Hurdles in Product innovation

Product innovation is necessary in order to keep the product relevant with time and also to create a differentiation in the market.However,very few product really innovate and create a differentiation.Rest all just follow what others do.
                                             Right innovation can help companies to grow leaps and bounds by catching on the opportunity.In Online product there is large scope for innovation .In this blog will discuss what stops innovation and how to deal with it.

1.Sales pressure:

Product guys works in sync with sales and there can be chances that due to sales pressure one only launches the product which  just increase sales without providing any value to the user.This can thwart innovation.

How to avoid:Once should chart out how the new product innovation can increase sales and explain sales team how to will bring value to business as well as user.

2.Risk factor

One may not innovate because of risk involved in innovation.There are high chances that innovation may not bring in the desired results.This may prevent people from innovating as failure may lead to loss of value of a person in organisation.

It is necessary to have a back up plan to mitigate the risk involved in innovation.This can be done by thoroughly anticipating the expected results and creating a backup plan for it.Consider you have launched an online booking for property.

            Expected results                        How to mitigate
          Lack of booking                     SEM,Mailers,Site visit facility,Other projects

3.Lack of ideas

There are chances that people may not have right ideas to innovate.This can be because of lack of knowledge in the particular field or because most of the innovation is already done

It is necessary to fully understand the field by talking to user,customers and referring various materials.One can also do the competitive analysis and check what nobody is doing.This can bring in some ideas to innovate

4.Lack of resources

This can be very common problem for many startups .The solution of this can be to either assign part of the employee KRAs to innovation which can help in bringing in innovation in the product.

Responsive vs Adaptive vs Mobile site

There has been lot of talks on whether your mobile version of your site should be responsive ,Adaptive or it should be a separate mobile site.The process of developing each of these type is different and also each has its own pros and cons.Most of the companies are now moving towards a separate mobile site due to growing user base on mobile .However responsive and adaptive still have decent number of user.

Responsive site and Adaptive: In responsive design layout changes with change in screen size which in adaptive design layout change only at particular screen size.Both are easy to maintain but complex to build because of adjusting the desktop layout to the mobile  size

Mobile site:Difficult to maintain but easy to build since it is not dependent on desktop design so more flexibility to built.

                    In this blog I would discuss how to decide which one should you go for in order to achieve better results.

1.Device resolution 

Check what are different resolution through which your user access your site through different device.Can they be clustered in a 3-4 groups in which 99% of user base fall.If this is the case then adaptive site makes more sense in case it is more than responsive site is better.

2.Identify the goal of your site:

What your site is about?Is it a transaction site ,navigation site or informational site.In case it is informational site it is better to go with responsive or adaptive site since the site is predominantly content oriented which can be easily shown using responsive and adaptive orientation.In case it is transnational site then it makes more sense to go with mobile site because of complex navigation and functionality

3. Bounce rates and conversion on mobile

Check how good your site performing on mobile in terms of bounce and conversion if it is comparable to desktop then it means you can go for responsive or adaptive if it  less than it better to go for mobile site

4.Traffic projection on mobile

When the traffic on mobile is outgrowing desktop then it is better to concentrate your effort more on mobile than on desktop.In this case  mobile site is better than responsive or adaptive since it provides more flexibility

5.Conversion and Cost trade off

You should do how much conversion will improve with the increase in cost and if it is not more than better to go with responsive or adaptive site

The final decision should be taken by analyzing how your site fares on the above  points.

Common issues in SEO and how to resolve them

One of the most challenging component of SEO is technical SEO. There are lot of technical issues which comes up when one manages SEO. These technical issue sometimes can lead to drastic drop in rank of the page and so one needs to be aware of how to fix these issues.

In this blog I will discuss some of the major issues in SEO

1. Wrong  page cache issue.

This issue is basically about wrong page getting cached for a URL.This means that when one searches in google and clicks on a URL he lands on to the page that does not match with the URL shown on search results.This issue may arises because of wrong canonical which means that wrong page has been set as the original page for the URL.When google bot crawls the wrong page get cached and because of which in search it get redirected to wrong page.

In order to fix such issues one should follow the below process

1.Go to the Webmaster account

2.Go to the Remove URL feature which is under crawl section

3.In this enter the URL which is being redirected to the wrong page.Now there will be three option 

• Remove the URL from search and Cache
• Remove from cache only
• Temporarily hide directory

Chose "Remove from cache only".This will remove the wrong cached page and when Google crawls the URL next time it will crawl the right page.

