Here’s what we have for you this week.
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Growth
💻 Tools: Cookies and Knowledge.
🧠 Persuasion: Paradox of Choice.
📰 Article: User Stories.
🤖 Automation: Notifications can be useless.
Product
💻 Tools: 100% data-driven.
🧠 Persuasion: Italians do it better.
📰 Article: Find your North Star.
💰 My 2 cents: The invisibility cloak.
Growth.
Tools 👇
Axeptio → Build a positive consent experience. (paid)
In our opinion, the best way to stay legal when it comes to cookies.
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Blinkist → More knowledge in less time. (free trial)
Before buying a business book, we always like a 15-minute recap of the key learnings.
Then we buy it, or we don’t.
Persuasion Technique 👇
Simplify Choices, Increase Sales.
Paradox of Choice: Too few options can deter purchase, but too many can lead to decision paralysis. 🧠
Example: When presented with one option, you might simply decide to buy or not. With two options, your focus shifts to choosing between them, reducing the likelihood of not buying at all. However, too many choices can overwhelm, resulting in no purchase. 🔄
Solution: Strike a balance. Like IKEA, offers a manageable number of options, such as 'Add to Bag' or 'Add to Wishlist', to guide customers towards a decision without overwhelming them. 🛍️"
Article 👇
Let’s debunk User Stories.
The Misuse of User Stories.
Misuse of User Stories: User stories, meant to guide product development, often become red herrings, distracting from the real customer problem. They can be too granular, leading to a loss of focus on the actual value proposition.
Role of User Stories: In product development, user stories should bridge the gap between identifying user problems and communicating solutions to engineering teams. However, they are frequently misused, leading to ineffective product development.
Common Mistakes in Using User Stories:
Treating them as a substitute for qualitative user research.
Fabricating stories to fit a preconceived product hypothesis.
Getting overly fixated on the format and dogma of user stories.
Proper Use of User Stories:
They should be conversation starters, not end points, fostering alignment between product and engineering teams.
Effective against scope creep by clearly defining project requirements.
Maintaining customer focus throughout the development process.
Expert Opinions:
Bruno Bergher emphasizes the need for genuine customer knowledge and empathy over superficial user stories.
Divya Chittoor points out that user stories often distract from shipping value and become repetitive work.
Tara Wellington suggests using user stories to initiate conversations and align teams, rather than as strict requirements.
Context Sharing and Collaboration: Involving engineers and designers early in the problem-solution phase is crucial. This approach reduces the need for detailed user stories and fosters better understanding and collaboration.
Adapting to Company Needs: The use of user stories depends on the specific context of the company. Larger tech companies may rely more on product-engineer collaboration, while smaller startups might find user stories more useful.
The article concludes that while user stories can be valuable tools in product development, they must be used judiciously and in conjunction with deeper customer understanding and team collaboration.
Here is the article, read it!
Automation 👇
Most notifications are useless.
Let’s try to get the most out of them.
Product.
Tool 👇
AKKIO → Let’s talk face to face with your data (from 49$ / month).
Yes, we suggested a tool about that last week (thanks for being such an attentive reader !). But Akkio is quite different from Ask Your Database.
A larger range of data sources, including the main databases engines, but also SalesForce, Google Sheets, Airtable…and a Zapier integration.
Customizable and Generative Reports. You can connect your data and train a model to predict key business metrics, minimize customer churn, or optimize ad spend.
Security and Customization. It comes with enterprise-grade security.
Persuasion Technique👇
Around 20% of advertisers contribute to 80% of Google's advertising revenue.
So Google focuses a considerable amount of its resources on these top advertisers.
This also influences Google's product development. Features are often designed to satisfy their needs.
Pareto Principle - “Roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of causes.” 🧠
So when it comes to decisions, concentrate on the 20% that generate 80% of the effects.
Article 👇
What is your North Star Metric? And how confident are you ?
This concept, popularized by Sean Ellis (again!) is extremely powerful but largely misunderstood.
The North Star Framework 101
In this article, you will learn about
What is a North Star Metric?
It is a single quantitative metric, easy to understand, and customer-centric.
It should represent your progress in your mission/vision.
It serves as a leading indicator of your long-term business success.
It’s actionable.
What it is not
It's not multiple metrics.
It shouldn't focus only on business value like LTV/CAC.
It's not an OKR.
It's not a strategy, but it should align with it.
The author recommends this classification from Amplitude.
Here is the article; read it!
My 2 cents 👇
The New York Times recently published a list of the “who’s who” in AI.
But Surprise (not really..), not a single woman.
Why does it matter?
Discussing the contributions of women in AI (and more generally in Tech, and not only women but all minorities) is crucial for several reasons, but here are just two of them:
It challenges the narrative that tech is for men, a narrative that leads to fewer young women choosing this industry.
Recognizing diverse contributions ensures that Tech development benefits from a wide range of perspectives. This is essential for creating ethical, unbiased, and effective systems for everybody.
So here is a more realistic and fair list from the Time: TIME100 Most Influential People in AI
We’ll see you next week.