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User Disengagement

zerodha.tech

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Re: User Disengagement

#21

Post by tareqak »

This blog post reminds me of older HN posts about in the Silicon Valley area schools try to be more low-tech/hands-on in their learning whereas schools elsewhere get Chromebooks and ed-tech offerings to the brim. Both the “Only do what is truly useful and meaningful to end users” and “Don’t do unto others, what you don’t want done unto you” characteristics are relevant because of how technology is dropped on the laps of teachers and students without necessarily have a clear direction of how to improve educational outcomes.

I don’t know if this is at all still the case.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: User Disengagement

#22

Post by skybrian »

toss1 wrote: post #4

Excellent approach - I hope it is part of a trend. I also wonder if after decades of VCs pumping trillions of dollars into apps and platforms seeking shallow 'engagement' user metrics, and at least the vanguard of the population starting to get sick of it, and it becoming a zero-sum-game, the landscape has fundamentally changed. E.g., iirc Google originally used the metric of short user time on their site to indicate…

Google minimizing its own screen time is smart, but I think it's harder to encourage this at the ecosystem level. For example, a useful but flawed metric for deciding whether a search link is good is that the user clicks on the link and doesn't come back for a while.

A user bouncing off a website immediately shows that it's probably a bad choice for them, but unfortunately not bouncing off it sometimes means that the website is gaming the metrics by wasting people's time through whatever means.

In particular there are websites that are automatically generated in a way so you don't figure that out immediately. They look like they might answer your question, but under closer inspection it's nonsense.

Videos that look like they might answer your question are another example of a time-waster.

In a way, websites where you can see immediately that it's not what you're looking for are better than the ones where it's unclear. Best would be actually finding an answer. That can't be judged by screen time, though.

Re: User Disengagement

#23

Post by usrn »

skybrian wrote: post #22
toss1 wrote: post #4

Excellent approach - I hope it is part of a trend. I also wonder if after decades of VCs pumping trillions of dollars into apps and platforms seeking shallow 'engagement' user metrics, and at least the vanguard of the population starting to get sick of it, and it becoming a zero-sum-game, the landscape has fundamentally changed. E.g., iirc Google originally used the metric of short user time on their site to indicate…

Google minimizing its own screen time is smart, but I think it's harder to encourage this at the ecosystem level. For example, a useful but flawed metric for deciding whether a search link is good is that the user clicks on the link and doesn't come back for a while. A user bouncing off a website immediately shows that it's probably a bad choice for them, but unfortunately not bouncing off it sometimes means that the…

People have to stop measuring things and need to start justifying things with arguments.

I like to compare "data driven decision making" and "reason driven decision making." Animals make data driven decisions, you don't want to behave like an animal. Sure it's better than being blind but your data should inform an argument not be the argument.

Re: User Disengagement

#24

Post by XorNot »

jw1224 wrote: post #12
bibliographer wrote: post #9

We are working on a B2B application right now and we're seeing 2 linked patterns we're looking to overcome: -- one strong champion in the customer organisation that uses us actively, then changes jobs / goes on maternity leave / retires -> customer churns -- a champion in the customer organisation does not find the time to onboard other users in their company, so the value of what we offer is smaller than it could be…

I’m in exactly the same boat with my B2B SaaS — particularly with the champion finding time to onboard the rest of their team. Our app takes a bit of setup time, and I put a lot of work into making a really user-friendly “onboarding guide”, basically a checklist of things to do to set up the account, accompanied by visual call-outs for each step in the UI. Before we had this, we forced companies to complete the full…

Personally I hate those getting started checklists. They tend to be full of a bunch of stuff I observably do not need to do to use the product for my job, because I never have to do them to do it.

I know in the past I've just ad blocked the UI elements for those lists because they contain things which don't matter - or worse, which I can't do because the organization has disabled that feature for regular users in the company.

I'd be pretty curious to know what's on your list - I bet even with 5 items, your data is probably actually telling you you might not need it at all.

