The Rise of Product Discovery in Social Channels

via Ecommerce Consulting http://ift.tt/1q01czv

March 7, 2014 by Kevin Strawbridge - Add Comment

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This article is inspired by my experiences over the last seven years with social media and marketing. It was further underscored by my colleagueDawn Kole who wrote recently about what marketer’s should do with social sites.

A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

OK, maybe not that long ago. And it was this galaxy; this planet, in fact, where shopping became an activity that was no longer a necessity. It used to be that people went to a store to buy goods that were required for daily living. Not much shopping was involved, rather it was a quick selection of items from a very limited assortment. Shopkeepers would know what individual patrons wanted and would stock those items just waiting for the patrons to come in at their customary times, pick up the items and be on their way.

Within the 20^th century, the shift of people into higher populated areas and jobs moving from rural to urban areas created the ability for businesses to aggregate and grow access to goods and services around centralized locations. The local store served many more people with varying styles and tastes. Close proximity of these styles led to people wanting to know know more about what was available and how to get different things for themselves.

If you go back 15 years ago, product discovery was something that typically took place offline. Shopping, by its very nature was a social activity usually convened by females and done in malls. Catalogs and other printed items might be viewed as supplementary means. Even television could provide a view into items that customers would want to locate and buy. To that end, it became incumbent on merchants to follow the trends, stock items and create a way to support product discovery – sort of playing off the old style of the local merchant who provide necessities to local patrons.

Now it is 2014 and the rise of big data, the evolution of the internet as a commerce channel, and the ability to link any and everything through social sites has completely changed the process of product discovery. Beyond just the typical sites that allow social networks to form and share information, a new breed of sites are gaining popularity based on how they use technology to parse the conversations and ferret out actual trend information based on key indicators. Example sites include Wanelo, Pinterest, and Ravesy.com.

By the end of the 1900’s (I say that for dramatic effect since we are well into the 21^st century now) data, and the ability to transmit data electronically, led to the evolution of the internet as a commerce channel. People could now find anything they wanted with a few keystrokes and the click of a mouse. Access to this kind of information redefined shopping as we know it today.

Digging into one of these sites, Ravesy, it is clear to see that the dissemination of these mass amounts of information can be highly useful for shoppers.

They even use the tagline “We discover the trendy stuff for you”. That is important in this day and age of short attention spans and reliance on data. Ravesy, and other sites within its space,  monitor what everyone is talking about and boils it down to a small subset of information. They use algorithms and behaviors to really understand what is important. Ultimately this takes the burden of product discovery off of the merchants and makes it a democratic process. As these sites continue to emerge, create cleaner data and crystallize the purchase intent, they will become the de facto point for product discovery, to which merchants and customers alike will turn for trendy products all in one place. In the process, the information gathered will be useful to merchants to give them better insight as to how their products fare on the social web and in the conversations in a way that can be measured and tracked.

Some, or all, of this may seem far-fetched. Many thought the same thing when eCommerce first emerged. However, as data continues to proliferate and be more accessible, smart marketers and merchandisers will seek ways to use that data in order to spur sales and grow businesses. The convergence of the need for growth with the consumers growing demand for ideal products is the underpinning for continuous improvement in the shopping process.

The Best Ways to Prioritize Products and Features

via UXmatters http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/12/the-best-ways-to-prioritize-products-and-features.php

By Janet M. Six

Published: December 23, 2013

Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in user experience.

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss the best ways of prioritizing a list of products and features.

In my monthly column Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts provides answers our readers’ questions about a broad range of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions to:ask.uxmatters@uxmatters.com.

The following experts have contributed answers to this edition of Ask UXmatters:

• Drew Davidson—Senior Experience Director at ÄKTA
• David Kozatch—Principal at DIG
• Shane McWhorter—Executive Director, User Experience Strategy & Design at Product Concept, Design, and Experience
• Itamar Medeiros—Senior User Experience Designer at ROAMWORKS
• Janet Six—Principal at Lone Star Interaction Design; UXmattersManaging Editor and columnist
• Simon White—UX Manager at Voyages-sncf.com

Q: What are the best ways to prioritize a product and feature list?—from aUXmatters reader

“The best way depends on lots of different variables—such as how early in the product development lifecycle a product is, how mature a market is, or how well-known the targeted personas are.”—Itamar Medeiros

