The goal of product design is to get something done. The faster it takes to get something done, the better the design. Products can be more than just performing a certain function or look a certain way. They can offer us a new perspective on how we view the world.

The goal of product design 

The app Notion is designed to be modular and adaptable to your needs. It manages all of your notes, tasks, and thoughts- one or many, many things. Each of the ideas and projects you work on is connected with everything else in some way.

Modular and Adaptable

Notion makes it easy to start any kind of project, write any kind of document, organize your life however you want. You can even import the code from another word processor, or customize Notion. Every feature is designed toward letting you do this. You can turn your journal into a novel or research paper.

Organize your life

I love trying out apps. I was looking for a holistic approach to getting work done. Before using Notion, I used Trello, Google Keep, Google Drive, OneDrive, Evernote, Dropbox and so many other apps to bring my life together all in one place. Notion moves all of that into a single app. I love it and can’t imagine ever using another task manager.

I am an app freak

Notion is the main tool I use for all my projects. I use it for blogging, for managing tasks, for content planning, to write notes, to make checklists… you get the point. It’s great because of its flexibility. Notion doesn’t try to fit your content into pre-designed boxes. Instead, it encourages you to use your own words, your own ideas to design your project the way that works best for you.

All in one Tool

More than 150 pages on Notion. The book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Pricing-Strategy-ideal-market-ebook/dp/B09HMZCTXK/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1637531941&refinements=p_27%3AAde&s=books&sr=1-1">“Winning Pricing Strategy”</a> is currently on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Pricing-Strategy-ideal-market-ebook/dp/B09HMZCTXK/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1637531941&refinements=p_27%3AAde&s=books&sr=1-1">Amazon</a>.Disclaimer: Notion probably won’t read this. I wasn’t paid to do this. It was just a big thank you to a tool that has made my work more productive.

Guess what? I wrote an entire book

The goal of product design is to get something done. The faster it takes to get something done, the better the design. Products can be more than just performing a certain function or look a certain…

productivity

Productivity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

business

Business

Why does Notion product design stand out? — Find out why

The most successful companies these days aren’t creating content, they’re curating it.

Founders & startups fail when they try to solve problems they’re not connected to or haven’t personally experienced. For a product to be viral, the founder has to:<ul><li>Make it so great that it advertises itself.</li><li>Embed growth within it.</li></ul>

A Viral Product

If you work really hard at something, you can achieve great things. New York embodies that for sure. Everyone here is dreaming, everyone here is doing. You pull anyone over on the street and they’ll tell you what they’re excited about and what they’re moving towards. At the end of the day, if someone really has a vision and they’re serious about it, I think you have to be in the middle of everything to make it work. In places like New York, San Francisco, and LA… you’re just surrounded by all of these like-minded people.

The Value Of Serendipity

If you have an idea: Take action, make something, work hard, and watch what happens.

So many of the brilliant, creative minds of our generation came from Tumblr. Creative directors at massive companies, and people running their own agencies, all recognize themselves as Tumblr kids. <ul><li>Tumblr is all about curating other people’s content, as opposed to creating your own (and there aren’t many social platforms out there that encourage this)</li><li>Putting out your own content can sometimes be intimidating, while simply sharing someone else’s is much easier</li><li>In a way, content curation empowers those who aren’t creating to still be creative</li></ul>

Tumblr: The Creative Dark Horse Of Social Media

If you decide to build a startup but can’t relate to the problem, you’ll constantly be spending time on market research. But, if you can relate to the problem, YOU ARE the market research (and the customer). Often, your intuition can tell you things that would be impossible to measure with dataWhen looking for a co-founder, find someone who has the skills that you lack.

Solving Problems We Don’t Relate To

A framework for assessing ideas:If you and your co-founder both agree on an idea, one of you should still play devil’s advocate (even if you’re a solo founder, try coming up with several reasons why the idea might, in fact, be a bad one).

Assessment Of Ideas: Devils Advocate

Before I even present an idea, I have run it through the wash… and I try to kill it. And if that idea is still with me a few days after, it’s probably time to raise it.

