31–40 of 41 posts
Thanks for the writeup. I like this approach as it's a slightly different way of something that's always been a dream for most designers to have UI's that evolve as you evolve over time. I have myself an app which is very unique and have had to find ways to make people understand what is unique and why they should download it. My primary method is video and that works out fine but maybe I should try this method out.…
Our Aha moments, the features that made us different, were also the reason people weren’t sticking around. People expect an email client to work a certain way. Our unique features made us too different. They made the interface unfamiliar — if you didn’t engage with our onboarding, chances are, you were lost.
We took all of these features out. Every single one of them. And by doing so, we created a bog standard email client. It did everything a regular email client did, and nothing else. It worked exactly as users expected it to — so we didn’t need our complicated on-boarding anymore. But that’s not exactly a compelling proposition.
We took them out of the UI, but we put them somewhere else. We created a ‘Skills Center’. You accessed it via a button that we highlight early in the user journey. It is the only thing that stands out from an otherwise familiar UI. Now, when a user played with Hiri for two minutes and realised that there’s nothing new or different, inevitably they clicked on the one thing that was. And when they do — we have them.
In the Skills Center, you can add the features that make Hiri unique. In your own time, you can explore these features and turn them on.
It reduced our time-to-Aha moment from one week to one hour. Our conversion rate shot up from 1 in 50 to 1 in 10.
Not sure I understand what exactly is novel about your approach. It sounds like your opening pitch was for solving problems that your visitors didn't have. That's an age old problem. You fixed that. Then, once you got a bit more of their attention, you started to elaborate on the product. This too is not much of a novelty. That's good old gradual on-boarding, "gentle introductions" and what have you.
If there's nothing novel in the initial version why would people think they would want to switch? What would be the reason?
Could it be that your product without any unique features is cheaper than competition, and adding features costs something?
The short version: Our Aha moments, the features that made us different, were also the reason people weren’t sticking around. People expect an email client to work a certain way. Our unique features made us too different. They made the interface unfamiliar — if you didn’t engage with our onboarding, chances are, you were lost. We took all of these features out. Every single one of them. And by doing so, we created a…
There's a famous failure of this approach. Many years ago, there was a Macintosh graphics application designed by Kai Krause. It started out with a very simple interface. After you'd been using it successfully for a while, a new tool would appear. As the user demonstrated competence to the program, more tools would unlock.
Users hated that. When a rumor started that Krause was going to redo the API for Photoshop, user groups petitioned Adobe to stop him.
The short version: Our Aha moments, the features that made us different, were also the reason people weren’t sticking around. People expect an email client to work a certain way. Our unique features made us too different. They made the interface unfamiliar — if you didn’t engage with our onboarding, chances are, you were lost. We took all of these features out. Every single one of them. And by doing so, we created a…
This is something you could A/B test. Some new signups get the old interface, some get the simplified one. There's a famous failure of this approach. Many years ago, there was a Macintosh graphics application designed by Kai Krause. It started out with a very simple interface. After you'd been using it successfully for a while, a new tool would appear. As the user demonstrated competence to the program, more tools wo…
To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.
- Raymond Loewy
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/what-ma...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've come to associate those things with snake oil. They're right up there with "Free trial, but you need to put in a credit card." Sure, some legit services use those techniques, but they're a red flag that they might be a pain to deal with if you choose to back out.
A lot of legit services take a cc with trial sign up to separate the people who might pay from the people who would pay if it was the right solution. The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. I see more and more startups using stripe, between that and the ability to do chargeback with that cc company, I worry less about it. The charg…
Not sure about that. Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? Suspend the account after the trial until the user logs in and confirms the renewal?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something you could A/B test. Some new signups get the old interface, some get the simplified one. There's a famous failure of this approach. Many years ago, there was a Macintosh graphics application designed by Kai Krause. It started out with a very simple interface. After you'd been using it successfully for a while, a new tool would appear. As the user demonstrated competence to the program, more tools wo…
The big difference in the described case, of course, is that it's the user in control of the on/off toggles rather than it being uncontrollable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of legit services take a cc with trial sign up to separate the people who might pay from the people who would pay if it was the right solution. The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. I see more and more startups using stripe, between that and the ability to do chargeback with that cc company, I worry less about it. The charg…
> The right thing to do when taking a cc for a trial is to send reminder emails that they will be charged.. Which not enough do. Not sure about that. Wouldn't the "right thing to do" be to not auto-renew the account? Suspend the account after the trial until the user logs in and confirms the renewal?
The worst scenario is when the subscription begins and the user has forgotten the cancelation date. A link could be embedded in the email to say yes or no. It must be profitable not to do this for some.
Thanks for the writeup. I like this approach as it's a slightly different way of something that's always been a dream for most designers to have UI's that evolve as you evolve over time. I have myself an app which is very unique and have had to find ways to make people understand what is unique and why they should download it. My primary method is video and that works out fine but maybe I should try this method out.…
How did the video work? Any words of wisdom?
You can see it here.