2.Google not crawling page

There can be various reason why google is not crawling your page.

No Interlinking:When page is not interlinked from any page google cannot find it and hence does not crawl.Ensure that page is interlinked from other pages

Bot limit:There is limit on the number of bytes that Bot crawls so if the there are number of pages then there are chances that google does not crawl some pages.In this case mention all your page in sitemap in the order of importance

Password protected:When any page is password protected bot will not crawl that page.

Robot.txt file: Check the robot txt file.Ensure that it is not blocking the page you want to crawl

3.Page not getting indexed

One may face problems like the page is not getting indexed.This issue happens mainly when the google is not able to navigate to your page.In order to resolve this one should ensure that the page is linked from some other page of the site.The will not only help in easy navigation to the page but also boost the crawling frequency of the page.

Mobile content optimzation

Traffic on mobile web and APP is increasing continuously because of increased mobile usage by people.There are lot advantage which mobile provides to user some of them are access on the go,easy share options,etc.However,developing a mobile site/APP is challenging because of limited space.In order to make your mobile site/APP efficient it is critical that right content is put on it so that space is properly utilized and user goals are also met.

                                                              In this blog will look at various factors which one should consider while deciding the content to be put on mobile site.

Click Map

Click map of your desktop providing a vital information on which feature/section user is currently using and the trends.This can help you in deciding which feature/section to be put on your mobile site.Higher the clicks, more useful is that section to the user  and so those feature should be introduced on mobile.

Call to action usage

Call to action button are the one which user uses to make transaction on the site.Desktop can have many call to action button.However all the buttons may not be useful for mobile and also because of  limited space one cannot put all the button on mobile.The usage of different button should be analyzed and only the prominent action button should be introduced.

Exclusive mobile features

There are many features which can be used only on mobile such as call ,location tracking(GPS) etc.. on Mobile.The relevancy of these features for site should be analyzed and whichever is applicable should be introduced.    

                       

Technical SEO-Different types

SEO has three main components which are On-Page optimization,Off-Page optimization and Technical SEO. On-Page optimization is more about optimizing Meta data such as Title,Description,Tags,URL so that google understands what keyword site is targeting .Most of the people are aware of On-Page optimization. Off-Page optimization is more about building links to the site from external platforms such as blogs,related site etc.This is also widely used and most of them are aware of this part of SEO.
                                         Technical SEO involves more about technology and how technology can be used efficiently to improve SEO. Below are some of the major Technical SEO

Schema:

This is basically about adding main parameters in a particular format which google understand and these are shown on the google search result pages as separate links.It is basically about structured data.The various schema  for different sectors are available here. Schema help in showing most important parameters on the search results.For ex you are searching for a movie ,the search results may show you directors,producer,actors,duration etc for the movie if the data is organised in schema format

Dynamic Meta tools

The meta data such as Title,Description can be changed without editing the code using meta data tools.These tools can be created in house or it can be bought and can help in updating the meta whenever it is required without involving the development team.

HTML sitemap

Sitemap is basically the structure of the site which tells bot what are the different pages which are there on the website and how it can be accessed.In webmaster one can submit XML sitemap which google uses to crawl your site.However,one can also create HTML sitemap which can be integrated on your site when google crawl the site sitemap also get crawled.It is easy for the google to understand HTML sitemap.The can help in improving crawl effectiveness of the site.

Technical error fixes

SEO person also need to fix various errors which are displayed in google webmaster.Some of the most common issues are crawl errors.

Goals using virtual urls in Google analytics

Goals in google analytics helps in understanding navigation on the website.Goals in google analytics can be created only when there is a certain pattern in URL for similar pages.However,sometimes it may not be possible to  have URL with pattern in that case it become very difficult to create goals.

                                    Virtual URLs can help when the page URLs do not follow a pattern.Virtual URLs are nothing but customized URL for the same page.For example you have product detail page with many URL now you want to group these URLs into a single URL so that you can use in the goals.

