How to Launch the Best Optimization Operation— Navy SEALs Style

You can’t pretend to be a Navy SEAL. They’re the cream of the crop when it comes to special operations. When everything seems to go dark and chaotic, it’s the SEALs who rise to the challenge and take charge.

As you may already know, Natural Intelligence empowers customers to make informed decisions with confidence. We operate comparison websites like Top10.com to ensure customers get exactly what they want and need.

While the stakes may not be as high in our line of work, there’s always a lot to be learned from the SEALs, and how they go about “doing business”. Which is why at Natural Intelligence we have a unit molded in their ways. Lurking in the shadows and sometimes behind enemy lines, our Product Managers act like an elite reconnaissance unit performing underground operations for their headquarters. But not everyone’s up for the task. So who are these unique folks?

Team Name: Product Managers

Specialization: Funnel Optimization, Marketing, A/B Testing, Technical Specification

Our Mission: “To provide conversion tools, new experiences, and lead the product strategy.”

Our Motto: “Act in the shadows, behind the system and generate success.”

With the weight of more than 30 sites and millions of users a month on each Product Manager’s shoulders, we have a lot to handle. This is where the Navy SEAL methods come in, helping us identify issues in key performance indicators (KPI) and launch the best optimization operations to get back on track. And it all happens in four simple steps.

1. Ask Clarifying Questions — Analyze Your Case

First step: ask clarifying questions

The Navy SEALS don’t just act on instinct. When a problem arises, they first clarify both context (i.e. what’s going on) and goals like who should act, what they should do, where, when, and how.

Similarly, when an issue comes up in your work, you’ll first need to analyze the situation. And this begins with an understanding of the root cause of the KPI problem. We recommend following at least one of these paths to better identify the problem, and how you should go about solving it.

1. Intelligence —Or in civilian terms, use your data. Your business intelligence (BI) systems hide most of the solutions and information you’ll need to create the ultimate feature that can save your product. However, you can also use external tools like Hotjar, VWO, and Google Analytics, to get a sense of your users and help you out.
2. Spy on Your Enemies — If you’re working in a competitive space, what your competition is doing has a major impact on your business. As such, you’ll need to analyze your competitor’s product for changes they’ve made or features you don’t have. You might get some important ideas, which you can modify to your needs.
3. Go Guerilla — Sometimes, when the other paths are unclear, the best solution is to go with your gut and do what you believe is best based on your own experience. Without facts behind you, this action is actually the riskiest, and shouldn’t be applied lightly.

After deeply reviewing these three options, you will come up with a few plans that support the KPI you’re trying to improve. This could be as simple as creating a 24-hour promotion on a site that has experienced a dramatic drop in clicks.

2. Attack — Big, Fast and Smart

Often times, Navy SEALs are in-and-out, conducting quick, intense attacks with a major impact.

And if your KPI is in crisis, this is what you should do too. If you invest enough time in Step 1, you will be more than ready for a big, fast attack in order to bring your product KPIs back on-target.

Why big and fast? While small changes may have a similar effect, they’ll take longer to get there. And sometimes, time isn’t on your side. That being said, even though we’re going to attack like SEAL Team 6 in the dead of night, we’d still like to test our effect. That means once you make a major change, you’ll need to wait a few days to see its impact.

Note #1: You should only conduct an extreme attack when your product KPI is going down dramatically. If not, it’s better to test small changes and see their effect over time.

Before putting your plan in action and going on the attack, you have to define three major things to form a hypothesis:

1. What is the change I’m making?

2. What do I believe will happen in the user experience as a result of this change?

3. What KPI will it improve?

Then it’s time to combine Step 1 (your research and plan) with Step 2 (your hypothesis), and test.

Here are two examples of how to create a correct hypothesis based on the research question, hypothesis, and test KPI:

Note #2: If you get more sales from adding a new feature, but the sales weren’t your hypothesis goal, you should investigate your test again and again, OR change your hypothesis.

BTW, if you don’t have the answers to the three questions above or you find them unrealistic, then it’s time to abort the mission and go back to Step 1.

3. Post-Attack Debriefing

Sometimes it will take more than one attack to win the battle, and when the SEALs fail the first time, they examine the failed attack and plan the next one better. The same goes for success. Passing on details of what happened, either way, is crucial for future missions.

For us Product Managers, this is a smart system to follow as well. So now that you’re post-attack, and have the test results, you should analyze the effects on your KPI. For example, sometimes getting more clicks isn’t the best practice because it might not mean greater revenue. In other words, every move you make should be connected to your strategy and hypothesis.

As such, when reviewing your hypothesis, you should first think about all KPIs that stem from it. For example, from the hypothesis “Adding a new promotion badge will increase my sales,” we can understand that the KPIs that we want to improve, by priority, are:

1. An increase in overall sales percentage
2. Clicks on the promotion badge

But you can also assume these KPI will be improved:

1. Increased click-through rate (CTR)
2. Decreased site bounce rate

If your results are not aligned, meaning you lost out with your main KPIs and/or a different KPI was improved, then it’s time to plan a second attack.

4. Conquer More Goals — Expand Your Success

The Navy SEALS don’t simply take action and stop. When they reap success, they keep ongoing. And so should you.

When you win with one feature, you can expand this feature across all similar products you have.

Of course, this shouldn’t be done blindly. But from our experience at Natural Intelligence, this is the time to examine sites or products where users’ behavior is similar to the previous site. Start a new test with the same feature, under the assumption that the results will be the same. Some won’t be, and that’s okay too because you’ll get more data to plan your next attacks. Do it with intelligence, and justify your moves based on your data, competitors, and your own beliefs as a Product Manager.

After all, we’re not here just to win battles, we’re here to win wars. And in our line of work, they never end.