This question is essential to product managers – because the way time and people are organized directly affects the outcomes these teams can provide.

Prioritization techniques help product managers and their teams bring structure to the way work is planned and actioned.

I’ve been fascinated by the various options available to sharpen our focus through prioritization.

In this post we’ll look at 9 prioritization techniques to help you plan work better and make teams happier in the process.

While the focus of these is product teams, these techniques can be adapted to projects, departments or wider business goals.

IMPACT

Impact stands for Interesting, Meaningful, People, Actionable, Clear and Testable.

As Product Plan states, “IMPACT is a mindset for ensuring you’re doing things that matter.”

You can use IMPACT as a rough assessment tool as well as to gauge the dimensions of any opportunity your team plans to work on.

You can also assign a scale to each letter of IMPACT (eg. 1 – 10), to score and rank ideas more rigourosly against this framework.

MoSCoW

MoSCoW stands for Must, Should, Would, Could. This prioritization technique is most useful for specific requirements / features / sub-ideas of a larger theme.

It translates to:

• M – we Must have this to fulfil the requirement / customer need / solution (in other words, “without this fundamental item we cannot launch!”).
• S – we Should have this to fulfil X.
• C – we Could have this to fulfil X.
• W – we Would (in a perfect world) have this to fulfil X.

I have used MoSCoW at least fifty times across various products and projects. It is quick, well-known, and effective, at least for a first-cut of priorities.

Once teams have classified features against MoSCoW, the attention focuses on the Musts and Shoulds. Often the Coulds and Woulds are ‘nice to have’ and are addressed in future releases.

Value / Effort

Value and Effort product prioritization is a powerful tool to bring focus to what matters most.

Value can be a combination of what is valuable to the business (new revenue, repeat revenue, new customers, increased engagement) and Effort is comprised of what draws on a team’s time (complexity of feature, resources required to work on the solution, ambiguity of the problem).

With value / effort, ideas are ranked against these two dimensions (out of either a 5 or 10 point scale).

The tool is most useful when results are then plotted against four quadrants (1. time sinks, 2, big projects, 3, quick wins, 4. fill ins) as shown in this post from Jexo on the Value vs Effort method.

Product Tree

The Product Tree allows product teams to engage in product and strategy planning in a fun and engaging way.

Using the metaphor of a tree – teams group, prioritize and sequence product features based on the tree’s trunk, branches, roots and leaves.

In this model, the branches represent core functionalities, roots are technical requirements and capabilities, and branches and sub-branches are feature themes and ideas.

The tree can be used as the primary metaphor for this exercise; Miro has a great template for Product Tree planning. Or, it can be used more loosely, allowing the tree to be more like a fish bone diagram.

One of the best examples I’ve seen of this techniques is the Product Tree from Up Banking, which is a highly useful example as it’s published online.

RICE

RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort for any idea on the pipeline.

As an example:

• Reach – how many customers will this idea/feature reach and over which time period?
• Impact – how much impact will this idea/feature have on a specific and important metric? Here, the metric could be measures like “uplift in conversion as part of the acquisition funnel”, “increase in customer engagement with the mobile app,” or “reduction in customer churn for online customers.” Again, often impact against the chosen metric is scored against a 5 or 10 point scale.
• Confidence – this is the level of confidence we have on the idea/feature’s ability to provide the outcomes (usually of Reach and Impact) when it is delivered. This lens helps us guard against unrealistic or overoptimistic expectations.
• Effort – Effort is based on the total project time an idea / feature will take to release, based on “person months.” A person month is the effort expended by one person in a month. So, if an idea / feature takes a week of planning, two weeks of design and five weeks of engineering / development / testing time, it would score 2.

Once we have these variables for each idea / feature, we multiply the first three (Reach x Impact x Confidence) and divide by the fourth (Effort).

The output of this provides each idea / feature’s RICE score, which is a proxy for total impact against total effort.

Those items with the highest score should be those that have greatest impact.

What is great about the RICE framework is that it includes consideration of ‘confidence’ for outcomes, which is not always present in other prioritization techniques.

Story Mapping

The true value of Story Mapping lies in its focus on jobs/customer needs and also developing a ‘view of entire journey contexts’ before breaking epics and features into releases.

I first learnt about Story Mapping many years ago when attending a course by Jeff Patton on ‘Passionate Product Ownership’.

Of all the methods included in this post, if time is available to populate the Story Map, I would lean on Story Mapping as a preferred tool.

Jeff Patton has very well regarded book on this topic. This post from Digite on story mapping is also highly useful.

Weighted Shortest Job First

WSJF (often pronounced Wiz-Jif) is from the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It can be used to prioritize and sequence epics, features, and capabilities that create maximum economic benefit.

WSJF estimates the Cost of Delay and divides this by the Job Duration (or Size), with the view that those items with the highest score, should be prioritized first, to provide the greatest overall value.

