4 more low-scope “feature hacks” for Product Managers short on resources
A few months ago, I shared a short list of features that cost little-to-nothing in terms of developer time, and which can give teams a boost as they try to drive user activity and deliver a great product experience. Since it was well-received, I’m publishing a follow-up, with 4 more ideas.
Last time, most of my solutions involved AppCues: in this article, Appcues is part of every solution.
1. In-App Referral System
The problem: It’s no secret that an effective referral system can be a great driver of growth. I had been dreaming of a feature that could somehow target users who were most likely to provide us with a referral, and then make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
The solution: I was delighted to find that while this is not something that AppCues explicitly supports, through persistence and some basic HTML, I was able to jerry rig their tools to create just what I needed.
When a user completes one of our app’s core actions, they may now see this survey:
Users who give lower scores are prompted for feedback, which is somewhat beside the point, but still valuable…
While users who give us high scores…
…are prompted for a referral then and there. Saying “Yes” triggers a pre-populated email draft in a new browser, which cc’s our Customer Success team. Finally, referrers are thanked and prompted for any additional feedback. Users who see the flow once won’t see it again for at least 45 days.
Not an ounce of engineering time went into this (beyond setting up the initial AppCues integration). AppCues allows you to download the history from the flow, so you can see exactly which users took what actions within the flow, and when.
Note: This flow has been live for weeks, and hasn’t yet generated a referral. While that’s a disappointing outcome, it’s much better than if we had seen the same results after building the feature from scratch ourselves. Try it out — with a different situation, you might see a better outcome.
2. Set expectations for long load times
The problem: Nobody likes to wait around for a file to load, especially if it’s going to take upwards of 30 seconds. I wanted to pad users’ expectations when downloading their account data, but didn’t want to bother an engineer with just a trivial copy change.
The solution: Use AppCues to attach a more user-friendly message to a loading spinner.
3. Event Logging
The problem: When we transitioned front-end frameworks last year, we never re-built our full event logging toolkit. Which buttons and links our users click, and when, is often a mystery. I can use Inspectlet to do sleuthing, but it’s time-consuming and sometimes unreliable.
The solution: AppCues allows you to attach “flows” to all sorts of elements in your app. Until we find the time to build out event logging on our own again, I can just create “invisible” AppCues flows on certain elements, and when I export my data from AppCues, I can piece together sequences of events, from the user-level to the aggregate. These flows can interact with each other, too. By putting a “hidden” flow on our Terms of Service checkbox, I’m then able to target users with an up-sell message in app, 60 days after they’ve agreed to the ToS.
4. Make a field “required” / force a response
The problem: Users on Axial need to identify the type of company their account is, but our Company Profile treats the field as optional.
The solution: To push responses up, I added an AppCue to the field, which blocks the user from interacting with any other part of the app until they’ve submitted a response.