“There are lots of different ways of prioritizing features,” replies Itamar. “And just like any other type of method, the best way depends on lots of different variables—such as how early in the product development lifecycle a product is, how mature a market is, or how well-known the targeted personas are. I’ll discuss two methods that you can use in two different contexts:

• Outcome-driven Innovation—“Anthony Ulwick created this framework for a strategy and innovation process, which he detailed in his book What Customers Want. Its basis is the premise that people buy products and services to get jobs done. (See Strategyn’s whitepaper ‘Jobs-To-Be-Done’ for further discussion of this framework.) Clayton Christensen credits Ulwick and Richard Pedi of Gage Foods with the approach to thinking about market structure that he described in his book The Innovator’s Solution, in the chapter ‘What Products Will Customers Want to Buy?’ as ‘jobs to be done’ or ‘outcomes that customers are seeking.’ From a product development perspective, I’ve found this method very productive of insights in the context of discussing business opportunities with product managers during a product development cycle. But I’ve found it hard to integrate this approach into the day-to-day prioritization discussions that I’ve had with development teams.” For further discussion, see Itamar’s blog post “Product Definition and Requirements Prioritization.”
• UXI Matrix—“Jon Innes created the UXI Matrix, or Pugh Matrix, which is a decision matrix that helps you to evaluate and prioritize a list of use cases based on a set of predefined weighting criteria. This is different from Outcome-driven Innovation in that its focus is not necessarily on eliciting requirements. That said, this approach is easier to integrate into your day-to-day prioritization discussions with development teams—especially agile teams. Jon actually created this method to help Scrum teams integrate UX metrics into agile development cycles.” Itamar recommends Jon Innes’ SlideShare presentation “Integrating UX into Agile: How to Ensure Your Sprints Result in Usable Software.”

Balancing Business, Technical, and User Priorities

“Removing features that do not support any use case—even those already in a product—is the single most effective way of reducing development costs and time to revenue, while also improving the product’s user experience!”—Shane McWhorter

“What a great question that speaks to the heart of user experience!” exclaims Shane. “User experience brings a more customer-focused approach to product development that involves seeing a product as a whole experience whose goal is to help people to perform their tasks successfully rather than thinking of a product as providing a set of features without considering how people would use those features to get something done.

“A feature list’s only purpose should be to support the user in performing tasks. Those tasks differ in terms of their business priority, frequency of use, and importance to the product’s overall use. Some tasks account for 90% of the use of a product, while other tasks may represent only 1% of the use of a product. Some features are critical to performing that 90% use case, but others are less so. A stakeholder might even ask you to prioritize a feature that supports no use case at all! Removing features that do not support any use case—even those already in a product—is the single most effective way of reducing development costs and time to revenue, while also improving the product’s user experience! First, list your customers’ tasks by business priority, then by frequency and importance, and you’ll find prioritizing product features to enable those tasks a snap!”

“Don’t prioritize user needs over business needs. While user needs are incredibly important, they won’t matter if they don’t end up driving business.”—Drew Davidson

“Whenever I’m prioritizing products and features for a certain project,” answers Drew, “I use the following exercise to determine their priority: I list the business needs, the user needs, and the technology requirements. Then, I consider where the needs from each of these categories intersect—for example, which business need aligns with which user need and which technology requirements align with the needs of the business and the user. Don’t prioritize user needs over business needs. While user needs are incredibly important, they won’t matter if they don’t end up driving business. Once I’ve determined the right priorities, I break down what’s possible within the specified timeframe. This exercise helps me to determine the priority of each product or feature.

“One note: some features are bigger and more time consuming to create than others. A product’s internal architecture is something that often gets overlooked when scoping out the technology and requirements for a given release. When you’re considering making changes to a Web site or application’s architecture—or creating a new architecture—be sure to establish a realistic timeline that accommodates a mixture of both large and small features. The small features are easy, but the big changes are what will make your project stand out.”

“If we fail to relate our design work to the business’s bottom line, that’s a problem.”—Janet Six

I whole-heartedly second Drew’s recommendation not to prioritize user needs over business needs. As UX designers, we empathize with users and want to give them the best possible experience—while showing off our spectacular design skills, of course. However, if we fail to relate our design work to the business’s bottom line, that’s a problem. Many companies truly care for their customers, but they must do that while ensuring that they are making enough profit to stay in business. Fortunately, this is not a binary choice. You can often both support business needs and make your users ecstatically happy. Just put business concerns first, so the company can be successful and keep distributing your awesome products to customers.