The value of this method is that it brings a higher degree of rigour and process to evaluating items of work. This should support the highest customer and economic value in the quickest timeframe possible.

The downside of this prioritization technique is that it requires a significant degree of process, that teams understand (and are not overwhelmed by) the method, and can take people a while to get into the rhythm of planning releases in this way.

Speed Boat

If WSJF is higher on process, speed boat prioritization is perceived as light, quick and fun.

In Speed boat prioritization, we start with a drawing.

Sketch a speedboat with an anchor, tell the group that the anchor represents all the features that are stopping the boat from going as fast / be as strong as it could, and ask the group to draw and label more anchors that represent features that are preventing the product from being awesome.

Often this visualization of problems / issues / constraints permits teams to provide constructive criticism of a product, in a highly visual and productive way.

Criteria-Based

Sometimes projects and products require wider prioritization lenses than can be provided by the models above.

An example I’ve seen often is when a company has 5 strategic objectives (eg. customer experience, compliance, financial return, platform, etc) and some or all of these would be useful to include in prioritizing product features.

In these cases, criteria-based prioritization can be valuable as the only (or an ancillary) method of prioritization for ideas in the pipeline.

This method involves:

• agreeing on the criteria to be used (ideally 5 – 7);
• determining a scoring system for these criteria (this is where a rubric is highly useful);
• scoring ideas/features against this framework;
• discussing the results to then determine the sequence for these items to be delivered.

This technique is much like the IMPACT technique we started this list with, only here, we are defining the criteria to be used, instead of using the acronym of IMPACT.

The upside of using this approach is that it is highly flexible and can be bespoke, based on the needs of the business.

The downside is that it can take time to reach agreement on the criteria (and the way they’re weighted), but once in place, it is a solid framework.

These are a slice of the many prioritization techniques available to plan and deliver work effectively. Many of these I learnt through my own lessons as a product manager. They are highly useful in combination with a strategy process.

I hope this list helps you. If you have a preferred method, consider letting others know which one it is, by leaving a comment below.

The post 9 Prioritization Techniques For Product Managers appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

Whether it’s mobile marketing, conversion rate optimization (CRO) or how to get the biggest bang for buck from paid search activities, a wealth of ideas exist if we know where to look.

These 9 digital marketing blogs continuously up-the-game by sharing proven techniques to jump-start website performance.

Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute publishes new content daily. Its authors have a razor-sharp eye toward what works in content marketing. What I like most about the blog is that each post has plenty of examples (most with images from campaigns or sites that are actively marketing) and focused suggestions for what can make a website great.
https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/

Moz

Moz was founded back in 2004 by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig and has become synonymous with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Though Fishkin left Moz in 2018, the Moz blog continues to be a valuable resource for marketers. Most recently I’ve been interested in the blog’s exploration of how SEO and CRO can play nice together.
https://moz.com/blog

Convince and Convert

The thing I love most about this blog, is that it explores digital marketing as related to building great narratives – word of mouth marketing, building social proof and, amongst other things, how to know if you’re chatting to a human or robot. The blog is not afraid of tending toward the explorative and is the better for it.
https://www.convinceandconvert.com/blog/

Occam’s Razor

Avinash Kaushik is the author of the blog, Occams Razor. Closely connected with digital analytics and marketing, this site has some deep dives into many of the subjects that marketers either care deeply about or are confused by. One of my personal favorites is Kaishnik’s article on digital marketing attribution models, which includes a detailed look at the benefits and downsides of each model.
https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/

Sumo

Sumo, as a company, is all about eCommerce growth. So it’s little surprise that their blog contains highly specific articles about how to increase conversion of online shopping carts. I quite enjoyed their write up of where to use power words in creative assets to improve conversions.  This blog is great for marketers running online shopping assets.
https://sumo.com/stories

Copyblogger

Brian Clark started copyblogger in 2006 and it quickly become an essential resource for digital copywriters. The advice on Copyblogger helps marketers make their content more visible on search engines, create successful openings for blog posts, as well as overcome obstacles that stand in the way of their creativity.
https://www.copyblogger.com/

Contently

Contently’s blog is aptly called ‘The Content Strategist’. While the blog focuses on what it takes to build great content, it also explores strategy, transformation and ROI as highly related themes. It’s a great resource to tap into and I particularly enjoyed the insights shared by long-time Editor In Chief, Joe Lazauska, about how Contently grew its audience from 14,000 to 400,000 readers.
https://contently.com/strategist/

Econsultancy

Econsultancy has developed a strong reputation for creating and sharing well researched data about how digital marketing is changing the landscape. In one of my first internet marketing roles I remember discovering Econsultancy. Then, the data made my job as a digital marketer that little bit simpler. Today the blog still focuses on very relevant and current issues, though I do find some of the deeper analytical content sits behind the paywall for paying subscribers. Nevertheless it is still an excellent read.
https://econsultancy.com/blog/

Seth Godin

Godin’s blog is about online marketing, and then again it isn’t. He is a master of the thought-provoking, short post, on all subjects from using social media better, through to what makes us happy. I go to Seth’s blog for the random, the profound and the immensely useful and so far have not been disappointed. It is a great place to visit for fresh thinking.
https://seths.blog/

Your Go-To Digital Marketing Blogs?