How to create virtual URL

For this create a separate view in google analytics with virtual URLs.When user uses these particular pages the tracking get stored in the virtual URL views.The virtual pages can be seen under the behavior->site content->all pages.Below is the virtual URL shown on google analytics

How to create Goal using virtual URL

To create goals first identify the corresponding virtual URL for the page.These can be done by adding secondary dimension page URL against each virtual page. After identifying the corresponding virtual page URLs for each page type which needs to be added in the goal,the virtual pages can be added in the goal as below

Once these goals are create now it can be used to understand the navigation of the user on the site.Virtual Pages should be created in separate views in order to avoid any kind of tracking issue in the normal view
                                                   

List view vs Grid view

Every internet user have come across grid view and list view across various portal.These are the two most commonly used view for the listings.Many site have both views in which user is allowed to toggle between them based on his requirement.
                                                      Each  view has its own advantage and disadvantage.In this blog will discuss on the advantage and disadvantage of these views

List view

What is List view

This view follow single column layout which  means that only one product is displayed in one row.

When to use list view

List view should be used when

• Lot of information has to been shown to the user in order to allow him to make right decision.This is applicable for high involvement products such as cars,property when the number of information points which user looks for is more .
• You want user to respond from the same page instead of going to the detail page of the product.
• There are lot of call to action for the list which is difficult to accommodate on the normal grid view

Advantage of list view

• More flexibility:Since the space available is more it gives more flexibility on what information can be displayed
• Limited space:In mobile where there is limited space list view is more comfortable

Disadvantage of list view

• More scrolls:User has to scroll more compared to Grid view to see same number of listings.
• Not easy to compare:Since user can see only one list it become difficult for user to compare different products side by side

Grid view

What is Grid view

This view follows multi column layout i.e in a single row multiple products can be displayed
 simultaneously

When to use Grid view

• Limited information:This should be used when limited information is enough for user to make decision.This is more applicable in variety seeking industry such as eCommerce , retail when user does not go more in depth to make decision
• Compare is important:When you want user to compare the listing side by side in order to make decision this should be shown

Advantage of Grid view

• More list with less scroll:User can see more product at a time so less scrolls is required.
• Better conversion:This may increase conversion since more option is shown to the user

Disadvantage of Grid view

Limited flexibility: Since the space is constraint the amount of option available is limited .

What leads to increase in bounce rate?

Bounce rate is very important metrics for any site.It is one of the factors which helps in measuring user experience .When bounce rate increases it means more people are exiting your site without navigating to  other page.Increase in bounce can negatively impact conversion of your site.However,there are instances when the bounce rate increase but the conversion of your site has not dropped.
                                              In terms of google bounce is when the user exit your site without navigating to even one page of your site.The change in navigation of your site can impact the bounce rate of the site.The various scenario when bounce rate can increase

1.Removal of navigation links:

When the page is revamped ,there are chances that some of the links on the site which user used to clicks were removed.The removal of links can increase the bounce rate.Therefore before removing any links its clicks should be analyzed before taking a decision of removing the link

2.Change in interaction of site:

The change in site interaction may reduce the page navigation of site.For eg. before when click on photos if user is taken on page and now if he is navigated to a popup  then Google does not regard it as page navigation which increase bounce rate but is  not actually a bounce.In order to ascertain this the navigation should be changed to check the impact on bounce rate

3.Decrease in richness of information

When the information shown in site is not enough for user to make decision it will leads to increase in bounce rate.For eg..In one of pages price which is an important paramater was not displayed for many properties due to which bounce was high.When the price was updated for the properties it led to significant decrease in the bounce rate and also led to improvement in conversion of the page

Before concluding anything from bounce rate once should analyze the reason behind increase in bounce rate and based on that appropriate action should be taken.

4.Mismatch between user expectation and landing page

When the user is landing to a page which does meet the need of user it leads to increase in bounce rate..In generally happens in case of display traffic when the intent of user is clearly not known.

Mobile SEO

With the growing popularity of mobile web,it becomes important to concentrate on Mobile SEO. SEO on mobile does not differ much from desktop SEO but there are some additional ranking factors which google considers while ranking a page for Mobile.
                                                                                         Search engine bot crawls the mobile site separately so it is important the mobile pages are optimized for SEO. In the below will discuss the various aspect of SEO.

1.Mobile friendly:

While showing results on mobile, one of the most important factors which search engine consider is whether the site is mobile friendly or not.Mobile friendly means that the site is optimized as per mobile size.The various elements spacing has to be adjusted as per the size of device.When the site is not mobile friendly it negatively impacts the ranking on mobile even though it ranks well on other parameters.