Re: User Disengagement

#25

Post by toss1 »

skybrian wrote: post #22
toss1 wrote: post #4

Excellent approach - I hope it is part of a trend. I also wonder if after decades of VCs pumping trillions of dollars into apps and platforms seeking shallow 'engagement' user metrics, and at least the vanguard of the population starting to get sick of it, and it becoming a zero-sum-game, the landscape has fundamentally changed. E.g., iirc Google originally used the metric of short user time on their site to indicate…

Google minimizing its own screen time is smart, but I think it's harder to encourage this at the ecosystem level. For example, a useful but flawed metric for deciding whether a search link is good is that the user clicks on the link and doesn't come back for a while. A user bouncing off a website immediately shows that it's probably a bad choice for them, but unfortunately not bouncing off it sometimes means that the…

Yes, these are real problems - it is a whole lot easier to measure 'engagement' with the proxy of [screen time in our app], which is a very good proxy, whereas measuring app effectiveness is much harder as you point out.

The problem is that measuring 'engagement' is like the drunk looking for his lost key under the lamppost because that's where the light is, not because that is where it will be found - and almost he entire industry is using the wrong metric like that hapless drunk . . .

Re: User Disengagement

#26

Post by abhayhegde »

marc_io wrote: post #17

> No marketing team. $0 marketing spend. Blogging is marketing too, so this statement in particular is not accurate. In fact, I would say that this very post was quite convincing and a good marketing — and branding — example. It made me want to know more about this company and “engage” more with it.

But not written with an intention to market themselves I guess. If merely expressing their true intents works in their favor while not boasting about it, I would not call it marketing.

Nevertheless, it nearly costs $0 to host the site, so even if this is marketing, no spending on it.

Re: User Disengagement

#27

Post by duxup »

I agree / like this article.

I wonder about measuring something related to both engagement and disengagement.

Some customers will disengage because they're not going to be a customer, never were, and it just wasn't going to happen. Recording that type of disengagement and saying "oh no that's bad" is a mistake.

I think they do sort of address that with "We charge users a fee, albeit nominal, to sign up.". That seems to narrow the field a great deal and seems useful to find the folks who are good potential customers. Very nice.

I've worked at so many B2B places where they chase big company or rando crap company for business and you can just tell that "These guys are not a good fit, if they walk that's not bad, it's good." But measuring that / understanding it is hard.

Related story. I recently heard about a perspective customer, a big company, could be a lot of revenue. But then I found out they pretty much ran on spreadsheets emailed to each other, had a whole staff whose job it was (as I understand it) was to be a human form of "git" to rectify conflicts as they got emailed around... and the spreadsheets were never right anyway. That was just the tip of the iceburg. A demo call involved the folks at this big company arguing over what they even DO now... just the most basic things. It was ugly.

The issue is we're a small company and these guys needed a consultant to come in, be the bad guy, tell everyone what to do (and take all their money) and probably fail at it before their management really realizes what is going on ... thankfully they passed on us.

Re: User Disengagement

#28

Post by marc_io »

abhayhegde wrote: post #26
marc_io wrote: post #17

> No marketing team. $0 marketing spend. Blogging is marketing too, so this statement in particular is not accurate. In fact, I would say that this very post was quite convincing and a good marketing — and branding — example. It made me want to know more about this company and “engage” more with it.

But not written with an intention to market themselves I guess. If merely expressing their true intents works in their favor while not boasting about it, I would not call it marketing. Nevertheless, it nearly costs $0 to host the site, so even if this is marketing, no spending on it.

They are spending time to host the site, to maintain the domain and to write and review blog posts. This cleary has a cost.

Re: User Disengagement

#29

Post by danuker »

zxienin wrote: post #6

> We charge users a fee, .. to sign up. This friction causes users without a strong intent to do financial investments to drop off. .... The mere act of signing up does not create a user. This is so obvious. It amazes me, that one needs to swim against the tide, on something as obvious as this. this is a good post.

> Choosing a financial services firm to manage one’s personal finances is a critical, long term decision.

This is not true for every industry. For example, a lot of mobile games are "freemium".

It might be worth offering free services to some people, in order to get them hooked. Maybe that way more end up signing up.

Re: User Disengagement

#30

Post by josefrichter »

Great piece. At least the philosophical first half. As a designer, I often see raised eyebrows when I say the user should get into our app, get stuff done in 5 seconds, and gtfo, ideally without even consciously realising they used the product :-)
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