Do you have other digital marketing blogs that you refer to as a digital marketer?  If so, I’d love to hear…please consider sharing a comment below.

The post 9 Digital Marketing Blogs For Every Marketer’s Toolkit appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

But we don’t have to be frustrated by this question. I’m just happy when people ask.

That’s because there’s a bigger risk when we think that CX and UX are the same thing.

They are related, but they’re also very different.  And both are highly relevant to helping companies compete in the experience economy.

Unfortunately ‘digital’ as a specialisation has not been kind when it comes to buzz words. When we talk about things that sound the same – like User Interface and User Interaction and User Experience – it’s easy to see why our specialisation is confusing to many people. Likewise, it’s no wonder customer experience and user experience are often intertwined.

In this post I share my perspective on how CX and UX fit together. These principles are not set in stone….rather they’re intended as a guide to help clarify these concepts and avoid confusion.

How to Define Customer Experience and User Experience

Customer Experience is an umbrella concept encompassing all channels and all products and how people feel and place value on experiences (broad or narrow) with a brand.  It involves a broad concept of experience, where CX “encompasses the sum of all interactions between an organisation and a customer over the entire relationship”.¹

User Experience refers to a “person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service”.² The term became more widely used in the 90s but has origins that stem from the machine-age.

While User Experience can relate to physical products, it is most commonly aligned with computers and, even more recently, the development of interfaces that have emerged via websites, smartphones and mobile apps. As a result, User Experience is (in the majority) focused on digital experiences and is concerned with the question ‘how can the end user achieve their goals’.  It’s worth taking a look at Peter Morville’s seven perspectives of user experience that can help explore and validate product design.

The practice of User Experience supports a brand to design digital journeys that solve the “right problem for the end consumer in an efficient and enjoyable manner.”³

Okay, But What Are The Practical Distinctions?

If we stick with the definitions only, we risk missing the distinctions between CX and UX. So here I’ve considered CX and UX across a variety of dimensions.

Now these are generalisations, so please don’t be upset with me if these are not 100% accurate. Generalisations are useful, but they do not always capture the full reality. I recommend a soft focus when we consider these to help us spot the larger differences between CX and UX:

A Working Example….

While CX and UX can be pursued as seperate activities, better value is achieved when they’re used together.

Let’s consider an example.

Several years ago I worked with a team to design a new mobile app. We used CX to conduct high level data gathering about what might be important to people when using this future service, which interactions these customers performed frequently, how a new service could help them with these behaviours, whether they would use the new service when at home, the office or on the go. (For interest, Designing CX has some excellent resources for CX journey mapping.)

We also explored with customers whether they would place value in a mobile app and what features they would expect to see within an app. We used this information to develop some broad concepts of what the mobile app might do, and then explored through focus groups how these concepts could fit into peoples’ lives. I would consider all of this work to be Customer Experience.

When we shortlisted features for the app, we developed paper wireframes for the app’s main screens as well as some typical tasks we might expect users to do (like ‘register for an account’). We used these paper wireframes to run one-on-one user research sessions with customers, the input from which we used to refine our designs. From paper wireframes, we created an interactive prototype. Again we tested this with users, using the prototype to ask users to try a series of tasks.  We asked users to score how ‘usable’ they found the prototype. We also used these results and insights to refine the prototype further. Eventually we did a final round of testing before launch of the app. I would consider all of these activities User Experience.

Both CX and UX worked together in this project. Without CX we would not have known whether a mobile app would be useful to customers and how it would naturally fit into and complement their lives. Without User Experience, we may have built an app that was not fit-for-purpose and didn’t help customers to perform tasks as simply as possible.

This example shows how both CX and UX are discreet activities but add value to one another when used in combination.

I found Digitalgov‘s article on the differences between CX and UX particularly useful. However, I would adapt their model to show CX and UX overlapping (as is shown under the ‘Bingo!’ heading).  While both can operate together, both also have their own specific disciplines and practices, and thus can operate separately.  I suggest showing UX as a smaller discipline, to reflect it’s narrower focus when compared to CX.

Exceptions That Challenge CX and UX Conventions

These guidelines are not fixed in stone. While the insights above are useful, it’s important to point out some exceptions and emerging issues.

Recently I’ve been thinking about three examples that provoke new thinking.