2.Loading speed

When mobile page loads faster it helps when the internet connection is slow.The page load speed is taken into accoutn while ranking the page for mobile.The loading speed can be improved by

• Reducing the size of picture. i.e compressing them
• Removing unwanted content
• Caching the page

3.Meta Elements

Meta description and title are the most important meta elements.In case of mobile the description and title can be made precise to suit the mobile version.Due to the limited space the meta content should be precise so that it is easy to read.

4.Avoid unwanted blocking of content

When the content are blocked through popup or through some introductory element it increase bounce on mobile which in turn negatively impact the SEO.

5.Mobile specific pages(AMP)

Make the mobile pages AMP compatible this will help in getting them on the top in mobile search results.

                                                         

Home page -What should it have?

Home page is the face  of any online brand.People who visit any website ,generally visit the home page of the site at least once.Home page therefore plays a critical role in building the brand of the company in user's mind.When there are so many site competing with each other it is very important to leave an everlasting impression on user mind in order to make him visit your site repeatedly.
                                                    In this blog ,I will jot down the few important points related to home page

1.Easy search:

In case your site sells some product or leads it is important that the user who visits your site find those product easily.Therefore search become critical.The search should be simple and easy and ideally it should expose user to maximum product or listings

2.Past search history:

When user come repeatedly to your site there are chances that he may be looking for the things what he searched earlier.The search history helps him search without entering the criteria again.It works mostly in online commerce company but not in e-commerce companies.

3.Recommendations:

Based on user search behavior,there should be recommendation which helps user to easily find what he needs.Recommendation also helps in improving conversion.Recommendations should be place at the top of home page so as to ensure that people sees them

4.Testimonials:

The trust about the website can be built in user mind by showing the testimonials of the user who have used your website and products.This is more applicable for a high involvement product such as cars,property.Video testimonials can have a comparatively higher impact than the normal testimonials.

5.New features display

When something new is launched in your site it is best to showcase it on home page it helps in building awareness among the people.The awareness can help in building traction to your new features.

6.User engagement data

When there are blogs which your site creates it should be dispalyed on home page so that people who are coming just to learn can use them to improve your knowledge.It also helps in creating positive impact about the brand in the user's mind.

                                       

When to do deep linking

Deep linking has become a very hot topic in recent time.Deep linking refers to the technology which allows opening a web page searched on google or any other search engine directly on the APP instead of taking user to the home page of the APP.

                             Deep linking can be very useful when you have lot of user who are using your APP .This can improve the active user base for you APP.However,one should also check how the mobile web is performing before making a decision of deep linking on the APP.

                            In this blog will discuss the various metric to check before deciding whether to deep link or not.

1.Conversion

Check the conversion of your APP and Mobile web.Which is performing better?Is the mobile web is doing better than your APP.If it is the case then it is better not to deep link.The APP experience should be first improved before deep linking the web page to the APP

2.User experience

It means where the user are spending more time.Is your user spend more time when they enter through the APP or web.When they are spending more time on mobile web it means that the interface,navigation and interaction is better on your mobile web than on APP..In this case the deep linking should be avoided

3.Content

There are chance that some of the content available on your mobile web is not available to the user on APP.The content can play a huge role in conversion .In case all the important content is not available on the APP it should not be deep linked

4.Bugs and Errors

The ratings of your APP will depend on how seamlessly user able to use the APP.In case app has lot of bugs it should not be deep linked because it will adversely affect the ranking of your APP and also lead to bad experience for the user.

User engagement ways

User engagement is crucial for any company whose business solely depends  on the website or APP which they have build. This is applicable for any e-commerce site as wells as lead generation site.When user visit these sites for a need there are high chance that he may leave the site without doing any transaction.However,users may come back to your site in case they found your site valuable enough.User engagement play a crucial role in making site valuable to the users.User engagement is one of the important factor which should be taken care during Product enhancement.

There are various ways through which user can be engaged on the site.

1. Similar things:This is basically about showing something which are similar to what is user currently browsing.This gives user more option to choose from.When more options are shown, user get more interested in viewing the content.This also increase the probability of user making a transaction on the site.

2.Photos and Video:Photos and videos help users to experience the product before buying it.They also help user to comprehensively understand the product and thereby ease the decision making process.Videos which are descriptive can be more helpful for the user.

