Pillsbury May 9 Product Development Andres Blank

8/6/2019 Pillsbury May 9 Product Development Andres Blank

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Product DevelopmentMay 9th 2011

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Some facts about Pixable

•Initial idea March 2009: print your social photos

•Took 4 months to launch first product

•Pivoted to consuming your social photos

•Raised $7M for VCs and angels

•Team of 16 in NY, 6 in Argentina



1st Stage: Defining your product



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Define your product before writing any code

1. Define the problem that originated the idea

2. Create your product based on user stories

3. Define your target demographic

4. Validate your user stories

5. List your competitors, why are you different?

6. Think of size of the market

You have to be the best at something, #2 is not enough



• Inaki wants a cute present for his girlfriend,

Ana

• In Pixable he selects all the photos in which

Ana and him are tagged (includes photos

uploaded by various people)

• He also wants to include comments left by

Susan (“you look so cute”) or Ann (“it seems

your are having fun”) in some photos

• In the first page of the album, he includes

Ana’s favorite quote (from FBs profile)

• Inaki created the album in 4 minutes and

Ana loves it

• Inaki, Borja, Teresa and Yoav spent a great

month of January traveling in Argentina

• Each of them uploaded different albums on FB

• Inaki goes and selects all albums of the trip,

including captions

• Inaki also puts in the first page a timeline of

the status updates (“I am relaxing by the pool”,

“I am having a margarita”, “I am exhausted

after climbing Fitz Roy”)

• For the cover page, he uploads high quality pics

• Yoav also wants the album because he is afraid

that his friends either unfriend him or delete

the photos

• Inaki’s birthday was last summer

• 123 friends left messages on his wall

• Two of his friends took pictures anduploaded albums on FB

• Inaki created an album with all those

pictures, with the first page full of the

“happy birthday” wall messages, including

name and profile picture of the person,

and in the last page the list of people

appearing in the albums (“tagged people”)

with their profile picture next to theirnames

• It is graduation time and Inaki wants to

print all the photoalbums he created on

Facebook during the year, before going back home and show them to his friends

and family. He includes captions, tagged

people, comments, etc

I II

III IV

Pixable offers acreative way to print

your FB content5

Create your product around user stories

4 real-life examples with

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1495758&id=660562704&op=2&view=global&subj=660562704

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=815204&id=660562704

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1495758&id=660562704&op=2&view=global&subj=660562704

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=815204&id=660562704



Large

printing

companies

or wide

productline

New companies

with few users ,

limited

features, or low

funding

C o m p a n y S i z e / r e s o u r c e s

- +

Level of direct competition

Target different demographics

Standard self publishing

Not using FB contentDifferent user experience

+

-

Target similar demographics with

possibility to include FB content; similar

products

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Current photo album printing companies target different user experienceor products/demographics providing an opportunity for Pixable



Create first list of features: rank them in order of importance

Less features is always better:

• Requires less time

• Costs less money

• Easier to maintain

• Easier to know what works and what doesn’t.

“I think the best products in the world start out as features” Kevin Systrom, Founder of

Instagram



Create the first set of wireframes focusing on your chosen features

• Simulate all the interactions before designing.

• It’s not about making it pretty, it’s to see if users get it

• Create the whole flow to understand the logic behind the product

• Differentiate 1st vs. 2nd time experience

• For 1st time users create a frictionless experience



Think about what will make users share and come back

Register Use app Share Return

•Why will users share or invite others to use your product?

•Why will users come back to your site?

User’s attention span is incredibly low

Return Share Use app Register



Validate your wireframes

• The best software for this is a pen and a paper

• Hear out your potential customers

•Typical questions to ask:

• What do you see here?

• What do you think is the purpose of this page?

• What would happen if you click here?• What do you think is missing?

Important tips:

• Don’t take into account every piece of advice

•Get feedback from people you consider experts

• The sooner you get advice the easier it is to change your product



Design after finishing your wireframes (UI)

• Simple is better

•Don’t re-invent the wheel, think of how cars are designed

• 4 Bs: Bling, Button, Blue Link, Box (text box)

• For consumer products UI is extremely important, it’s also becoming more and

more important in B2B products



2nd Stage: Building your product



1st prototype of your product: Team Formation

• Do you have a tech team or are you going to

outsource?

Outsourcing considerations:

a) Proximity helps (at least similar

time zone)

b) Visit your team as often as

possiblec) Previous work experience is

extremely important

d) Negotiate not only the price of

the 1st deliverable but also the

price of having a team after the

first deliverablee) Spend a lot of time giving

feedback, document it properly.



1st prototype of your product: Organizing the 1st release

• It will always take more time and cost more than

expected•Divide development in short phases

• Have a release date from day 1, get the development

team to define it.

• Build vs. Buy: buying is usually the best (open source isusually free)

• Launching quickly is key: competition never stops

• Demo your product to users constantly

• Think hard on what technology to use: PHP vs. Ruby,My SQL vs. Cassandra



3rd Stage: Going to market



Define the metrics that will make you successful

• Users

• % users cine back

• Avg. page views• # users that share

• # shares per user

• Revenue

• Revenue per user• Loading time

At the end every KPI is important, you have to chose the

MOST important ones

Get tracking in place from day 1!

Defining goals is almost as hard as achieving them



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Get your product out FAST!

• You should be embarrassed to show it to the public

• Call it pre-alpha, make it invite only.

• You can get users fast through marketing• Get qualitative feedback

FAIL AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!



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Usability tests are extremely important

Why do usability tests?

•Helps you understand the performance

of the product• Gets you unbiased opinions of your

product

• Understand the frustrations of the users

• Understand the features that they love

How to do them?

In person: Craigslist ads

Sites: Utest, usertesting.com….

How to conduct them? • Give the user clear instructions.

• Avoid talking to users while conducting

the tests

•When finished the test ask them all the

questions you want.



Collect quantitative and qualitative results

•Validate your hypothesis• See what had exceeded your expectations vs. not

• If you couldn’t hit any of your numbers, lower them

• Forget about your vanity metrics

• Identify your power users and your haters

The important thing is to know what’s wrong and see if it improves with time

Current conversion from Visitor

to customer: 3.0%

• Impression (CPM)

1. Visitor lands on

pixable.com (CPC)

2. Users (user logs in)

3. User creates album(select photos and

place them in album)

4. Customer: user pays$16

$3.5

$2.6

$0.48

$0.17

Current FUNNEL (paid customer)

0.05%

18%

76%

22%



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A/B test is the best way to improve your product

Simple definition: A direct comparison between two design alternatives. Everything

in the system is unchanged except the item under test

You can test:

• Flows

• Images

• Texts

A/B tests yield the most actionable results



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Set weekly goals for your KPIs

• Choose 2-5 numbers make them visible

• Make your whole team aligned with these goals• Celebrate with the team when you hit these goals

• Discuss internally when you’re not hitting your numbers

•Identify your power users and your haters

• When something works don’t change it!!



Pivoting is not bad

Definition: a pivot is changing the main value proposition of your product

Why pivot?

• Main value proposition not working as desired

• Stumbled into a bigger and more exciting problem

You should pivot based on metrics and qualitative opinions

Wh f l ?



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What feature to release next?

• Internal discussion with the team• Based on data collected from users (Surveys, usability tests)

• Define the goal of the feature: this is going to increase % users coming back,

increase the % of users that share, etc

• Before creating the feature create a dummy button or run a fake ad

Thi ki ll?



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Things are working well?

•Foot in the gas in marketing

• Focus on virality

• Investing in scaling

• Invest in performance



Questions?

Pillsbury May 9 Product Development Andres Blank

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