#1 ChatBots:
According to Business Insider, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025.⁴ ChatBot’s go well beyond simple screen design, relying on content and conversation to respond to customers. While ChatBots occur within a digital experience, the ways in which ChatBots engage with users departs from many of the conventions of user experience.

#2 Voice (eg. Google Home)
The emergence of voice-enabled computing and artificial intelligence, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, also challenge the concept of user experience. Customers understand these services because they are an extension of services we have come to know that are primarily digital. For example, ordering an Amazon product on Alexa is an extension of ordering an Amazon product on their eCommerce website. However, over time these services will create completely new interactions and services. These products blend digital and physical interactions and require a larger concept of experience. While the specific task we seek these products to perform on our behalf might be considered User Experience, the study of how we use voice-enabled devices in the home and how these change our perception of convenience, are really questions for Customer Experience.

#3 Digital, Data and Push services
Services that blend digital experiences, with rich data and proactive notifications, will also stretch our perceptions of UX and CX. User experience is often concerned with solving a customer pain point or increasing customer delight. Yet, many of these new services focus on small increases of convenience. For example, when Google Now prompts you to try a different restaurant from the one you’ve eaten at last week, this may uncover a problem the user didn’t know they had (eg. the need for more variety / something novel). Whereas people used to either ask friends for recommendations of restaurants or turn toward review aggregation sites to discover new restaurants, this interaction pattern blends these two worlds with Google’s understanding of the user’s previous behaviour (eg. in this interaction, Google is the trusted friend and review source). Though the interaction may be digital, the ways in which it challenges existing behaviour redefines the concept of ‘looking for a restaurant’ which challenges broader concepts of customer experience.

These three examples aren’t cause to throw out the models above, but they do point out some of the emerging trends to consider.

That’s a wrap! I would love to hear how you view CX and UX. You can share your thoughts using the comments area below :).

References:

1. Understanding Customer Experience, HBR.  https://hbr.org/2007/02/understanding-customer-experience
2. User Experience vs Customer Experience: What’s the Dif, Digital Gov. https://www.digitalgov.gov/2014/07/07/user-experience-ux-vs-customer-experience-cx-whats-the-dif/
3. User Experience, Wikipedia.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience
4. The latest market research, trends & landscape in the growing AI chatbot industry, Business Insider. http://www.businessinsider.com/chatbot-market-stats-trends-size-ecosystem-research-2017-10/

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The answer I give is…’maybe’.

It’s certain that ‘mobile’ is one of the fundamental trends changing the internet. So ensuring a business can capture this opportunity is essential for any strategy.

Building an app is one of the options to do this. Another option is to create a ‘mobile responsive’ website. Sometimes, businesses can pursue both strategies with good results.

The presentation below extends the thinking of the blog post 5 Proven Formulas of The World’s Best Mobile Apps.

[slideshare id=61543411&doc=alessiobresciani-5provenformulasoftheworldsbestmobileapps-apr2016-160501053707&w=715&h=550]
If you enjoyed this, you may also be interested to read How To Build Mobile App Features That Keep People Coming Back or Why Mobile Apps Win Our Hearts Every Time.

The post 5 Proven Formulas of The World’s Best Mobile Apps – Slide Share appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

With Darth Vader George Lucas explored the possibility ‘what if the greatest Sith Lord was a man’?

In this post we ask the question ‘what would your content tell you if it was Darth Vader’?  Not just any content, but your website content, or your blog content, or your YouTube content.

Random, hey?  Here goes….

#1. “I find your lack of faith disturbing”

For those people who do not yet believe that content drives the web, Darth Vader would say this. In 1996 Bill Gates said “content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting”.  A true visionary, Gates had faith in content way back then.  So for us there really is no excuse not to.

#2. “You underestimate my power”

Even if we believe in content, oftentimes we will dramatically underestimate its potential. Who would have thought that the top 10 most viewed videos on You Tube generated 11,517,422,907 views by this year. Or that a niche blog titled ThingsOrganizedNeatly (which shows photos of, you guessed it, things organized neatly) would receive over 350,000 tumblr followers (a brilliant site, by the way). Content truly has exponential power.

#3. “Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them”

Content has incredible persuasive and influencing power. When people are sitting on the fence, great content can woo them into action. There are loads of examples of this, from Shopify’s post on tweaking calls to action through to Copyblogger’s examples of small website changes.

#4. “Luke… help me take this mask off”

When Darth Vader’s dreams of overlord glory vanish and he is at his most vulnerable, he takes the mask off.  Then he is at his most sincere. Then he builds a connection with his son. Great content is honest, raw, and transparent. When content is written like this it’s emotional and connects with people. This is a reminder that great content written with integrity and honesty builds a connection with your audience.  Sometimes we need to remember to take the mask off.