3.Chat functionality:Every user who comes to the site may not find the thing he is looking for ,in this case chat can be very helpful option for the user.The chat also help in establishing connect with the user and thereby understand their need properly.Chat can also be triggered based on the user behavior so that it can be more contextual.

4.Research articles/blogs:A well written articles which enrich user knowledge can improve the engagement by leaps and bounds.Articles which are relevant to the need  of the user will really attract his attention and thereby improve his time spend on the site.Well written articles  also creates positive impression about the site in user's mind.A blog content strategy should be adopted in order to improve engagement.

5.User reviews: Real time reviews can help user to not only learn about the product but also can bringing in lot of traffic of user who just want to learn more about the product,

6.Contest and quizzes:Contest and quizzes attracts lot of user attention if they are coupled with attractive prizes.New site which want to gain popularity can use this medium to attract user and increase the popularity of the site

Useful SEO tools

SEO traffic is vital for every internet company.When a company is good  in SEO it helps in acquiring new user at compartively lesser cost than companies which lacks SEO traffic.Improving SEO traffic requires you to understand your competition very well.Once you understand how your competitors performing against targeted keyword you can realign your strategy to take advantage of keyword which are not targeted by the competitors.I would discuss very tools which one can use to improve SEO.

1. Google Webmaster

It is most widely used tool by SEO managers.This tool helps in understanding your site from SEO perspective.It can be accessed here. It provide features such as

Crawl stats

This features tells you about how many pages of your site has google crawled.Whenever a new content is added on your site google bot crawls the new page and add it to the index .

Search Index

This data provides you with how many pages of your site is in google index.When a page is indexed it means that page will come in search results when it ranks for the keyword user is searching for.It should be noted than pages which you dont want search engine to crawl should be set as No-Index

Crawl errors

When google crawls the pages and find some errors while crawling it logs it into the crawls error where one can check fix those errors.Fixing these errors can help in boost in ranking

Search Analytics

This help in analyzing keyword,impression,and CTR for your site.

Sitemap submission

The sitemap of your site can be submitted through this.Site map helps google in understanding the structure of your page and the various pages that has to be crawled

2.Keyword Planner

This tools helps you in knowing the search volume of various keyword.Keywords planner also help you in knowing the competition for various keywords.This tool can help you in identifying keywords which competitors are not targeting and therefore can help you in ranking better for those keywords.The tool can be accessed Keyword planner

3.Screaming Frog

Screaming frog is a tool that helps you in crawling a website.It provide you detailed information about the on page elements such as Meta title,description, H1, H2 of the site.It also provide other information such as broken links,duplicate contents ,redirection .The tool also helps you in downloading these information on an excel file which you can use to analyze the site properly.This tool is extremely useful when you want to crawl a website quickly.With free version you can crawl 500 pages for more paid version is available.

How to launch bug free product

Background

The quality of product launched not only affect the various product metric but also affect the perception of the brand .When the product launched has lot of bugs user may fill irritate and may not return back to the site.Launch a bug free product is therefore critical not only for improving product metrics but also for building good brand perception about the company.

There are various way through which the number of bugs can be drastically reduced.I would discuss here

Comprehensive PRD

 Quality of product mainly depend on how comprehensive the requirement is.In order to write comprehensive requirement one should ask following questions while writing PRD

• What is the goal of the feature?
• How will be the navigation of the product?
• What are the different area from which the product will be accessible for app /Site?
• What will happen when user click on particular interactive element?
• How the product will impact SEO? How to make it SEO friendly?
• What should be business  logic for various scenarios?
• How the  product behave in different devices?
• Is there a marketing plan required for the product?
• Is all the expectation from product covered in the test cases

These set of question can help in ensuring that all the requirement of the product is covered in the PRD.

Development team syncup

 The product will be developed as per requirement only when development team is clear with the PRD. Ensure that development team has clear understanding of the PRD .In case there are doubts it  should be clarified before the start of development so as to avoid unwanted iteration.

Regular interaction with the developer

During the development phase regularly interact with developer to ensure that everything is as per requirement.Regular interaction will ensure that any deviation from requirement can be corrected in the earlier stage and thus reduce the delay.

