Funnel vision for Product Managers
Why looking at user journeys as funnels can help you build better products.
Jobs to be done is not the only framework Product Managers are stealing from the world of marketing.
Growth hackers and marketers have long known the value in looking at the customer journey as a funnel, analysing things like drop-off rates in sign up flows and freemium to paid conversion rates. But how can we, as Product people, leverage this thinking inside of our products?
Breaking each user journey down into a funnel once users are already on board and analysing the data at each checkpoint allows you to better understand areas for optimisation within your product, to delight the user on their journey and to safeguard against competitors aiming to provide a smoother user experience.
Getting the user from point A to V
From the moment a user interacts with your product, they are trying to get from point A (aware of their problem and whatever the desired solution or outcome is that they perceive your product to offer) to point V (the VALUE that they hope this outcome will provide for them). Well designed products simplify and smooth the path the user takes to get to point V, sometimes even delighting them along the way and reassuring them at certain points of the journey to keep them going through the funnel. As a Product Manager or Designer, it’s your job not only reach product-market-fit and build something that provides that value, but also to refine the path the user takes to reach their goal, removing friction and testing optimisation ideas.
Breaking the user journey down into a funnel and making sure you’re collecting data at each check point allows you to test small iterations to improve that journey. Most products have multiple user journeys, some much more complex than others. But they can all be broken down into funnels and data collected in some form, be it quantitative or qualitative.
User Journey Funnels
Let’s look at an example.
Instagram is a well designed and simple to use app, allowing you to share an image and view photos others have taken. The user journeys don’t end there, though. You might want to look at other photos people have taken in a specific location, or discover new accounts to follow based on the images your friends are liking, or (more recently) share an image to your story but not on your timeline. All of these have a point A, and a point V. Let’s break down sharing an image on your timeline and how we might look to optimise that funnel.
Point A would be the starting point, some might view this as the moment I open the app, or the moment I unlock my phone and land on the home screen. Let’s go with the moment I open the app.
“I want to share an image of where I am for others to see it and ‘like’ it so I feel good about myself” — It sounds so self indulgent when you write it like that! But to some degree, this is the desired outcome and the start of the funnel.
- Open app
2. Tap to share an image
3. Choose image
4. Apply a filter
5. apply # or location
6. Post image
If we view this journey as a funnel, we can collect as much data as we can from each check point and we work out the drop-off rate (when a user abandons what they are doing) at each point in the funnel, we can begin to ideate and hypothesise on how to remove friction and improve the journey.
NOTE: I do not work for Instagram and have no knowledge of how/if they collect data and test in this way, nor do I have access to any of their data myself, this is purely hypothetical :)
Hypothesis: Including suggested hashtags that other users have recently used in that location could remove cognitive overload when thinking of the best hashtag to use, improve the visibility of the image and increase engagement with the post, driving them to post more.
The above hypothesis could be A/B tested with a small portion of users to see if providing them with relevant hashtags actually improved users advancing from step 5 — choosing location or # to step 6 — sharing the image, due to not having to think about a relevant hashtag and then changing their mind or abandoning before posting the image. This would be the success metric. You could also track if the user actually uses more hashtags and gets a higher number of likes on their images, ultimately resulting in them wanting to post more images more frequently, but for the sake of picking a trackable metric with a lower number of variables I’d go with focusing on the above first.
Your goal, if you were a Product Manager/Designer at Instagram, would be a % decrease in the number of users abandoning the funnel between steps 5 and 6, and then seeing if this improved user engagement.
This is not revolutionary by any stretch. Designers have been working in user journeys for decades, but now we have so many more ways to track key metrics and in an ever competitive product landscape, we, as PM’s, need to continually ideate and test our way to better user experience’s.