#5. “Join me, and together, we can rule the galaxy”

Of course, if our content was Darth Vader and we followed the wisdoms above, I am sure with great content we could indeed rule the world…if not the galaxy.

Do you have any other favorite quotes that I’ve missed which content would say?  Please consider sharing them by leaving a comment below.

The post 5 Things Your Content Would Tell You If It Was Darth Vader appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

Let’s face it, we’ve all had horrible experiences with organisations at some point in our lives. When this occurs, we are far less likely to use the organisation ever again, and far more likely to tell all our friends not to do so as well.

Today the world’s best companies take customer experience very seriously. They invest time and effort into understanding the journey customers go through, and pinpointing the many places where they can improve.

Given the renewed focus on the customer over the last decade it is little wonder that metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES) have become so important.

In this post we take a look at several examples of customer experience maps. We also look at 8 checkpoints to consider when you start your own customer experience mapping activity.

2 Excellent Examples of Customer Experience Maps

#1. Adaptive Path

Adaptive Path is a world-renowned experience agency. Capital One acquired the agency in 2014 to provide in-house expertise for user experience and service design. In this example from their blog Adaptive Path details what was required to provide an experience map for Rail Europe. As stated in the write up, Rail Europe “wanted to get a better handle on their customers’ journeys across all touchpoints, which would allow them to more fully understand where they should focus their budget, design and technology resources.” Personally, I like the lenses of Doing, Thinking, Feeling that are used to explore the customer experience. The map also does an excellent job of detailing linear and non-linear journeys.

#2. Seek Recruiter Experience

Late in 2014 a user experience team at Seek mapped the Recruiter Experience. The team (Mathew Devey, Tim Crook, and Chris Gray) wrote about the process of creating the map on the Seek Product Blog. In their notes they emphasised the importance of gathering high-quality research and data points that represent actual customer views. Often a limitation of many experience maps is that they draw only upon the internal views of an organisation. The Seek approach avoids this by involving customers in the research process, as well as members of the internal team.  I’m a strong believer in involving customers in research as I’ve detailed in other posts.  According to their blog, the mapping process helped the Seek team to “identify and prioritise the right product initiatives, fostered a user centric approach and will ultimately lead to a better product for our customers.”

Top Tips for Creating a Customer Experience Map

Over the years I’ve created dozens of experience maps. Some of these were all-encompassing maps, covering as many aspects of the journey as possible into a single reference document. Others were far more fine-grain, exploring only very specific aspects of the customer journey in detail.

If you are seeking to create your own customer experience map, here are some 8 tips for creating purposeful maps with your team:

#1. Spend time gathering and building up your cross-functional and highly collaborative Experience Mapping team.

#2. Create a research program that gathers inputs from voice of the customer.

#3. Ensure that you have a process to capture, consider and prioritise insights and data points to inform the customer experience map.

#4. Consider the variables that are important to the customer experience and iterate the map continuously through collaboration.

#5. Be open to ideas new ideas but also defend the insights revealed through customer research.

#6. Focus discussion at a level consistent with the goals of the map (If you have a highly explorative team, it’s natural for people to want to dive into the detail of specific aspects of the customer experience. This is an excellent learning practice for the team. Just make sure that at some point discussion returns to an overarching level that is appropriate for the experience map)

#7. Walk-through the final experience map with as many stakeholders as possible and invite dicussion.

#8. Reflect on the customer experience map as a way to plan and checkpoint initiatives, so that the overall experience is constantly improved.

I hope you found this post useful in thinking about how to approach creating a customer experience map.

The post How To Use a Customer Experience Map to Delight Customers appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

While news like this instantly shines the spotlight on Netflix, it is the historical decisions made by the company to continuously disrupt that have ensured its success where others have failed.

In this article we look at the role of digital disruption across industries.

While disruption is often spoken about as large scale change undertaken at a specific point in time, the most significant disruption occurs through continuous change. When companies are able to understand an industry’s value chain and then continuously reinvent it piece by piece through digital technologies, this is when large scale digital disruption is possible.

Digital Disruption Spreads Through Value Chains

Take the airline industry as an example.  Disruption took hold at one place in a value chain, and then spread to adjacent steps.

The game changed when customers began booking flights online.  This occurred at the start of the value chain, at the moment of Purchase.  Then came online check-in and self-serve kiosks at airports. Now digital disruption is happening in the flight cabin itself, with WIFI, on-demand tablet entertainment, in-seat connectivity, and exploration of virtual reality for travelers.²

Virgin America is recognised as a leader in the industry and has drawn upon its agility in digital to connect many of these innovations for customers.  Beyond digital, it has also tied digital innovation to support wider customer experiences, including great music when you board the flight and entertaining safety videos.  In this way digital is just one aspect of Virgin America’s personality.