User acceptance testing

Though testing team would have done multiple round of testing there may be scenario which testing team would have not foreseen. Before the product is taken  live product manager should do comprehensive user testing so as to ensure that everything is working fine.It is also advisable to request other product managers in team to test the feature so that no scenario is left untested

Identifying new product opportunities

Product need to evolve continuously in order to compete with other product and be relevant with time.Right product changes can help companies to grow and increase its market share and wrong changes can not only deter growth but also wipe it off the market.
                           Identifying right opportunities is critical in order to improve the product. There are several ways in which new product opportunities can be identified.I would discuss them in blog .

User feedback

There cannot be anything better than user feedback in identifying new opportunities. People who have used the product can give valuable information regarding your product.The feedback may not be something out of box but it will help in identifying user pain points which the product if addresses can help it to become more popular among the users.The way one can get user feedback are

1.Online survey:Certain set of question can be asked to the user through mailer or online feedback form.The question should be such that it helps in identifying the user pain points.Some of good feedback tools are survey monkey,web engage etc..

2.User interviews:These are basically one to one interaction with the user.It help in understanding user requirement in detail.User interview can also help in getting opinion about new product and features to be launched

Competitive analysis

Keeping track of competition is very important to understand how competitors are changing with time.Competitors may launch new product based on their product strategy but still these feature may help in identifying new opportunities.Every product which competitor launches should be evaluated based on your product target segment and check if that adds any value to your target segment.

Analytics

 Data analytics can give you valuable insights on what people are buying on your site or what features they are using.For eg..in an e-commerce platform you find people uses ratings and reviews feature the most to understand more about the product.This means that uses values real time reviews of the product so many feature can be around improving this product.

User navigation on the site/APP can be a valuable information regarding how user moves through your site.This can help in identifying whether user is moving where you want him to go.In case not then product change can be launched to improve the navigation

Technology

The latest trend in technology can help you identify how the features on your APP/site can be improved.Technology trend may not give new product idea but it can help in improving existing features.For eg..you have chat feature on your site in which manual interaction is required to answer to user query.New technology can help in reducing manual interaction and make this process automated.

Innate needs

Innovation comes from identifying innate needs of the user.Innate needs are the one which user  cannot express.These needs can be identified by deeply understanding the user behavior.Innate needs can bring in differentiation in your product and make it better than competition.

In case you have any query,please leave your comments .I will reply back ..

                                           

How to measure user experience

Improving User experience is one of the most important tasks which every product manager focuses on.There has been a lot of talks on how to make user centric design.User centric designs aims at achieving user goals.The question which lies at the end is whether the user experience have improved or not .How to measure it?In this post I would list down various metric through which one can measure the improvement in user experience

1. Improvement in repeat users in direct traffic

When the direct traffic repeat users are increasing it means that people you came last time to your Site/APP have found value in your site and that is why they are visiting again.Any site which has increase in repeat user in direct traffic can be sure that the user is finding more value in your site 

      2. Reduction in Bounce rate

Over a period of time if the bounce rate reduces it means out of total user coming to your site less people are going off without doing some action which means more users find your site more relevant to your need.

To know more about bounce rate please refer
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1009409?hl=en

Note: The bounce can change when the navigation of the site changes .In case this is the case then we should not consider this parameter

      3.Improvement in conversion

Conversion means how many user coming to your site and how many are converting as per your goals.When this number improves it means that more user are finding what they need and therefore converting more than before.It should be noted that the conversion here should be directly through site/APP and not through calling.

     4.Increase in pages/session

When pages/session is increasing it means user is viewing more pages on your site than before which means that stickiness of your site has improved and user is now more engaged on your site.This especially applies to sites which are content driven as well as lead driven.

     5.Improvement in time spent

This metric is mainly applicable for the content based site.When the user is spending more time on your site it means the content on the site is valuable to the user and user want to spend more and more time in order to know more.In case of ecommerce site increase in time spent can be positive as well as negative because it may mean that users are either not able to easily find the information they need or they are finding very good options so spending more time.When response are increasing with time spent then it many be considered positive

                                                                     The metric discussed can be seen in isolation improvement in single metric does not guarantee improvement in user experience.

In case of any comments please feel free to post it .I will reply it to the best of my ability.