Sort by Potential Revenue

“The ideal basis for prioritization is potential revenue…. Separate the nice-to-have features from the real revenue drivers.”—Simon White

“The ideal basis for prioritization is potential revenue, of course,” responds Simon. “On a coarse prioritization pass, you need to separate the nice-to-have features from the real revenue drivers. Sadly, the fine details of a user experience are often nice-to-haves. Maybe you can fight for an earmark for customer satisfaction as a source of soft return on investment (ROI) or pick one feature from a list of UX priorities each cycle, or Sprint.”

Use a Bucket Sort

“Features that stakeholders have rated as essential, that are unique, and that have high expected-usage scores will be your winners once you design, then market the product.”—David Kozatch

“If you have many features to rank, I recommend using three buckets or piles,” recommends David. “Have stakeholders or respondents identify each feature as one of the following:

1. Essential
2. Nice to have
3. Not needed

Then, run through the feature list and ask them to indicate whether each feature is unique in comparison to those of competitors—as far as they know. Run through the list again and ask them whether they would personally use a unique feature starting on Day 1 of trying your product. Features that stakeholders have rated as essential, that are unique, andthat have high expected-usage scores will be your winners once you design, then market the product.”

References

Christensen, Clayton. The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2003.

Ulwick, Anthony. What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

- See more at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/12/the-best-ways-to-prioritize-products-and-features.php#sthash.0q1i9ILY.dpuf

Getting More Out of Usability Testing: Understanding Product Usage Over Time

By Paula Barraza

Published: September 23, 2013

“By including a long-term testing approach as part of your UX research plan, you will develop a more comprehensive model of user engagement and a better understanding of how and why engagement changes over time.”

Understanding the relationship between a product and its users over a period of time is a key aspect of user research that is often overlooked. By including a long-term testing approach as part of your UX research plan, you will develop a more comprehensive model of user engagement and a better understanding of how and why engagement changes over time.

Just as the real world quickly changes around us, so does our virtual, online world. We are perpetually being introduced to new ways of fitting the Internet into our lives, and we must often learn how to use new technologies and devices. These, in turn, affect and change our online behaviors over time, as well as our perceptions of our online experiences. Who actually engages with a Web site in exactly the same way as they did when they first used it? During our first visit to a Web site, most of us probably try to get oriented and become familiar with the site, with the goal of figuring out how and whether we want to engage with it. Typically, the things that we looked at and interacted with when using the site for the first time are not the same things that we look at after several months of use—or at least we do not need to look at them in detail or with the same level of attention.

Gaining Insights Through Long-Term Research

“Understanding long-term use leads to product innovations and improvements that enable us to retain users.”

As user researchers, we certainly need to understand first-time experiences, but understanding long-term use leads to product innovations and improvements that enable us to retain users. Usability testing in a lab has largely dominated the field of user research. One of the areas in which it has proven to be valuable in is identifying users’ painpoints around key tasks during a first-time experience.  I am suggesting that user researchers expand this knowledge by carrying out studies that tap into users’ perceptions of and their engagement with a product over several weeks—even several months. This long-term research can provide insights that traditional lab usability testing cannot.

Long-term research studies can

• identify inefficiencies in routine interactions
• surface unmet needs
• uncover how new features change usage behavior
• reveal changes in product perception over time
• provide reasons for changes in engagement, whether increased, decreased, or discontinued use
• help map usage patterns to business goals and design objectives
• pinpoint usability issues that surface later in time
• more accurately tell the user’s story

“Think of long-term usability testing as a series of smaller studies that you conduct over several weeks or several months, with the goal of understanding key states of product usage.”