Of course no one company is immune from change within a value chain.  And just as airlines have innovated, so too they have had to deal with disruption further up the value chain.  Now at the Pre-Purchasing step, customers use services like Expedia and Adioso to compare a wide variety of prices and offers across airlines – all enabled via digital technologies.

In isolation, many of these developments feel like incremental innovations.  But taken in totality, with the period of the last decade compressed, the entire experience of flying is dramatically different due to these changes.

Leverage and Evolution as the New Platforms for Competition

Netflix used leverage to grow its business.  Netflix had amassed 4.2 million subscribers to its online DVD ordering business in 2005, before it launched its movie streaming business in 2007. Later in 2011 it begin to acquire original content, with series like House of Cards.  In so doing it used its streaming business and subscriber base as leverage to evolve further up the value chain, from distribution into content creation.³

Netflix didn’t quit there.  It continued to spot opportunities to make the experience of watching content even better for customers.

Through continuous digital evolution it introduced innovations such as support for multiple viewing profiles, a sophisticated recommendation engine for subscribers (so that its film-picks have the best possible match-rate for viewer preferences) and new forms of application development to ensure Netflix will play smoothly over thousands of device types.⁴

Incredibly, Netflix’s 65 million members can all watch high quality content closely fitting their expectations, sourced and recommended by Netflix, at home or on the move, advertisement-free and for a fraction of the price of the competition. This is disruption of every step of the value chain.

Winning Brands Are Those That Tie Digital Innovation with an Ongoing Promise of Experience

When we read mission statement examples from the world’s leading companies, many of these are deeply connected to digital disruption.

Digital innovation is enough to capture the attention of customers, but is it enough to keep it?

We’ve seen hundreds of examples of companies that launch a new mobile app, or a new website. For a short time these innovations ignite imaginations and attract customers.

But why do some customers stay when others leave?

What makes customers stay connected is where the company can connect further digital innovation with a consistent experience.

When Uber launched its first service in San Francisco it was the new kid on the block.  And after a time it became a brand unto itself, with its own loyal base of fans.

Uber’s customers told the story of how easy it was to use the service, how incredible it was pinpoint the exact location of their driver. If Uber was not able to sustain this promise when it launched other products, it would have fractured its brand.

Source: Mark Warner “Uber…” www.flickr.com/photos/senatormarkwarner/19588717540/

UberX succeeded because it maintained Uber’s ‘experience promise’ with customers.  It brought all the convenience of the premium Uber service, less some of the frills, and fulfilled expectations at a lower price tag.  It did this in close rapport with the brand that Uber had become.

UberX didn’t feel like we were getting a completely new product, but rather the innovation of an existing product we had come to love.⁵

Even when Uber launched a completely different type of service in the form of UberRush, it preserved its brand. UberRush gives customers a simple way to order a courier service and full knowledge of when their parcel will be collected, just as Uber does for drivers.

What is interesting is that Uber has drawn on its unique competencies (in branding, mapping and moving people) to create services that jump across industries entirely, from providing competition for taxis to couriers.⁶

This is the next wave of digital disruption that will occur, where innovations hop between industries and value chains to bring new services to customers.

Some of these changes are captured in this slide.

References

1. http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/NFLX/454272674x0x839404/C3CE9EE2-C8F3-40A1-AC9A-FFE0AFA20B21/FINAL_Q2_15_Letter_to_Shareholders_With_Tables_.pdf
2. http://www.qantasnewsroom.com.au/media-releases/qantas-samsung-unveil-industry-first-virtual-reality-experience-for-travellers
3. https://pr.netflix.com/WebClient/loginPageSalesNetWorksAction.do?contentGroupId=10477
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix#Original_programming
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_(company)
6. http://blog.uber.com/RUSH

The post Digital Disruption: How Continuous Evolution is Reshaping Industries and Brands appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

It’s a great question because it’s a universal one for anyone looking to establish their digital marketing career.  I’ve certainly been asked this by people of various experience, from graduates to seasoned professionals.

Answering this question prompted me to think about how I learnt along the way (and how I could accelerate the journey for others).

In general, I find the best way to learn is by blending Theory and Practice. Read a little, then put it into action. That’s stood me in good stead in my career and also many other forms of training (sports, lecturing, etc).

So, let’s get to it. These are some of the top tips I would have for others:

1. Build Up a Good Influencer List

Find those people on twitter, linked in, and in blogs that you aspire to be like. Follow them. Connect with them. It never hurts to send a note to these people to say hi, as long as its done with professional respect.

2. Setup Your Feeds

I have many blog feeds from my favorite digital marketers, so I can always see their latest posts. I do this to get inspiration as well as build up my own ‘theory base’. Digital marketing moves quickly, and this keeps me on top of things. If you’re interested, I wrote a on how to set this up (How to Build Your Intelligence System in Less Than 30 Minutes).