Product Management tools

Online product management field is technology intensive. There are numerous tools available in the market which can help product manager in effectively managing the products. Based on my experience and usage, I will try to list down various tools which can be used by product managers. The tools can be basically grouped into various categories based on the problem it solves

Understanding user behavior

1.      A/B testing

One of the most effective way of understanding user behavior on the site/APP is to do A/B testing. It is basically about developing multiple version of a feature and showing each version to a different set of user to identify which version is working better. There are goals which can be defined for the A/B testing based on what that features objective is.These goals then can be tested for each of the variation and whichever variation performs better than other can be picked for final development. There are numerous A/B testing tool available in market. The tools which are famous are

·         Optimizely: It has both paid and free version. One can test up to 1 lakh user for free in this tool. One can try out this tool at https://www.optimizely.com/

·         VWO: It also has both paid and free version. One can test comparatively less number of users for free in this tool. The tool can be accessed at https://vwo.com/

·         Google’s experiment: It is part of google analytics which allows to do A/B testing on various features pages

     2.       Heat Maps:

The heat maps is basically a click map where you can know where on the site/mobile user is clicking. Heat maps helps in understanding which elements are more valuable to the user and so the interface can be rearranged as per user behavior. The heat maps also helps in identifying the elements which are not used at all and thus can be removed from the site. Some of the famous tools are

Crazy egg: This has paid version as well as free version. Free version is available for one month. It can be accessed at https://www.crazyegg.com/

Data Collection Analysis

In order to improve the product it is necessary to understand how your site is currently performing. This means that data for site needs to be collected and stored so that it can be analyzed as and when it is required.

There are numerous tools available which helps in analytics. The most famous ones are as below

1.  Google Analytics

This the most widely used analytics tools in online industry. This tool helps you in knowing everything about the site and identifying new product opportunities. It provides below functionality

• Page tracking: This helps in understanding how the various pages of your site is performing in terms of bounce rate, time spent, traffic composition etc…The google analytics code needs to be place on each page in order to access this data.
• Event tracking: This helps in understanding how many times a particular action is performed by the user for ex... How many time a button is clicked, how many times user fills a form etc…
• Channel grouping: This helps in organizing the traffic into various channels such as Organic, Paid, and Direct etc... There is default channel grouping available which can be used for this
• Content grouping: The various pages on your site can be grouped together based on the content of the pages.

      2. Omniture

This is another tools which is similar to google analytics. It is basically used by ecommerce companies to do data analysis.

Wireframe and Prototype

In order to develop any product first its prototype needs to be developed. There are numerous tools available in the market which allows creating wireframes .Below are some of the tools available in the market and I have used them

1.   Just in Mind

 It is one of the most widely used wireframe tools. It has free version as well as paid version. Once can design desktop wireframe as well as mobile wireframe using this tool. This tool can be accessed at www.justinmind.com/

2.  Balsamiq

This tools is very simple to use. It can be used to create basic desktop wireframe. It is not so much suitable for creating mobile wireframe. This tools also has free and paid version. It can be accessed at https://balsamiq.com/

3   3.    Mockflow

This tools is suitable for creating mobile mockups. It can be accessed at https://www.mockflow.com

Conversion drop-what to check?

People working in online industry frequently face challenges related to site conversion. Conversion can be defined differently for different portal based on the industry in which it operates and based on the goal of the portal. For ex... Goal of E-commerce is to sell product so for them conversion would Buyers/Total Visitors. In case of consumer internet which acts as intermediate between buyers and seller it would be Respondents (People who dropped inquiry)/Visitors. Whatever may be the definition every online portal works with certain goal and conversion is very critical for every site.

What affects the conversion?

Conversion of site get affected by various parameters such as

• Traffic composition: It is basically the quality of traffic every site get. Generally, majority of traffic comes from SEO, Direct, and SEM.

• Changes made to site: New features on being added to the site to make it more user friendly which many have positive or negative impact on your conversion

• Consumer behavior changes: It is basically the change in preference of the visitors coming to your site.

• Sentiments of People: External factors such as floods, climate, earth quake may affect the sentiments of people any they may become choosy for ex. Recent floods in Chennai has affected the real estate industry as people have now become very choosy in terms of locality.

How to identify the exact reason 

Identifying the exact reason for the drop and fixing it is very critical since it affect the business of the portal. The conversion can drop because of decrease in push from micro conversion to macro conversion.Here the list of exhaustive steps that can be taken to identify the reason behind it

1. Check the traffic composition:

Compare the traffic composition for the month against the previous month when the conversion was better. Is there a change in the traffic composition? Is the better quality traffic going down? In that case you need identify which one is going down. Is it SEO? Then check whether the traffic for competitors have also gone down. Is that the case then no reason to worry and it can be attributed to seasonal drop.

