Imagine you're in a game with one objective: a bestselling product or service. The rules? No marketing budget, no PR stunts, and it must be sustainably successful. No short-term fads. This is not a game of chance. It is a game of skill and strategy. And it begins with a single question: given competing products of equal pricing, promotion, and perceived quality, why does one outsell the others? The answer doesn't live in the sustainably successful products or services. The answer lives in those who use them. Our goal is to craft a strategy for creating successful users. And that strategy is full of surprising, counter-intuitive, and astonishingly simple techniques that don't depend on a massive marketing or development budget. Techniques typically overlooked by even the most well-funded, well-staffed product teams. Every role is a key player in this game. Product development, engineering, marketing, user experience, support-everyone on the team. Even if that team is a start-up of one. Armed with a surprisingly overlooked science and a unique POV, we can can reduce the role of luck.
We can build sustainably successful products and services that rely not on unethical persuasive marketing tricks but on helping our users have deeper, richer experiences. Not just in the moments while they're using our product but, more importantly, in the moments when they aren't.
I'll read anything Kathy Sierra writes. I actually ordered this book when I was out of town, having it delivered to a hotel because I was looking forward to it that much. What I got was a book that inspired me to think differently about how I plan features, UX, and everything else for users.
What stuck with me the most was the concept of putting users into different "buckets" of ability on your product -- beginners, intermediate and advanced. If you aren't moving users up in their abilities on multiple features at once, then people will leave your product. Thinking about things in this perspective was incredibly helpful for me.
Reading updates
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Started reading
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26 June, 2016:
Finished reading
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26 June, 2016:
Reviewed