This post is part 4 of a 4 part series “Developing Startups: Lessons Learned Over Two Decades”. If you’d like to read it from the start, you can jump to the first post here.
In order to make informed decisions, you need:
I’m assuming I don’t have to convince anyone that they should define their target audience. If you do need convincing, read this. Defining your target audience, like with everything else, starts with a gut feeling, then moves to research, exercises like creating customer personas, defining your consumer journeys, then conversations, interviews, polls, etc. However you do it, don’t skip over this process. It provides focus, sharpens your UX/UI, and provides a frame of reference by which you can qualify your decisions and get your investors and team on board. On the flipside, not understanding your users habits, likes and culture, you stand to lose a lot of time and money creating features and ultimately a product, they won’t use.
Once the platform is launched is when the real work starts. Many times a platform is created with one target in mind only to find out that they missed the mark. This could happen even if you had your target figured out perfectly. The market changes so quickly that user habits can change in a matter of months. But this doesn’t have to be a problem as long as you stay on top of current trends and you learn from your users and adjust accordingly. You’re platform is your best tool for doing this.
Once you’ve launched, the simplest way to get the insights into your users is to ask them. Feedback forms and reviews should be built into the platform as a sincere effort to learn from your users. Yes it’s scary to open the doors to direct criticism, but if you’re not willing to receive and process your startup’s faults, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
The next step in your evolution through Zen and the art of platform maintenance is the implementation of a customer support platform. This steps up your game, letting your users know that not only are you listening but that you’re acting on their concerns. And if done correctly it also lets you start building a knowledge base which can allow future support seekers to looks through previous user’s concerns and questions.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you’re going to take this approach you must have the (human) resources in place to review and do triage. You don’t want requests falling into the black hole of customer service, but you also don’t want all your requests to pass unfiltered to the dev team. Your support team should let users know that they are being attended to while also protecting the development team from an onslaught of requests. A properly setup support process can result in a more loyal user base. It’s a powerful tool.
There are many 3rd party services that can be incorporated into your support flow without having to invest in building your own system. Zendesk, Freshdesk, Zoho desk, and HappyFox are a few.
This Build-Measure-Learn cycle is the process by which Validated Learning occurs. Validated Learning is exactly what it sounds like, learning that has been validated by data. The Lean Startup methodology specifically emphasizes frequent experiments on actual users to generate the data and validate your hypothesis.
The Learn phase of the cycle is where you take your data, feedback and learnings and generate ideas and new hypotheses in order to build or modify (experimental) functionality and begin the process over again.
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