You don’t have to be an engineer anymore to build a software company. You just have to know how to give explicit details and draw a sketch of what you want – then, you can hire someone to build it. However, one of the best skills you can learn is coding. Coding and petroleum engineering jobs will be some of the last to be automated by AI.

Learning To Code

You don’t have to be completely original to succeed in life: <ul><li>Google built off of other existing search engines.</li><li>Wikipedia wasn’t the first online encyclopedia.</li><li>Bitcoin was far from the first cryptocurrency.</li></ul>

Being Original Is Optional

A Podcast about Making your Product Viral and Successful.

My guest today is Andy McCune, an entrepreneur and creative who co-founded Unfold, a mobile design tool kit for storytellers that was acquired by Squarespace. He also runs an Instagram account called Earth (@earth on Instagram) with 1.1 million followers. Andy is one of the very most talented people I know. And he has a more intuitive, make-it-and-test-it way of working than most of the people on this podcast. I’ve built a friendship with him as he’s flown under the radar for years. I remember talking to Andy about Unfold back when it was just a small side project, and it’s been a joy to watch Andy grow and scale the business. Please enjoy my conversation with Andy McCune.

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

startup

Startups

podcasts

Podcasts

product

Product & Design

A deep dive into the stories, habits, ideas, strategies and methods that drive fulfilled people and create enormous success for them.   Guests are diverse, but they share profound similarities. They’re guided by purpose, live with intense joy, learn passionately, and see the world with a unique lens.   Guests include Neil deGrasse Tyson, Seth Godin, and Tyler Cowen.

North Star Podcast: Hosted by David Perell

Andy McCune: How Products Go Viral

Voice search is starting to dominate the way people search for information online. Instead of typing your query in the search engines, you simply speak into your device and ask for the information. 45 million people use voice assistants every day. They not only use it to find information but also to discover brands and buy products online. Reports state that voice shopping is set to jump from $2 billion today to $40 billion in 2022. You could lose money by not optimising your business for voice search and voice shopping.

Voice search is dominating the search landscape

When people use voice search, they use a conversational tone and a long text string instead of a few random keywords. It is better to optimise your website for longer queries using long-tail keywords. These keywords are specific and targeted.

Use long-tail keywords

Voice search queries often include the phrase 'near me' because most users do a local search intending to visit the store. To help you optimise your business for local search, consider adding your location, timings, contact information, parking availability, and other relevant information on your website's homepage. Consider creating local content for your blogs.

Optimise your business for local search

List your business in Google My Business. Getting your business listed in a local search can help you maximise your online presence and improve your SEO.

Get listed

When people make a Google search, they often don't intent to buy. However, Google shows that people who use voice search are 30 times more likely to act on the query. Understanding your user's search intent will make it easier to create content for your site that clarifies those queries.

Consider the search intent of your users

When you create content, ensure to keep a conversational style of writing. This will increase the chance of your business appearing in the voice search results.

Use conversational tone in content

Easy ways to optimize your content for voice search.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

5 Important Ways to Optimize your Business for Voice Search

Customer advocacy is one of the best ways to grow your business. Potential buyers search for online reviews and peer recommendations before they decide to purchase. Harvard Business School research found a 12% increase in customer advocacy can result in a 200% growth in revenue.

Creating customer advocates for your brand

The customer is your greatest asset. When you keep them satisfied, they will become your brand advocates. A customer advocacy campaign is designed to turn your customers into brand advocates. It encourages your customers to recommend the product to other potential customers.

The importance of a customer advocacy campaign

A customer advocacy program is a marketing strategy. The Customer Success (CS) department should co-own advocacy with marketing for the following reasons: <ul><li>They can get more dollars from a customer through renewals, upsells, etc.</li><li>To increase LTC.</li><li>To reduce the dollar acquisition cost.</li></ul> The marketing team can get more leads from video testimonials, case studies, reviews, referrals, etc. People tend to check out the social proofs, not your website. So the higher the number of advocates, the higher the number of leads for acquisition.