                                                     Has the traffic gone down only for your site?Yes.Then the reason for that case has to be identified as fixed. In case traffic composition has not changed then move on to step 2.

2. Check the Page conversion:

Every site has some critical pages such as home page, listing page, detail page, response page/Payment Page which most of visitors uses. There may be certain page which may be causing the drop in the conversion. In Google Analytic or other web analytic tools check whether to the conversion of certain pages has dropped compared to previous reason. In case yes, identify the features which have been launched on that page and check if it has impacted conversion. In case yes then fix them.

3. Consumer behavior changes: 

In case page conversion was not affected by new features then check whether user preference has changed over time from the available data. In case it has changed then work on the logic used to show the information to the user based on the changed behavior and it should help in improving the conversion

4. Sentiments changes: 

In this case, the user may not be willing to transact because of poor sentiment such things can be easily identified from external environment in this case not much in your hands .Wait for the sentiment to improve.

5.Changes in text of call to action button

The text which you show on your site also affects the conversion of your site.When call to action button text is changed it affect the CTR for the button and hence also the overall conversion.Ensure that you do the audit of your text.

What defines good user experience?

Good user experience is critical for increasing repeat visitors to your site or APP. A good experience can bring in traffic without much effort and if the experience is not good it takes lot of effort to bring back the user. User experience is a function of various attributes which a product has.  In this blog I would try to jot down these attributes which define the user experience for online products.

                                        Every product has two component tangible product and intangible product. Tangible product is the one which can be seen and used such as Website/APP. Intangible product can only be experienced such as Service. User experience is combination of these two components.

 

 

The various attributes which defines user experience are as below

Tangible Product

 Easy Discovery of information

A user coming to site/APP will be able to do a transaction only when he is able to find the product he is looking for. Every site should have various ways in which the user can discover information he requires. Some of the most common method

• Search: This is the most common method that is used by most of online product to allow user to search. The search here should be comprehensive enough. Elastic or Solar search can help in improving performance of the search.
• Recommendations: These are basically based on user behavior some information is recommended to him

Correctness of data:

Every user wants information which is up to date. In case, he finds information which is wrong, the trust of the user goes down and overall has negative impact on the brand of the product. When the data is not correct, user will move to other site

Richness of data:

The data which is shown to the user should be rich enough to make sense to the user. Ex.. In case of eCommerce, which sell various products, each product should have complete information which help user in deciding the right product for him. In case of incomplete information he may not buy the product.

Easy to use interface: 

No matter how good is the information and feature on the site or app, if user is not able to use and understand it easily it will be of little benefit to the user. The various elements used on the site/APP should be selected such that it requires least effort in order to perform the various actions which user wants to perform. The best practices for UX should be followed.The interface should be made easy and simpler to user in order to improve the conversion. The below are guidelines for good user interface

• Use the right element: The element which is used should be easy to user. There may be various elements used for particular action eg In order to select a product category drop down, open selection or simple text box can be used. In this case identify which is more suitable based on volume of data and device
•  Space them properly: The elements should not be very close to each other. They should be separated properly so that they do not interfere with each other. This is very important for mobile devices.

Organization of information: 

Information makes sense to the user only when they are presented at right place and in right context. When user browses through a site, the information should be presented in the manner in which user wants.

Effective Navigation:

When user comes to any site, he browses through the various pages of the site. When it is easy to navigate, user would go through many pages and be engaged on the site. This means all the links of your site should be easily accessible to the user to navigate to the appropriate pages. There are various through which navigation can be defined

1. Header: All the important links can be embedded in the header so that user can easily navigate

2. Footer: Footer can be used effectively to help user know more about the brand.

  Intangible Product                                                            

 Service delivery:

When user comes to site/APP and does some transaction such as buys a product, he may need offline services which many include delivering product, connecting with seller etc.This service delivery plays an important role in overall experience of the product. In case online experience is good but the service delivery was not up to the mark he may not visit the site next time

Complaint resolution:

When user raises a complaint, it needs to be addressed effectively so that he gets satisfied. In case he is not satisfied, he can shift to other brand which may lead to loss of valuable customer. Costumer acquisition being a costly affair, it is critical that existing customers are satisfied and retained.

Timelines

The service should be delivered on time.When the service offered is not provided on time it leads to dissatifaction