reads #46
User pathways, product errors, UX golden rules, etc.
Happy Sunday,
I hope the week was interesting enough in between all the dramas around Twitter. The memes and long LinkedIn posts around Parag Agarwal must have kept you hooked. If you have missed, I have added a link in the end.
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Understanding User Pathways in Analytics
A Sankey diagram comprises nodes connected through links that show how people move from one node to the next. The width of the link shows the amount of traffic that moves between those nodes.
Key Takeaways:
- Is the dropoff rate from any of these landing pages higher than from others? That’s an indication that there may be issues with the content of that page.
- Hub pages are nodes with a lot of traffic coming into and out of them; they are typically routing pages that function like a form of navigation
- Another technique for investigating pathways is to begin your analysis by looking at the end of the flow. This approach can reveal how discoverable advanced features are and how persuasive conversion-supportive content is.
CAC & LTV are confusing! So I have simplified them to get you up to speed
CAC (customer acquisition cost) and LTV(Lifetime Value) are common terms today. But apart from the definitions, common knowledge extends only a little more.
Key Takeaways:
- Fast CAC payback means a start-up can recycle its cash quicker and raise less capital (and lower dilution)
- To become profitable, your LTV to CAC ratio should be higher than 3.
- Spending lots of money to acquire unprofitable customers is a recipe for disaster
Applying the 8 Golden Rules of User-Interface Design
A good interface is one that helps all users navigate through the app easily and helps them do what they came to do with minimal effort. Shneiderman’s eight golden rules cover similar important rules.
Key Takeaways:
- The best way to keep your user-interface designs consistent is to create a design system that collects all the graphic user-interface and design guidelines for a brand, ensuring their consistent use
- If the user must complete a specific task — especially one that consists of several steps — make sure that the user sees an appropriate message giving them a sense of satisfaction in completing the task.
- Actions that users can’t undo are very frustrating to them — sometimes to the point that they’ll simply stop using your application or site.
Bottleneck #03: Product v Engineering
Both groups may have conflicting goals and different definitions of success that have to be reconciled. Engineering might want to build a product that is perfectly scalable for the future with the best developer experience. Product might want to quickly validate their ideas, and put features out that will entice customers to pay for the product.
Key Takeaways:
- Cross-functional product team should be a team member’s “first team”.
- To avoid this source of friction, executives must clearly articulate and disseminate the overall value their organisation provides to its customers, investors, and society.
- Once startup grows, it needs to break apart its products and services into multiple value streams so that individual teams can assume full ownership of various products or pieces of products
When life gives you lemons, write better error messages
There is nothing called 100% uptime or zero error rate in the real world. There will always be errors and error states, lot of people take an approach that they believe is okay, but aligning with few professionalism is important.
Key Takeaways:
- What makes a bad error message?: Inappropriate tone, Technical jargon, Passing the blame, Generic for no reason.
- What makes a good error message?: Say what happened and why, provide reassurance, Be empathetic, Help them fix it, give a way out.
- Everyone is responsible for making sure we’re handling errors properly.
Product of the week: chromatic
Ship UIs faster with automated workflows for Storybook
