OMG EOL – LOL (or: How to take a product to end of life)
Product managers are full of contradictions: if we’re not busting a gut to launch something, we’re trying to kill our older products off.
Articles about product management
Product managers are full of contradictions: if we’re not busting a gut to launch something, we’re trying to kill our older products off.
There is a popular myth that in order to protect its metalwork from the salty ravages of the nearby North Sea, the Forth Bridge needed to be painted to keep it proofed against corrosion. The task took so long that, by the time the painters finished one job, it was immediately time to begin over.
In the thrilling* conclusion to this lo-fi usability testing trilogy, we get down to the nitty-gritty of how to run the tests and how to interpret and act on the results.
* It all depends on your perspective
In this second instalment of this series on lo-fi usability testing, I’ll be showing you what you need to do to prepare for your usability tests.
You can run lo-fi usability testing in a single afternoon that will uncover 80% of the problems your product has, with only a pen, some paper and access to the software or website.
A good friend and colleague recently left our firm to take on a more senior product management role elsewhere. His boss and his boss’s boss stood next to him and gave him a glowing and sincere send-off, with the leaving speech striking that good balance between “we’re sad to see you leave” and “go out, excel and make us proud”.
Does your sales team sell your products (like, in exchange for money), or does it give them away as generous sweeteners to guarantee the sale of something else that will hit their targets? Or to put it in another way, does your salesforce truly understand the value of your products and can it articulate the benefits to the customer?
How much would you invest to prevent a mass customer exodus? Everything Everywhere, the merged T-Mobile / Orange behemoth, was happy to spend £150 per customer to shore up its customer base following the post-merger restructuring.
What did it gain? A reduction in monthly churn from 1.7% to 1.3%, significant given their customers number well into the millions, plus an additional 300,000 customers locked into long-term contracts in place of short-term pre-pay contracts.
I was discussing recently the importance of getting a product installation or upgrade process right for customers. Here are some guiding principles from a usability perspective that you may wish to consider when defining your product’s requirements.
Do you find it difficult to set appropriate financial targets for your product?