Planning a Long-Term Usability Study

You can think of long-term usability testing as a series of smaller studies that you conduct over several weeks or several months, with the goal of understanding key states of product usage. When you put the results of these studies together, they paint a more complete picture of the user experience. Here are some things to consider when planning a long-term usability study:

• duration—The number of weeks or months over which a long-term usability study should continue varies based on a team’s resources and the amount of time that is appropriate for answering the research questions. The more long-term testing you do, the better you’ll become at determining what is the right amount of time for testing your product. Keep in mind that, after a certain period of time, user behavior when using your product may remain the same, so you’ll have to assess the tradeoffs in considering whether to continue your research past that point. For tablet testing, I have found that two months is often sufficient.
• participants—Another consideration in long-term usability testing is whether to use the same or different participants for the series of studies. The true value of long-term research comes from using the same set of participants for the entire duration of the study. This provides the opportunity to develop comprehensive models of engagement patterns, as well as an understanding of how and why these patterns may change over time.
• method—Approach long-term usability testing as a series of touchpoints with users whose goal is to gather users’ feedback at strategic points in their product usage cycle. Wherever there is an opportunity to do so, be creative in coming up with methods that let you leverage these user touchpoints. However, keep in mind that you don’t want to overburden participants by making them take part in research every week. Make sure that there are some weeks during which they don’t have any research activities in which they must participate. Table 1 shows an example of the user touchpoints for a two-month study that combines field visits, online journals, video calls, and surveys.

Table 1—An example of five touchpoints in a two-month study

Weeks	Activities
1	Home visits
2	Online journals and field-visit analysis
3	Online journals analysis and participant’s week off
4	Online journals
5	Online journal analysis and participant’s week off
6	Survey
7	Survey analysis
8	Video call and start working on the final report

Challenges of Long-Term Research

“Your research would be of little value if there weren’t enough time to analyze all of the data.”

One of the biggest challenges for UX researchers who are conducting long-term usability testing can be the need to devote several weeks or months to the study. This is especially difficult if you are concurrently conducting other research for your company. This is why it is important to carefully plan your long-term research: the dates of the study, the number of touchpoints with users, and the amount of data that you’ll capture. Thinking through these aspects of conducting long-term research will help ensure that you have adequate time to analyze and share your data as you go. Your research would be of little value if there weren’t enough time to analyze all of the data. Plus, it is good for stakeholders to see updates to your data as the study is taking place. 

Long-term research, like other types of UX research, does present some challenges, but if you have the time and the resources to follow the same participants over the course of several weeks or months, you’ll have an opportunity to gather valuable user feedback over time that can significantly increase users’ productivity and the usability of your product.

- See more at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/09/getting-more-out-of-usability-testing-understanding-product-usage-over-time.php#sthash.zQnZvr3G.dpuf

via UXmatters http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/09/getting-more-out-of-usability-testing-understanding-product-usage-over-time.php

Design for Experience: Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences

UX Magazine Staff, Design for Experience

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On the heels of today’s article on the Internet of Thingsand the struggle to make the mythical smart fridge a reality, it seems appropriate to take a closer look at the Design for Experience category, Bridging Digital and Physical Experiences.

In his article, Avi Itzkovitch discusses how tricky it's been creating interfaces that allow users to easily input the items they are putting into their fridge. He suggests that as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags (which allow individual products to be stamped with unique data and tracked) become more cost-effective, it will be easy to have a fridge that keeps track of the tagged items inside it.

The struggle with the smart fridge up to this point is that users have to scan UPC barcodes as they put new items into their fridge, or use a touchscreen to drag and drop items manually. The possibility of RFID tags allowing an appliance to keep track of the items inside it and their expiration dates without any extra work by the user is a beautiful example of a way to bridge digital and physical experiences in a meaningful way.

This is the type of innovation that belongs in the Design for Experience awards. If you know of a product, service, or team that has found a remarkable way of bridging the physical and digital divide, nominate them. If you think that your product/service/team deserves DfE recognition, apply for this award right now!

Image of nixie tube clock courtesy Shutterstock

By UX Magazine Staff, Design for Experience

via UX Magazine http://uxmag.com/articles/design-for-experience-bridging-digital-and-physical-experiences

Talking with…The Land of Nod Managing Director Michelle Kohanzo

By ARTEMIS BERRY, VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL RETAIL, SHOP.ORG | Published: SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

Be the first to comment | This entry was posted in Events, Marketing, Merchandising, Mobile,Retail Companies, Social Media

There is something delightfully different about The Land of Nod. From the hand-selected, curated product selection to creative, story-telling blog posts, this Chicago-based retailer is one of my favorites.

I had the pleasure of meeting The Land of Nod’s Managing Director Michelle Kohanzo thanks to one of our Shop.org Board Members. She has been with the company since 1999 and has worked in just about every department in the organization. With 18 years of experience working for Nod and parent company Crate and Barrel, she has helped lead the company in redefining marketing strategies, opening a pop-up toy shop in New York, remodeling the Chicago flagship store and driving brick-and-mortar expansion.

