Tips and Tricks for Staying Effective During a Pandemic
Read NowAt every stage we constantly evaluate the end-user funnel lifecycle, which covers the following steps: User Acquisition → Activation → Monetization → Retention
Our goal is to maximize the chance of a product succeeding by addressing product fit and market fit from the beginning. We believe in rapid cycles of Build. Test. Learn. as a discipline to create a culture that challenges assumptions and puts you in touch with customers early and often.
Discovery
Define the Requirements for Your MVP and to Create a Plan.
The best products start with a clear understanding of the opportunity. During Discovery we use in-depth workshops to discuss everything relevant to a successful product: users and channels, brand, business vision and business model, technology, and team, metrics, keywords. In short everything.
- User review and high level persona creation
- Brand review: mission, vision, values, brand story and tag lines
- Key metrics review
- Organizational review: business model, distribution model, key stakeholders
- Technology deep dive: critical IP, tech stack, marketing stack
- Develop requirements outline and overall experience map
- Competitive and keyword analysis
- At the end of the phase, you get a spreadsheet: a list of requirements and a plan.
- Overall structure of the app experience and key flows
- User/buyer personas and behavior, including community behavior
- Business/revenue model
- Brand and marketing plans
- High-level database of requirements
- Updated plan for Design and beyond
Design
How will the user interact?
How will the product be built?
Great mobile design maps product requirements to the unique canvas provided by today's mobile platforms.
- Define the structure and shape of the app experience: app flows, information architecture, wireframes
- Create a visual design: brand statement, mood boards, colors, images, icons, typography
- Design the Architecture - tech stack (mobile and web and cloud), design for scalability. response time, redundancy, transactions, marketing tech stack
- Build out landing pages and start to build out the community
- Develop a social roadmap and plan out keyword experiments on FB or GA
- Build out your CRM with automation and segmentation
- Define the structure and shape of the app experience: app flows, information architecture, wire framing
- Detailed requirements in an issue tracking system, with supporting acceptance criteria, bundled with design assets
- A high-level development plan, including key milestones and build order and testing strategy
- A high-level marketing plan, including ASO/SEO strategies, a content strategy (which includes plans for social and other channels)
- An active process for running experiments with landing pages and keyword tests
Development
Agile, Professional Development with a Focus on Quality
We follow Agile principles to deliver quality, continually. Weekly builds. Transparency and communication. And a lot of support for internal testers, betas, and key milestones.
things are getting real!
- We write Stories for all the requirements. We divide stories into Epics. We add details and reference the design files
- We use Airtable to document and track Stories, Epics and Bugs
- We run an Agile process but happily plug into a client's existing processes
- We do daily standups. We do sprint planning weekly. We have status meetings weekly with our clients
- We write code for iOS and Android. We mostly do Native work but we also use cross-platform tools like React Native where appropriate
- We also create Responsive Web apps
- We write code for AWS using modern cloud architectures and open standards
- A working product.
- An operational system.
- The infrastructure to learn from user behavior - what's working and what's not.
- And a plan to enhance your product going forward.
Growth
Growth: a continuous Build Test Learn process focused on small wins that result in cumulative gains against core metrics.
We perform A/B testing to make sure we are optimizing Acquisition, Activation, Monetization, and Retention.
- We theorize based on data
- We measure results of key metrics along the user lifecycle
- We develop theories as to what can be improved
- We create ideas about what to change based on theory
- We evaluate each idea against impact and ease of implementation, aligned to core metrics
- We decide what to build next
- We build and release
- Go to Step 1
- Improvements to your product and system
- A process for continuously evaluating changes
- Dashboards showing progress against growth tasks and metrics
- A growth team that’s poised to make rapid changes to maximize dev investment