3. Start Something

The only way to learn digital marketing is to have skin in the game. I’ve known many digital professionals in my career, and the ones I respect most are those that are ‘on the tools’ every week, whether that’s posting from their social media account, or writing a blog. So, wherever you are in your career, start something. It takes less than $50 to start up a blog (some are even free), and with Twitter and Pinterest anyone can curate content. As well as being valuable ways to contribute creatively in the world, these tools also refine our skills at being great digital marketers.

4. Get involved in Social

When I sent my first Twitter post, I was actually nervous. I didn’t know the first thing about how to curate links, let alone share content with others. But since then I’ve probably learnt more from Social than any other tool. As well as setting up accounts, try some of the tools that let you schedule content, as well as analyse its results. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite are great.

5. When You Hit the Wall, Read

There will be a time when you hit the wall, and you think, ‘yikes, what’s the point’! When this happens, pick up a new book on digital marketing or read a blog. Because digital marketing is an ‘always on’ job, digital marketers can get burnt out quickly. So finding a new tip or piece of theory to re-energise you and get you inspired toward your mission can help. I know I’ve been in those situations more than once.

6. Build Your Mind for Metrics

Finally, I’d suggest dabbling in many digital analytics tools. The day-to-day role of a digital marketer is immersed in analytics, whether that’s Google Analytics or a new A/B Testing Tool. Digital Marketers that are familiar with these tools and can quickly interpret numbers definitely stand out in today’s crowd.

Again, I recommend highly blending a weekly practice of reading and doing (or theory and practice). And digital marketing is certainly an exciting and fast-moving career (and we’re lucky to be in such a rapidly growing area of all industries).

If you are thinking about a change in career or role, you may find my article on factors to consider in your career decision useful.

Feel free to also share your perspective with others by leaving a comment below.

The post How To Kickstart Your Career In Digital Marketing appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

The question doesn’t surprise me. The growth of mobile as a means of accessing the internet has been one of the most fundamental changes to the digital landscape over the last decade.

However, when we ask the question of App vs Responsive Site, what we’re really asking is “how can we best capture the opportunity of mobile#8221;

It’s common for us to think about Apps and Responsive Sites as alternative answers to this question. But in truth these options aren’t always substitutes.

There are several characteristics of Apps that, in my opinion, can’t be replicated by Responsive Sites.  And when done right these characteristics will allow Apps to have superior engagement with customers.

In this post we take a look at these characteristics and the subtle connections Apps have with our perception of ourselves.

1. Our Phone is Our Identity

We know phones are different than desktop computers. But why do we associate our phone with our identity?

Even though our phone performs many of the same activities as a computer (eg. browsing the web, reading emails), it also allows us to speak with our friends and family and manage our contacts.  It also literally connects us with all the things we love – we visually see photos of our friends, we speak with them by voice, we receive tactile sensation when it buzzes in our palm with new messages.

Because of this, our phone has a higher sense of connection and less physical separation (ie. its often in our pocket, as opposed to on the desk in front of us) than a desktop computer.  These are just some of the reasons why we connect our phones so closely with ourselves.

2. Mobile Apps are Part of This Identity

We perceive Apps to be inherently connected with our phone, and therefore our identity.

It seems like a simple distinction, but it’s a fundamental one.

Whether its App Store or Google Play, there’s a record of what Apps we’ve brought, what is installed on our device, even which Apps we like (based on our ratings).

When we purchase a new phone, it’s an almost instant process to update the phone with all the Apps we’ve purchases over time.

This triple connection (between our phone, apps and our identity), blurs the lines separating ourselves from our Apps.

This may be the reason why, when we use Apps we love every day, we feel even more connected to them. When we use Apps we don’t like (or worse, that are updated and shift from being loved to not liked), we reject them from our identity.  Sometimes we feel so enraged we tells others about our dissatisfaction.  This is why Apps foster such vocal communities of interest through feedback on Google Play and App Store.

3. The Same Does Not Apply for Mobile Browsers and Responsive Sites

Browsing a website on a phone is a very different experience from using an App.

As soon as we open a browser, we realise we are connecting with a service that is ‘somewhere out there’. Even if we perceive the Browser to be part of the phone’s ecosystem, we reject that it is connected to us (like an App), because we know it’s fetching something ‘out there’.

And compared with the perfect interactions we often have with great Apps, many of the interactions we have when using a web browser reinforce that it is connecting with something separate from us.  The ‘address’ panel in the browser tells us we have to go somewhere else for the latest news.  The ‘loading bar’ tells us the phone has to retrieve something that is away from us.  When we see a full page website squeezed to our mobile screen, the experience feels completely impersonal.

Of course, Mobile Apps connect to services just like Responsive Sites, but for some reason we aren’t reminded of this.  In fact, we don’t even think about it in the same way we think about websites.

