

Pavel Pekanov is a seasoned Creative Director, Art Director and Designer (and a Developer, but tss-s tell no one). Started his creative career in 2004, followed by the launch of his own Creative Agency in 2008. Ranked a top earning freelancer on Upwork (former Elance) in 2013. Launched a few startups of his own. Featured on CSS Design Awards. Former Creative Director at QUOINE. Pavel has been helping startups, founders and well run businesses with Branding, Product Design, UI/UX and Brand Experience for 14+ย years.
Personal website: pekanov.com
Letโs start with an eye-openingโโโyou may not even have a Product at your hands. You may have a service, an app, a website. Having a Product is different from just having aย website.
Value + Team + UX + Community =ย Product.
Iโve got a list based on a few quite expensive mistakes, my extensive design and startup practice (co-founder/founder).
[โ] Value proposition. Products bringย value.
[โ] Team with a common goal. There has to be people besides just you alone believing in yourย Product.
[โ] User experience. Interacting with a Product is meaningful.
[โ] Community. There has to be people besides your friends and family aligning with yourย Product.
Your Product must have all that inย check.
We improve Products gradually along their lifecycles. While we do, we come across two decisive milestones that change the perspective, direction and expectations.
Make or break for an MVP. Youโre still testing concepts, but youโve already discovered the selling feature. Your Product is en route to building a strong relationship with early adopters.
Focus: Product.
A contrasting milestone as it takes months-years to get there. Youโve got a technically solid Product disconnected from the community. It lacks the Emotional Intelligence. Your company is set on course of molding the Product with companyย vision.
Focus: Company.
Some Products shape themselves with the big picture, the mission and the company vision right from the start. The result is exceptional just like the amount of time and effort required to ship them. Very few businesses can play the game thatย long.
The difference between these two isnโt a subtle one. So is the focus and the expectations.
Iโve seen to a lot of companies trying to channel their vision before even having a viable Product and realizing the market fit. Hell, I did it myself with my own projects! This may not be a mistake per se, but itโs a drain on creative, emotional and financial resources.
Weโre still at a point when no one cares, literally. Here are we, here are they and here is a cold-hearted bottomless pit betweenย us.
No market fit equals having no community. Without a Product community, youโre channeling your vision into theย abyss.
Iโve also seen to a lot of teams improving their tech passionately and tirelessly. They refactor the code, resolve bottlenecks, improve the platform performance, introduce the new database architecture, et cetera. There is little to no regard for their Product brand. Thatโs a bigย no-no.
Your techies may score a miraculous win (case of Nginx). That may happen with luck and years of dedication. Are you willing to bet on luck and spend years on something that may not turn out thatย good?
Iโm telling you forget the tech and focus on yourย brand.
Iโve been on both sides of the coin, and what I came to appreciate is the moment the Product starts getting momentum. Thatโs when itโs the right time to raise the bar and come to understand one hard simple truthโโโthe tech isnโt theย king.
Yes, your tech got you there. But circumstances change, the landscape evolves and your engineers arenโt omnipotent. Your Product may be better off with less focus on the techย itself.
Iโm saying that having an engineer/developer background myself. I enjoyed improving APIs from 10ms to 1ms latency even though no one would ever notice that kind of improvement. I understand itโs cool and itโs kind of an internal competition and such. Letโs leave it at thatโโโimproving tech is a race against yourself. Take a step back,ย instead.
Let me repeat myselfโโโthe tech isnโt the king. The tech isnโt the unstoppable force that drives the Product further, neither it should be. Itโs not even a singleย force.
The โdriving forceโ are the personas behind the Product (the foundation team), company vision and where the CEO stands. Itโs time to work with that once your Product is recognized.
Unless.
Unless you launch rockets to space. In this case, forget everything you read so far and please God focus on theย tech.
Youโre building a Product for the people. What do people expect? Better experiences.
Over the past few years Iโve done quite a number of re-designs. Iโve been at various Product stages and Iโm a big fan of re-designs. I considered myself a seasoned pro able to deliver the best design to any kind of Product outย there.
The work I did all those years now feels sketchy atย best.
Where Iโm heading withย that?
I believe company vision and values, mission statement, people behind the team, community voiceโโโall that should come together to shape a better Product and then that could be called a true re-design. Something to be proudย of.
And the data is there tooโโโfunnels, bounce rates, user journeys click-throughs, LTVsโโโthe data we donโt have at the beginning. It helps massively in developing a better UX, UI, building the next level Product Experience, and simply doing better designย overall.
Itโs funny thinking analytics improves the design, until it does. Having reliable data helps you discover (or interpret reliably):
Why re-design something thatโs not broken? You see the room for improvement, you act upon it. If your Product can become better, you make it happen. Itโs thatย simple.
You start the re-design with 1) defining the reason for it, 2) evaluating the Product metrics and 3) getting an understanding of where the Product is headedย after.
