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- There's no bombs.
There's no bombs.
Oh, I shouldn't say bombs.
I remember my brother saying bombs at the airport
and this guy stopped him.
He's like, "Hey!"
He's like, "Uh, I'm sorry."
I was like, "I don't know this guy."
(upbeat music)
Using the power of story
to build powerful software products
now this is a super fun video for me
because I know a lot of folks that get challenge sometimes
of building the right experience
that's gonna engage customers right off the bat.
Get them motivated to sign up for the product,
become activated and end up loving and this is key,
referring their software
because a lot of them are challenged in
like how do we get people to take action
and I feel like maybe the setup process is too complicated.
And for me, what I've learned over the years
I was super lucky to
share an office building with Twitter.
So Flowtown when I started that company.
It was a venture backed company, social marketing app.
We were on the first floor, Twitter was on the fourth floor.
And one day my friend Laura called me up and said,
"Hey, I want you to meet my friend Josh.
"He just came from Facebook.
"He was leading growth there I believe
"and they just hired him at Twitter
"to fix their onboarding and their growth challenges."
So I was like, "Yes please, sign me up."
So I went upstairs, took the elevator all the way up
and I was talking to Josh
and I had done a lot of market research.
When I moved to San Francisco,
one of my areas of expertise was marketing
and product and trying to understand
what caused software and features to grow organically
and really get distribution.
So I was talking to Josh about some ideas I have.
I was just asking, like are you gonna add this?
You know, like that.
He goes, "No, because it would actually
"tell the wrong product narrative."
And I was like, "What does that mean?"
You know he started unpacking the work he's done
and the short version is that no matter what you do,
your product will tell a story to its customer.
And that starts with the home page
and the language used there,
the onboard experience, how you set up that experience
for the customer.
And finally, what you ask them to do
or what's the first interactions
when they first get going in the product?
And he explained to me, you know like Instagram.
He goes, "A lot of people, they think that Instagram
"is a social network for photos
"and the truth is even though that's a byproduct
"one of the core aspects of Instagram
"is to take a photo, add a filter
"and share it on social networks as fast as possible."
So what I wanna share with you guys
is the product story framework.
How do you think about your software
as it relates into the three core areas
that you need to identify and kind of move forward.
The first one is the homepage
specifically these two characteristics.
One is called the hook, the other one is called the promise.
The hook is the what.
What does your software do?
If you go to the SaaS1000.com list
or the Montclair 250 top publicly,
for the most part, publicly traded
at least biggest SaaS company,
software companies in the world.
And you look at their homepage, they follow this pattern.
It's the hook, what do you do?
The easiest way to send invoices.
The fastest way to understand your personal finances.
Whatever it is, that's the hook
that tells somebody like this is for me.
Now the promise is how they do that
and that might be
mobile management of your money
using reports et cetera, et cetera.
Like those are usually the features and benefits.
They say in that kind of right underneath it.
And again, go look at these homepages,
underneath that there's usually a button, with the CTA
a call to action to sign up for free,
no credit card required in little brackets et cetera.
That is the most valuable area to focus on.
At the end is video, I'm gonna share with you guys
a tip on how to really get through those iteration
and test as fast as possible using a quantitative method
that you're not gonna wanna miss,
but you know that homepage experience,
how you communicate, what you do, and how you do it
is what is going to set the positioning and the frame
of the customer in their mind.
Once they get into your product,
they're gonna be looking for evidence of
what you said on the homepage.
So if you're not deliberate, you're not thoughtful,
you're not intentional about that language,
it could really hurt you from activating
and engaging customers,
especially in that first-time user experience.
Second big part of the product story framework
is to ensure that you have an incredible onboard experience
the way I like to think about onboarding
is it's the set up, it's the level one of a game.
It is the three steps that you ask the user to do
that it tells a story.
It's like why asking me to do this?
And why is this second?
So for example, with Josh at Twitter.
