In which I pretend to be a PM for apps like Ditto that have received a lot of love from users and help product teams manage their words from design to production. I talk to Mariana, a "SCAD grad", a potential user of Ditto and currently doing great things at rocketship startup Signifyd.
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As a PM my objective is to help build products that provide value to high-frequency use- cases so it can acquire newer users at lower cost and retain existing ones at higher value.
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Use-cases: How often and how severe is the use-case. Is there a higher frequency, higher severity adjacent use-case.
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Acquisition: What are barriers to try and switch.
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Retention: Can value be delivered sooner to avoid risk of churn.
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Takeaways:​​
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Managing words from a marketing objective (eg: website) is a low frequency (3:40), high severity (6:55) job for Mariana. Signifyd is a mature Series E startup that provides credit card fraud protection for huge online retailers. Despite that, the last time she needed to think about this problem was a year previously when the website needed translating into multiple languages.
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Despite bringing up product personality and product voice as important considerations, the risks of inconsistent copy appear to be manageable on a day to day basis and spike infrequently like during an annual audit or when the site needs a first time translation.
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"What happened next" as a conversation hack to get detailed and reliable user feedback worked (eg:11:10)
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Next steps with Mariana and others:
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Mockups: Mariana mentions how highlighting inconsistent language in code could be useful. This type of "reimagining" of experiences is risky to act on, and should be followed up with a low cost, lightweight mockup even if in Keynote and validated more thoroughly with multiple prospects.
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Asks: See if Mariana would be open to sharing her solution to the problem (style guide) to understand it better.
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Probe: Actively find inconsistencies on Signifyd's website if any, point them out to Mariana and see if her opinion on severity changes.
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Talk: to more core personas (designers, PMs, devs).
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Test: hypotheses like the problem could be more high frequency, high severity for personas like legal, deal desk.
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Big thanks to Mariana for her time and knowledge!