Marketing and Customer Success co-owns customer advocacy

<ul><li>Develop a customer-centric attitude: Top management should promote a customer-first approach.</li><li>Identify customer advocates: Ensure to build and maintain a good relationship with your customers. Involve them in various processes when it is suitable. This ensures that they will be happy with you and your brand.</li><li>Know your campaign's purpose: Reflect on your brand's purpose. Knowing what, why, and how you want to build the campaign ensures better results.</li></ul>

Prepping for a customer advocacy campaign

<ul><li>Create a customer-centric campaign. It helps you to know your customer advocates better.</li><li>Build a loyalty or a referral program. Use quantitative analytics to identify your loyal customer. Then approach them directly or offer rewards or bonuses for promoting your brand.</li><li>Social community helps. Build a community using social media platforms. Promote a shared sense of belonging, shared goals, and shared responsibility.</li><li>Gather social proof. Get your case studies from a decision-maker, not a user. It will encourage your advocates to recommend the product to potential customers.</li></ul>

Launching a customer advocacy campaign

Simply hoping that your customers will renew is not enough. Instead, you need to work towards that goal from the start using customer advocacy.

Driving value through Customer Advocacy for your SaaS Business

Community marketing is the process of designing and implementing programs to engage the customer, company, and other groups in a mutually beneficial way.
Today's businesses attempt to grow their social media following but only consider half the picture. Instead of trying to gain followers, they should connect with people beyond transactional relationships. It's an indirect way to promote your business without using a 'push' marketing strategy.

Building a community around your brand

<ul><li>Start a Facebook group. You can start a private group where content is only visible to members. You can connect your audience to a support network and share files and resources.</li><li>Email marketing is a low-cost, personal way to reach your customers by providing engaging content in their inboxes. You can engage readers by asking them a question at the end of the email.</li><li>Create a membership site where only registered users can communicate with each other.</li><li>Host events and meetings with the help of online conferencing tools.</li><li>Create live videos.</li></ul>

How to build your community

Indirectly promote your business with community marketing.

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Why Your Business Needs Community Marketing

In the world of software as a service (SaaS), the distance between the Product team and the Customer Success team may appear to stem from competing priorities. However, a close-up look reveals that the interests of the two teams are very similar.

A productive relationship between CS and product teams

When companies are just starting, the responsibilities of the teams overlap. Product speaks with customers. CS helps with product testing. As a result, it's easy for teams to be collaborative and agile. But when organisations scale, teams find it more challenging to stay in sync. Product and CS teams may seldom interact, leading to misaligned goals, misunderstanding priorities, and miscommunication with customers.

Rapid scale cause silos

The poor communication caused by siloed teams is frustrating for internal teams and impacts your product experience. The product teams rely on the conversations CSMs have with customers to inform their roadmap and inspire innovation. But if the CS team doesn't have a forum for sharing customer feedback with Product, product teams are unable to build functionality to address the customer challenges. Similarly, if the product team doesn't inform the CS team about the latest product decisions and developments, CS can't advise customers about the product.

Poor communication

CSMs spend their time talking to customers about the business challenges they're trying to solve. Product teams don't get one-on-one time with customers. Instead, they use analytics to try and understand the customer experience. Analytics is vital but lacks the qualitative and emotional aspects of sentiment and satisfaction. Understanding both quantitative analytics and qualitative user feedback is essential to understanding the customer experience fully.

Varied understandings of the customer experience

<ul><li>Both teams focus on the customer experience: Product focus on the "why" of customer needs. CS drives the experience throughout the customer journey. It builds loyalty, drives expansion, and cause retention.</li><li>Both teams need to be agile and adaptable: Product needs to respond quickly to competitive developments, bugs or feature requests. CS needs to be available to customers to respond to issues.</li><li>Both teams thrive with a product-led mindset: Product teams play an ongoing role in the business's success. CSMs leverage the product to drive loyalty and competitive advantage.</li></ul>

Similarities between Product and CS

Product and CS often fail to work together because of three key issues.

