How digital product development can aim for a yellow jersey - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Viewpoint careers advice blog

How digital product development can aim for a yellow jersey - Viewpoint - careers advice blog Enabling a user to be able to achieve what they set out to do is as high a priority for a digital product team, as winning the yellow jersey is for a Tour De France cyclist. Chris Froome’s consecutive victories in the Tour De France cannot solely be attributed to Sir Dave Brailsford’s theory of marginal gains, but the well-documented approach taken by Team Sky’s Team Principal certainly plays an important role in the team’s success. Brailsfords strategy has been to try to make 1% improvements in a number of different areas; for example cycling position, bike maintenance and having the right pillow for sleep, the idea being that the cumulative effect will lead to a significant increase in performance. And it is clearly a strategy that has worked for Team Sky, as well as the legacy he has put in place for Team GB’s cyclists. Across the spectrum of business, if not life, this strategy can also be applied. One of the areas of business is digital product development. Whilst not necessarily being able to equate this to reaching the heady heights of Mont Ventoux or plummeting at speed on a descent into Bagnères-de-Luchon, this is the art of managing digital product development to enhance a user’s experience and level of engagement with a website, app or other digital product. The grand reveal of a new product is often considered to be the apogee of product development; as the result of blood, sweat, tears (and hopefully some user testing), is made available for a world of users to consume. For example, BBC iPlayer’s launch into the UK broadcasting landscape was a grand reveal. The Uber app equally so. Both products have filled a huge user need; the iPlayer for watching TV on-demand and across devices, and Uber for enabling cheaper urban taxi journeys from A to B. And now both products are well established and well-used. For example the BBC will be expecting record numbers viewing the Rio Olympics on the iPlayer this year and in London, in April, it was recorded that each week, over 30,000 people were downloading Uber to their phones and ordering a car for the first time. Now that they are established, the enhancements to these products are, in the main, far less revolutionary. However, the quality of these enhancements needs to be consistently high to match user expectation â€" somewhat akin to an avid cycling fan expecting medal after medal for Team GB in the Velodrome. User centricity driving change Because user expectations of digital products have been raised in general, user testing is a key technique to ensure product development meets these expectations. Understanding how users interact with products on a daily basis provides the foundation of many of the enhancements on a product roadmap. Whether it is testing with people in the street using paper prototypes, usability testing in a lab environment, running an A/B test on a website or using a tool such as hotjar to look at heatmaps, recordings and polls, this insight is invaluable. Sometimes this can lead to more fundamental changes. These could be a complete overhaul of a homepage or restructuring of the entire Information Architecture of a website. More often than not the changes are more subtle and marginal, such as improving the tactile nature of a button or giving the user feedback when they have completed an interaction. On the Hays mobile website, adding in a phone icon on the job description page, enabling users to call a consultant directly from their mobile phone, (see below), led to an 27% increase in conversion. Providing an onward journey when the user seems to have reached a dead-end may seem basic in nature, but is actually significant in terms of extending the customer experience in however small a way. We also improved  the message that is displayed to users if there are no jobs to match their search terms, and presenting other options such as the ability to find a Hays office or go to another relevant Hays website, means that the user can continue their journey, (see below). Changing the position or colour of a call-to-action button, making a sign-in process clearer or improving the abandon shopping cart process can lead to repeat visitors, ongoing usage and in an ecommerce world increased revenue. And lets not forget the importance of accessibility. Not marginal in their nature, accessibility requirements should be part of everyones roadmap. Aspiring to marginal gains in product Chris Froome and Team Sky have aspirations to succeed and continue to succeed. And online product development should also aim as high. A digital product should make use of leading edge technology and capitalise on trends in user behaviour instigated from major online product leaders from Silicon Valley and the likes of iPlayer and Uber. A digital product should strive to become industry-leading, competition-beating and even a disruptor. But the weekly and fortnightly minor changes and fixes also serve to make a world-class product. Recent research shows that an average smartphone user has 42 apps, but spends 90% of time on only 9 or 10 of them. To make sure that an app or website is one of the 9 or 10, constant improvement is necessary. So, the art is in finding the right balance in terms of ongoing development of a digital product, making small, sometimes marginal changes, to ensure that a user’s journey is enhanced. It’s not always possible to delight the user; but as a minimum the user should be able to achieve what they set out to do, have an uninterrupted journey, and experience as few errors as possible. From a digital product point of view enabling a user to complete the primary purpose of their visit in the optimal way is just as important as achieving the yellow jersey or a gold medal. Hopefully you found this blog valuable. Here are some other related blogs that you might also enjoy: 4 ways to grow yourself global Berlin: next hub in HR technology? Forget B2B or B2C, it’s actually You2Me 1  thing  you need to know about digital marketing Big Data â€" help or hype? 3 things you need to know about careers in 2020 Share this blog: