The Best Friend You Never Knew You Had

WellnessFX and Square show us how growth and UX can play very nice together

Q: With growth marketers focused on analytics and “the funnel” while UX designers are obsessed with individuals and their many intangible needs, how do we ever talk to each other and launch things that people love?

A: We’re really interested in human behavior.

We Can Relate.

Smart failure leads to understanding our customers better.

Any designer worth her salt will stress the importance of trying out many possible solutions. You inevitably design better products by making (and breaking) lots of bad ones in the process. By continuously refining a design solution and testing results along the way, you can learn an incredible amount about your product and your users’ needs.

There is a close analogy in growth. A great growth marketer knows that connecting with an audience takes iteration, testing, and constantly exploring new channels. Sean Ellis tells marketers of all stripes to “dig deep creatively, and relentlessly test new ideas.” Big, scalable growth comes from consistently moving metrics and activating new channels by modest percentages over time. That takes constantly trying new ideas to find what resonates and works with customer behavior.

Keep trying new designs and marketing tactics until you see needles move.

Communicate tactics and share insight.

Then we can deliver strong.

When you care passionately about your craft, you see everything through its lens. The best product people I know gather inspiration and see opportunities for improvement everywhere. Sharing those insights across roles benefits the whole product team.

Jeff French, designer at WellnessFX, has to design for a health tech product that requires precise messaging and social engagement to attract and retain users. Because the product is so personal, his team “relies a good deal on network influence” to build trust (WellnessFX is a service that analyzes blood samples and provides health data to users). Network effects and social media are organic and unpredictable by nature, so it requires laser focus on users to get messaging right and makes sure design reinforces users’ expectations. When marketing and design do not share learnings, he says, “you get mismatched ways to uphold the brand.”

So try this: if you work on UX problems, ask a marketer about their latest cohort analysis. If you are in marketing, ask a UXer about what words customers used to describe their experience in the last usability study. You might be surprised how much grain is hidden in the other silo.

One of the reasons people love Square is because the promise of easy transactions is upheld in the product itself.

The Message–Product Continuum.

Honestly promise and honestly deliver.

It’s up to growth and UX teams to make promises and follow through with product and brand interactions.

A practical example: Onboarding is one part of a product where UX and marketing can really support each other. Joe Robinson, formerly of Square and current VP of Product at Circle, says that during onboarding,

users are transitioning from what they believe about the product (marketing) to what the product really is (design / UX). It’s a critical time for the groups to work together. Ideally that’s as smooth a transition as possible — the product should match (and exceed!) your beliefs about it — that leads to delight, and deeper engagement with the company.

When marketing and UX can learn and produce together, you can build a product that fits with customer expectations.

And that’s good for everybody.