I said, "Are you gonna add an address book importer
"to kind of like build a viral K factor?"
He said, "We could do that, but the truth is is
"Twitter's not a social network.
"And if somebody came in
"and that was the first thing we asked them to do
"they would go, I already have a social network
"so I don't need this new product, right?"
Whereas what Twitter is really about is
consumption of media, content.
It's a content consumption platform.
So the first thing we wanna do
is get them to start following people
based on their interest and who they know
and maybe celebrities and authority figures
so that if they went to their feed,
even if they never Tweeted or shared anything,
their personal feed would have incredible content
that's relevant to their lives.
And we can do that,
then we get them to stick and stay around.
And that was really fascinating for me,
it's just the sequence of steps.
Now they still had the address book importer
so that they could create kind of some
distribution for the product,
but that was like the last step, not the first thing.
And again, how you present your product,
how it unfolds will tell a story.
Now you can either be deliberate about it
or it's just a byproduct of you building your software.
I'm a big fan of being intentional.
The third big area is the core value.
What is that moment in your product
that if a customer experiences, they will retain,
they will activate.
Some people call that the must have experience,
some people call it the aha experience,
I just call it the core value.
At the core of an Instagram,
it is not about the photo sharing,
it's not about the social network of photos,
it was about the easiest way to take that photo,
add a filter, share it on the social network
of their preference.
And that's why they beat out,
and back in the day of Instagram,
there were ton of photo sharing or photo taking,
editing, annotating apps out there.
I mean probably like 50 of them in the App Store
and they just cut through the noise,
'cause they said here's our product hook
or here's the core value.
We're gonna just drive people
in the sign-up process to understand that,
to get there, to do that action
in the first time they sign up and get that experience
so that they come back and they use it,
they tell their friends about it.
And that's how you build a product that gets
what's called the VWOM, viral word-of-mouth marketing.
And it's a beautiful thing that really
can expand your distribution.
Now, if you want to learn the right way
to test your product hook and your promise,
'cause this is really where people get stuck,
my tip is to use Adwords.
You know Adwords gives you restricted amount of details
for the title in the description,
usually the same amount that you'd want on your homepage
right above your call to action button
to get people signed up in your software,
or request a demo or whatever your sales funnel looks like.
But you can use Adwords to quickly iterate and test
different test, multivariate test the specific targeting
to just see what the click through ratio is
and just getting the CTA or the language
that gets the highest click through
will give you some real data.
'Cause most people wanna split test their homepage
but the truth is, they don't get enough traffic
and the fastest way is put that in front of an ad,
show it to your ideal customer,
see which one gets the highest click through rate
and the most engagement,
then test that on your homepage
and keep iterating from there.
So three core areas.
One, just nail your homepage's hook and promise.
Two, ensure your onboarding experience
is a clear three-step setup process
that really tells the story and the narrative
of driving them towards.
Finally the third thing, which is the core value
of your product, that aha, that must have experience
to just make your product deliver for your customer.
That is my challenge to you
is to build something that is spectacular,
leveraging the story narrative.
And if you're stuck, here's another tip
ask your customers how they explain
your product to a friend or colleague.
That question will unlock the language
and even the things you might wanna frontload
in your product.
Another tip, and I apologize,
I'm just really excited for you,
there's an opportunity for you to analyze a clickstream
in your software.
If you have products and users,
look at the clickstream of your top customers,
top 20 customers.
Look at the path.
Where did they come in?
What did they use? What features did they use?
What were they exposed to? What did they set up?
And try to figure out what's the 80-20?
What's the common path in clickstream that they used
that got them to experience that aha or gratitude
or whatever moment that will get other customers retained.
So you want to frontload that in your new user
onboarding experience.
That's what I got for you today.
As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life,
and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.
If you like this video,
be sure to subscribe to my channel
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and if you're ready to get going,
I got two more videos queued up for you,
I will see you next Monday.