How customer development fuels product development in

SaaS, E-commerce and Mobile

What is Customer Development

Get out of the building. Steve Blank

• Who your customers are • What problems and needs they have • How they are currently behaving • Which solutions will they give their money for (even if

the product is not live yet) • How to provide solutions in a way that works with how

your customers decide, buy and useLean Customer Development.

Cindy Alvarez

AARRR by Dave McClure

Every stage of product development requires its own customer development plan

Acquisition

• Connect with customers early • Landing page - collect emails • Sign up - talk to every customer in the beginning • Onboarding flow • Qualaroo surveys give you customer insights

Activation

• How successful your customers first experience was • Mixpanel analytics to track the events

Revenue

• Payment • Founder/Product person email: Hi Mike,

Glad to have you on board and thanks for paying! Can we talk to discuss you needs further?

Thanks, Anna

Customer Development for Marketing

• Use your audience wording Copy that speaks • Be where your audience hangs out Promotion channels

E-commerce Boommy.ru

Two-sided marketplace

• Guerilla tests - watch them

walking through your flow and get lots of insights

• Place where the target audience representatives hang

out: coffee shop

E-commerce Boommy.ru

Two-sided marketplace

• Usability tests: invalidate your designer assumptions

• Hint: Shut up and listen • Place: Places where your target audience hangs

out

E-commerce Boommy.ru

Two-sided marketplace

• Urgency matters • Get their phone number - Experience the product -

Collect invaluable feedback • Call users in 5-30 seconds after they experience

your product/feature

Customer Development in SaaSSplitMetrics.comA/B testing and analytics for the App Store

• Connect on Linkedin=> Get your target audience

touch the product early • Soundcloud were the SplitMetrics early adopters

and helped build it from scratch

Watch your funnel!

• Customer identity analytics is the core part of

customer development. • Slice your audience and find those who

successfully go through the funnel and those who don’t.

• Just ask them one simple question: Why?

Kano Method for Feature List Prioritizing

Mobile

• User testing: get real users touch your app wireframes

prototype even before designing it or coding.

• Define user segments • Competitive analysis: what

they love/don’t like/hate/irritated about?

• Backlog for the next version

Resources1. Introduction • Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez. The complete guide to customer

development. • UX for Lean Startup by Laura Klein. Design Qualitative Validation

2. Validation • Running Lean by Ash Maurya. Building a sustainable business model - core interview types • The Entrepreneur’s guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper (short version of the 4

Steps to Epiphany - optional, part of it is covered in Running Lean)

3. How-to Articles Lists • 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews Hacks and tricks https://

blog.kissmetrics.com/26-customer-development-resources/ • Top tips to get started with user research List of must-reads - https://userresearch.blog.gov.uk/

2015/03/18/so-youre-going-to-be-a-user-researcher-top-tips-to-get-you-going/

4. Source • Customer Development Theory The whole “Get out of the building” theory by Steve Blank - 4

Steps to Epiphany

5. Interview Questions • How to maintain neutrality: https://sensible.com/downloads/things-a-therapist-would-say.pdf • Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

by Steve Krug

Thank you!Anna Maistrenka

anna.maistrenka@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/annnette https://www.linkedin.com/in/amaistrenka