Those are the prerequisites for the re-design. The following are the four high-level pillars that are the foundation for a great re-design.
Your Product must have a great logo. Great logos look good, they tell a story, they stand out. They make people curious about yourย Product.
Your Product story starts with the logo and so does your company vision. A good logo channels the deepest message you have without you having to explainย it.
You should be after the logo with great marketing potential and the ability to deliver a powerful opening on itsย own.
Charts creation platform logotype tells a story of creating a chart. Simple, straight-forward, enjoyable to lookย at.
Here is a very different storytelling example:
Game development and publishing studio delivers their company vision thru a mesmerizing logotype animation. Itโs a storytelling within a storytelling, a dream inside aย dream.
The opening story is a story of a girl chasing her kite that transforms into seagulls. It serves as a metaphor for โchasingย dreamsโ.
The closing story is told at the final framesโโโseagulls leaving the box. The โthinking outside the boxโ message is delivered with them flying out of the box outline while the girl keeps an eye contact on [a former]ย kite.
Logotypes are the perfect take-off points for Product storytelling. We use the logos to deliver all kinds of messages:
Your logotype is your story. The very best logotypes out there drive the storytelling for entire companies, let alone the Products themselves.
2. First impression
The first impression is naturally established via a Product landing page, or a company website and itโs usually the former where you meet your future customers.
Meeting your customers starts with a โhiโ and then following up with a proposition, a Call Toย Action.
A few proven CTAs that youโll most likely end upย using:
Itโs worth mentioning that the very last CTA is mostly used when testing concepts, i.e. when you donโt have any Product at all. Keep that in mind and donโt abuse your customerโs trust.
Once youโve decided on the CTA youโre going to use, you should decide on the approach for your landing page. What are you going to show there? Your Product, your team, or both? Does it feel like a friendly welcome, or a salesย pitch?
The holy grail of landing pages has always been about showing theย Product.
However, we now enter the age of Human Oriented design. Human Oriented design is all about building relationship with the Product, building a unique Company Experience and finding the right emotional connection with the customers.
Showing the Product early may not be as effective as youย think.
People are less excited about the Products in general, as they are about the change in their life a particular Product canย bring.
This is one of my most favorite pillars as itโs the most overlooked one.
Do you tease your Product at Sign Up flow? Do you show your team members? Does your CEO provide a heartfelt welcomeย message?
Usually, a Sign Up page is a simple form that gets your name, e-mail, password, or you can bypass it altogether and Sign Up with Facebook or Twitter. The only purpose a Sign Up flow serves is getting your credentials.
This definitely doesnโt sound like youโre using this flowโs full potential.
Imagine you saw a Product so promising that you discovered an urge to create your account. Would you like to learn more about the Product? Would you like to learn more about the people behindย it?
Would you like to know and see how great that Product turned out to be for others just likeย you?
Of course, you would! And thatโs the moment when you create the connection between your customers and your Product values. Itโs emotional, itโs strong. Thatโs the point in time when your customers get connected and hooked up on the Company vision andย mission.
Selling at Sign Up doesnโt mean to be the actual โsaleโ. Sell differently. Sell your vision, sell the big picture. Sometimes it takes that little to convert a customer into a Productย fan.
All right, this one kind of goes along my other pointโโโa good Product needs explanations. Actually, the better the Product is the more explaining it would probablyย need.
I mean, a great story behind the Product, lots of useful features, various inter-connected servicesโโโthat should be explained somehow, right? Unless youโre offering a day job of digging through all that to your potential customers.
By explanations I donโt mean the abundant FAQs, tutorials, tours and such. Instead, you should always engage the customers. Engagement is playful, engagement is fun and it just feels more natural (like a human conversation).
So, whatโs up with On-Boarding? It should be a quick game-like experience, a few steps to complete in rapid succession, a chit-chat. Having a reward at the end of your On-Boarding session doesnโt feel like a bad move either. Gamifyย it.
On-Boarding provides you with the chance to know your customers better too and simplify the connected flows. Having On-Boarding flows simplifies the actual Product Experience and makes your Customer Experience more entertaining andย fun.
On-Boarding flows are the friendly chats between you and your customers. Did you forget to tell them something? Do you need to know their names? Do that at On-Boarding flows. Simplify the rest and create a positive Customer Experience.
Finally, you should mind the end-game of yourย efforts.
I canโt stress enough the importance of picking the right re-design approach and the importance of choosing the right re-design goal. Once the decision has been made we shall not divert, neither we can without the risk of needlessly burning up lots of resources.
There are different re-design approaches that you can choose from, depending on the kind of improvements youโreย after:
Leave a comment if youโd like to know more about Company Experience, ways to measure and track it, ways to improve and design for great Company Experience. Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments.
Iโd love to hear from you, if youโre after the best Company Experience your customers can have or if youโre after the ultimate Product Experience. Shoot me anย email.
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