"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" - Mike Tyson
One of my startup clients is building a digital content network of sorts. Their primary experience lives on their website (to be launched soon) and upcoming mobile app. We have some cool plans to grow the network, much of which is data intensive. So they asked me a simple question: What should be doing to get our app ready and how do we start?
One of my startup clients is building a digital content network of sorts. Their primary experience lives on their website (to be launched soon) and upcoming mobile app. We have some cool plans to grow the network, much of which is data intensive. So they asked me a simple question: What should be doing to get our app ready and how do we start?
I gave them an answer via email, but I realized after the fact that this is actually a pretty decent template for anyone building an interactive web experience. So I have reposted my answer below (lightly edited to preserve their identity). Let me know if it's helpful for you.
1) Break down the information architecture of the website. The goal is to understand on paper the different components of the website and how we intend them to relate to one another. Both for current and planned features.
2) Establish baseline key performance metrics. These are the important quantifiable things we measure and optimize in order to get the business to grow. Note: this is agnostic of any tool or software we use to measure.
3) Audit and implement analytics tools. We need to figure out if what you are using right now is exactly right, although it is probably about half the way there. Then we need to improve upon our current tools or implement new ones to do the job that we need done.
4) Define and implement tests. We do this to figure out what actions have the highest correlation to acquisition, retention, and growth. The goal is to eliminate what does not work and double down on what does.
5) Lifecycle and retention marketing. We need to figure out a plan of how to ramp users up over time and how to get them to keep coming back once they are active. There are many marketing communications tools that can help us with this.
6) Segmentation analysis. We do this to figure out the different kinds of users we have according to their attributes and the acquisition channel they came from.
7) UX optimizations. Once we have a bigger audience we need to optimize the onboarding and retention according to everything we have learned.
image credit
you can catch me @yes
1) Break down the information architecture of the website. The goal is to understand on paper the different components of the website and how we intend them to relate to one another. Both for current and planned features.
2) Establish baseline key performance metrics. These are the important quantifiable things we measure and optimize in order to get the business to grow. Note: this is agnostic of any tool or software we use to measure.
3) Audit and implement analytics tools. We need to figure out if what you are using right now is exactly right, although it is probably about half the way there. Then we need to improve upon our current tools or implement new ones to do the job that we need done.
4) Define and implement tests. We do this to figure out what actions have the highest correlation to acquisition, retention, and growth. The goal is to eliminate what does not work and double down on what does.
5) Lifecycle and retention marketing. We need to figure out a plan of how to ramp users up over time and how to get them to keep coming back once they are active. There are many marketing communications tools that can help us with this.
6) Segmentation analysis. We do this to figure out the different kinds of users we have according to their attributes and the acquisition channel they came from.
7) UX optimizations. Once we have a bigger audience we need to optimize the onboarding and retention according to everything we have learned.
image credit
you can catch me @yes