These are some of the subtle psychological differences between using Mobile Apps and Responsive Sites.

Using a Mobile Browser is like renting a car….we’re driving it, but we know it’s not really ours. In contrast, the psychology of using an App is like owning a car that has been customised for us.

We can also think of this in another way – Apps put ‘the world in the palm of ours hands’ (conveying ownership and control) whereas Browsers put ‘the world at our fingertips’ (conveying access, that is separate from us).

A Closing Note on Mobile Apps vs Responsive Sites

When reading the latest articles from industry press, the differences mentioned above are not often discussed.  What is readily available are the incredible stats about the growth of Apps compared to Responsive Websites. I’m suggesting that some of the characteristics of Apps that are discussed above are at the heart of this trend.

The interactivity we’ve seen through native Apps (fluid screen design, four digit pins, native use of the camera), accentuate these characteristics.  And developments like fingerprint logins (eg. Apple Touch Id) will further magnify the connection between our phone and our identity.

This is not to say Apps are a substitute for Responsive Sites.  To have a comprehensive mobile strategy, many industries and their customers are well serviced by having both a compelling App strategy and Responsive Site (take Linked In as an example).  When Apps are done well as part of such a strategy, very often they will have far greater engagement with customers, because they are so closely connected with the perceptions we have of our phone and identity.

The post Why Mobile Apps Win Our Hearts Every Time appeared first on Alessio Bresciani.

User Research is the process of engaging with end-users to understand their needs, motivations and actions. A common form of this type of research is 1 on 1 interviews, where users are asked questions as they interact with a specific idea for a digital product.

Companies will often draw on user research at one stage of their creation cycle (eg. prototyping).  However, User Research can reveal valuable insights at all 7 stages of the design process. It is a high useful activity in combination with building a digital product strategy.

#1 User Research to Gather Ideas

Every business has a process for gathering new ideas. Some try to spot trends in the market. Others look at the competition to find the next innovation. Engaging end users is a great way to get a pulse for what’s valuable or, even better, undiscovered. Asking users what they like in a category of services, and why they selected or did not select our product, can reveal insights and new ideas.

#2 User Research to Create a Concept

When a team has defined a specific concept to explore (eg. a Mobile App that collects store discounts), user research can help add colour and depth to the concept. We could ask the user “how do you collect discount vouchers at the moment”, “how do you keep track of these vouchers”, and “if you used a Mobile App to collect these vouchers, what would you expect to be in that App”. Based on the answers to these questions the product team can extend that specific concept.

#3 User Research to Refine Alternative Concepts

Creativity is about exploring multiple concepts and not stopping at the first concept that comes to mind. I always encourage product teams to define as many concepts as possible, because the most original and valuable idea is rarely the first one. From those concepts, they can select the top five they would like to submit to User Research. During the research process, each of the concepts can be tested with users. We can draw out the elements that have the most value to the user across the concepts. We can validate the unique appeal of each concept. Based on this work, the product team can select a preferred concept or choose the best elements of each to create a hybrid concept.

#4 User Research when Prototyping

Okay, so your product team is in the process of building the new digital product. They’re 30% through the work and are rushing to hit their release date. And they’ve taken some interesting directions during their development cycle. This is a perfect time to trial the early prototypes through User Research. Users will help your team validate the design is on track. Insights from research at this stage will also point out refinements important for the product’s success, as well as guard against blind-spots the product team have missed completely by being too close to the project.

#5 User Research Prior to Launch

So you’re digital product is almost complete and Go Live is only two weeks away. The project team is buzzing with excitement. What’s the point of doing User Research at this stage? Because we’ve missed something.

Things change all the time. From going from a concept to a prototype, or from the prototype to the full product; there will always be something we’ve missed or changed that might not make sense to the end user.

You’ll be amazed what User Research reveals just prior to launch, that the product team had not considered. And at the very least, if no issues are picked up, research will validate what a good job the team has done as well as a list of smaller improvements that can be corrected after Go Live.

#6 User Research to Improve After Launch

The highest performing teams include User Research on an ongoing basis to improve their digital product. Customer behaviours and attitudes evolve and trends re-shape markets entirely…so doing fresh User Research at regular intervals (whether it’s 1 month or 6 months) will help to continually tune the performance of your digital product.

#7 User Research when Exiting a Digital Product

By the time a company has decided to exit and switch off a digital product (whether a website or Mobile App), User Research is very rarely used.

But, research at this stage can help understand why people didn’t use the product, so the company can avoid similar services in the future.

It can also show if there are aspects of the service that some customers love, but didn’t use, because it was not a prominent enough feature.

While here I’ve covered some of the moments to draw on user research, in another post I’ve written of the benefits of user research.  For an overall view of strong user experience pratices, I also recommend taking a look at the excellent Usability.gov site.

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