This retail star and mother of four will be the keynote speaker at the upcoming Shop.org Digital Retail Boot Camp. In advance of her presentation, I asked Kohanzo about her retail career, the power of Pinterest, and how product assortment helped reinvigorate the brand.

Tell me a bit about Land of Nod and your role. You began your retail career in customer service and have worked in nearly every division. What has your your career journey been like?

Michelle Kohanzo, Managing Director, The Land of Nod

The Land of Nod is a multi-channel retailer specializing in children’s home furnishings – our tag line is “design for kids and people who used to be kids.” Our goal is to create a happy, creative home for families. We are owned by Crate and Barrel and have been around for 18 years. I am Nod’s managing director, which means I run the organization. I have been with Nod for 14 years and was the 10th employee. I also have four children and have been said to be Nod’s biggest customer.

I’ve had such an amazing career. As The Land of Nod grew, so did my career. I had the opportunity to work in every area of the company and truly create my expertise on the job. I was lucky to have a brilliant mentor who trusted me completely – he taught me everything and pushed me constantly. Some of the highlights for me were the opening of the first stores, my time in merchandising and, of course, being offered the opportunity to lead the company. I’m fortunate enough to love what I do – honestly it’s never really work for me and that’s the best part.

Last year, Land of Nod made a lot of changes to its product assortment. Tell us about what led to that process and what the response has been.

The changes to the product assortment were part of a larger strategic rebranding. We wanted to reinvigorate the brand and really get back to our roots. We turned over our entire product assortment and really focused on color, trend, playfulness and of course quality. It was a massive undertaking and took several years to complete. The response from our customer has been phenomenal – which I’m incredibly proud of. At the end of the day, the customer’s opinion is the only one that matters.

Your website is rich with content, featuring artists, real families, photo galleries and a blog full of personality. Can you share some insights into your content strategy?

Our content strategy is to add value beyond the selling experience. Our customers are typically busy moms and we really respect the fact that they have limited time and so when they are interacting with us, we want to inspire and engage them. We consider it a privilege to be given that ounce of free time that mom has. We share everything – sneak previews of new product launches, behind the scenes of our day-to-day, and lots of fun DIY projects. We also have many blogging contributors, which adds depth to the content and introduces our customers to some new faces. Honestly, it is a challenge for us to truly capture and leverage the magnitude of content that we are creating on daily basis. There is a lot of opportunity.

Talk a little bit about what went in to developing Land of Nod’s mobile strategy. Why was it important to include the baby and gift registry on your mobile site?

From a mobile perspective, we’ve had the advantage of our much larger parent company, Crate and Barrel, blazing the mobile trail for us. We have followed their lead and have seen huge adoption rates from our customers. The registry is a key element of our business and so was necessary from a mobile perspective. I see our mobile strategy rapidly evolving in the near future, as we begin to leverage more mobile marketing opportunities.

Your social media presence is robust. What role does social media play for telling Land of Nod’s story and engaging customers? How would you describe the importance of Pinterest to your entire social media strategy?

We love social media. It’s such an amazing way to engage with our customers in real time. It allows us to open up the brand in a way that no other medium could. We also love the conversation and the ability to really solve problems for our customers. We have several different individuals engaging in the conversation at any one time, which makes our content that much richer. Pinterest has been an amazing vehicle to drive traffic and awareness to the brand. It’s a great platform for us, because it’s all about inspiration and creativity – I’m always so pleased when a year later a photo from a Nod media preview pops up again in my Pinterest stream. The imagery can really live forever there. We are also utilizing Pinterest to provide design services to our customers. We are creating custom mood boards, upon request and getting tremendous feedback. We are really just scratching the surface of that opportunity today.

You will be the opening act at the Shop.org Summit Digital Retail Boot Camp. What are you looking forward to the most?

I’m looking forward to meeting many new people and of course getting inspired to do that next innovative thing. I find that any time I am at Shop.org I walk away invigorated and full of ideas. I’m also looking forward to my speech being over. I’ve got nerves!

What innovation (or innovator) do you think will shake up the retail industry next?

I believe there is something coming that will clarify the intersection of .com and brick-and-mortar – not sure who will get there first, but it’s brewing.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/09/12/talking-with-the-land-of-nod-managing-director-michelle-kohanzo/