Part one of this three-part series explores key challenges that have prevented Product and Customer Success from collaborating at their best.

Three challenges that hinder CSM and PM collaboration | Pendo Blog

As product leaders, it is your task to build a great product culture.
This prevents ineffective product management and helps to reduce churn. Generally, it gives the people you work with the opportunity to grow.

Building a product culture

Product teams need to understand human motivation and psychology. Entrepreneurs Neel Doshi and Lindsay McGregor state that there are three pillars of motivation: <ul><li>Play: The number of tasks, projects, and priorities can feel overwhelming. But keeping a sense of fun brings innovation and creates value to customers.</li><li>Purpose: A person wants to feel like their work is meaningful and builds a better world.</li><li>Potential: A person needs to know that there is an opportunity for growth and advancement.</li></ul>

Three pillars of motivation

This eBook includes tips product leaders can put into action to help motivate PMs, reduce churn, and establish a great product culture.

The 3 P's of a Great Product Culture: Play, Purpose, & Potential

The product-led flywheel is a framework that promotes product-led growth. It focuses on the user experience at the various stages of the user's journey. <ul><li>On the inner circle of your flywheel, imagine the different segments of your users based on where they are in their product journey. For example, product qualified leads, customers, active customers, loyal customers.</li><li>On the outer layer of your flywheel are the different stages of product growth: Onboarding, adoption, retention, and growth.</li></ul>

The product-led flywheel

<ul><li>It's a better fit in the modern SaaS market that depends on recurring revenue to succeed. The flywheel assists in proving immediate product value.</li><li>It leads to higher NDR. It delivers excellent experiences to both the new and existing users.</li><li>It speeds up over time. The growth stages feed on one another to produce faster growth.</li></ul>

The benefits of a product-led flywheel

<ul><li>Understand the customer experience through tools such as in-product analytics, in-product engagements, and surveys.</li><li>Use a smarter approach to segmentation. Do surveys and customer feedback loops to develop different user segments. Identify user pain points and user's objectives, then plan to deal with the pain points.</li><li>Focus on product qualified leads.</li><li>Make onboarding easy.</li><li>Use in-product analytics to power your product-led growth flywheel.</li></ul> Improving your product-led flywheel will lay the groundwork for faster growth and a user-first product.

Jumpstarting a successful flywheel

The SaaS industry can tap into a growth plan that gains momentum over time.

Discover our top tips and tricks for building a product-led flywheel that fosters real growth for your SaaS business.

softwareengineering

Software Engineering

Tips and Tricks for Building a Product-led Flywheel | Customer Success and Product Experience Software | Gainsight

There’s no need to go into this too much as for any business owner, this is 101 - but it is always the foundation of getting your pricing strategy right. Ensure you understand how much your product has cost to develop, how much it will cost to deliver and how that cost will scale as more clients come on board (more servers, more support staff etc).

Understand your costs

Now, just because you're in the same market as your competition, it doesn't mean you have to copy their pricing strategy, nor should you look at competing on price. However, you should leverage the work that they've done to understand their buyers, and the psychology behind it. Look at how they've segmented their customers (small, medium, enterprise ...). Understand how their pricing scales. Do they increase pricing based on:<ul><li>features</li><li>users</li><li>business size</li><li>other consumption-based metrics</li></ul>If there's a well understood theme across your market, you should probably consider adopting it.

Understand the market

So many technology companies go to market competing on price rather than value.You definitely don’t have to be the cheapest, however, you also don't need to be the most expensive. This largely comes down the phrase "If it's that cheap, it must be rubbish" - I've seen it time and time again, where SaaS companies have struggled by going to market with a super cheap pricing model, then had massive success by raising their prices considerably! Who knew?!

