Part 1: What pitfalls to avoid and what opportunities to embrace
When building an exceptional product experience, there are certain pitfalls that product teams can avoid and tips that they should embrace.
In partnership with Product Hunt, Sprig’s CEO & Founder Ryan Glasgow and Head of Product Ning Ma presented their top dos and don'ts of building a product experience from their own careers and experiences.
If you missed this incredible session, fear not. We’ve got you covered with the top dos and don’ts of building a product experience:
Don’t sacrifice user insights for speed.
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, product managers are constantly under pressure to deliver products and features quickly. However, in the race against time, product managers need to make sure that they don’t overlook the importance of user insights.
User insights provide invaluable information about the target audience, their needs, and their frustrations with your product.
You can set up a continuous user insights program to quickly and regularly gather user insights. Examples include ongoing user experience metrics (through Sprig!), a weekly call with different customers or a customer advisory board.
Don’t keep stakeholders out of the loop.
Engaging and collaborating with stakeholders throughout the product development life cycle is vital for achieving shared goals and ensuring the product's success. Stakeholders bring diverse perspectives and insights to the table. By collaborating with stakeholders, product managers can tap into their domain expertise and market knowledge.
When product leaders collaborate, they can share user insights with sales, customer success and marketing and make user insights as accessible as possible. Your stakeholders might also have the best possible solution to an issue. Design or Sales might have an idea that you haven’t considered yet!
Don’t rely on NPS alone.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) has gained significant popularity as a customer loyalty metric over the years. While it has become a widely adopted tool, it's essential to acknowledge the flaws inherent in NPS.
For one, there’s no context in the product. A survey outside of the product isn’t going to tell you what you need to change in your product. NPS also provides an incomplete picture of user sentiment. Plus, NPS only surveys a segment of your users, leading to incomplete results.
And lastly, NPS does not provide product recommendations. Unlike Sprig AI which provides actionable product recommendations, NPS only provides general user signal and not next steps that you should take.
Do iterate.
“Always iterate” is actually one of our company values because we really believe in the value of testing and learning.
Iteration, the process of continuously refining and improving a product through repeated cycles of feedback and adjustment, offers numerous benefits that can greatly enhance a team's effectiveness and drive customer satisfaction.
When you embrace iteration, you can solve issues that you couldn’t cover in the initial launch and as you learn more about users, you can improve the product to match learnings.
And as we all know, people change. The needs of your users may change and you should iterate to meet these changes head on.
Do get to know your users
User insights provide a deep understanding of user behaviors, motivations, and expectations, empowering businesses to make informed decisions, tailor their offerings, and create remarkable experiences that resonate with their target audience.
By tapping into the wealth of knowledge that user insights offer, organizations can gain a competitive edge, foster customer loyalty, drive innovation, and ultimately deliver products and services that fulfill the evolving needs of their users.
And these benefits will show in your metrics – Sprig customers have boosted product adoption, increased engagement and eliminated churn.
So, what’s next?
You may wonder, now that I know the top dos and don’ts of building a product experience, what’s next? How do I get to know my users and not sacrifice speed?
In our next article, we’ll cover how to use Sprig to understand your users to build a better product experience.