Perceived Value

I got a call from a large global business that liked the product, and wanted an unlimited license for their 10,000 employees and £500k/mo wasn't the budget they had in mind! Nor should it have been!Our pricing model needed to adapt to allow businesses of different sizes to pay more, but scale relative to the value the solution was delivering them. We implemented a system where you had Up to 5 users, Up to 15 users, Up to 50 users and More. The price ceiling is about understanding the amount of money you're saving the client. Most B2B SaaS solutions top out at about £10k/month/problem solved.

The Price Ceiling

Think of this as putting yourself in the shoes of the company exec pitching their budget - what saving or benefit will they need to demonstrate to win the approval of the CFO? Importantly, which exec will be the one to best position your product to get the green light on budget?The top tip here is to work out where the money will come from in your target clients - which line item in which budget is going to give you the revenue you need, and who is in charge of signing it off - you'll sometimes be surprised, because it's not always the person you think it is.

The Existing Budget

If you're about to launch a SaaS platform, you can't really go wrong by analysing how some of the most successful businesses have approached their pricing matrix. I know it's cliché, but they will have spent a lot of time and money in understanding the customer, their psychology, the market, the budgets and many other factors.SalesForce are masters for pricing; at first glance you might think that their pricing model is simplistic - fundamentally it boils down to a bronze, silver, gold style model. However, the way they've constructed the matrix heavily encourages you into the next level.

Taking inspiration

After saying all of this, you don't have to, and probably won't get it right first time. When you first go to market, irrespective of how well prepped you are, how well understood the market is, the chances are your pricing model will need to adapt as you grow and the market changes. The top tip that I would advise to here is that it's a lot simpler to reduce your prices than it is to increase them!

Test and Adapt

When you first take your product to market, beyond the price, clients also want to see proof points and case studies. If they're the first customer, this will always make them nervous, particularly if there's a lot of money on the line. This is where the old adage of "No-one ever got fired for buying IBM" comes in. Choosing the ‘safe’, known option as opposed to the challenger is a defensible position for the person signing off the budget.Don't be afraid to battle and do deals to get your first 20 clients in and using your product. The information you'll get from them will be invaluable.

Don't be afraid to deal to get going

Peter Rossi, Co-Founder and Strategy Director at Equals Collective


Yet when they actually go to market with their product, their pricing strategy has had very little thought and is always a mad scramble to get in place.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

8 tips on setting the right price for your tech service

The key to a successful product is a cross-functional team that supports every aspect of the Complete Product Experience (CPE). They understand their role in making the product successful and work towards fulfilling that role. However, many companies do not understand the concept of a formal product team. Each group operates in a bubble. It may cause multiple difficulties such as:<ul><li>Duplicate processes and tasks.</li><li>Teams are unwilling to accept others' solutions.</li><li>Not thinking how one action impacts the whole.</li><li>Tasks take forever.</li></ul> This could lead to a product no one really wants.

Creating winning products

Delays are caused when people are unclear on what is a priority. Value for the company and customers come when you are able to prioritise what is most important. Product team members become ambassadors of strategy and champion alignment in their functional groups and together.

Strategy alignment

Product teams are organised around a specific customer need or value, not individual projects. When problems arise, you can refocus people to the common objective and away from competing interests.

Customer focus

Breakthrough ideas seldom come from individuals. Bringing together a different and diverse group of people from multiple disciplines can lead to creative solutions.

Opportunity for innovation

Teams in an organisation have different priorities, causing multiple efforts to happen in parallel. However, product teams share a purpose, making it easier to resolve bottlenecks or pivot.

Iteration speed

People with a different skill set may view a challenge from a new angle and offer solutions you might never have considered. While few people want to attend a meeting they are not directly involved in, there is value in all groups hearing the same information.

Problem solving

Making a case for the necessity of a formal product team.

Product teams are organized around a specific customer need or value stream — not individual projects. Learn about the core benefits of formal product team structure and how you can advocate for one in your company.

The Benefits of a Cross-Functional Product Team

Find 100+ Business Facts, Ideas & Insights - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!

Why does Notion product design stand out? — Find out why