User experience on a product is a mixture of how the user interacts with the product, what the product wants to communicate to the user, and what the user perceives from the interaction, consciously and otherwise. If the desired communication coincides with the formed perception, product discovery goal is achieved. That’s why a lot of product and design veterans say that the best user experience is when the product becomes invisible…as the interactions become more intuitive so that the user performs them unconsciously, the conscious mind becomes more free so that the chances of perceiving exactly what the product wants to communicate increase. Perhaps one of the most important features of product design, thus, is the first time user experience where the product needs to clearly and unambiguously form the right perception in the minds of the users.
The essence of product management lies in user empathy, and the first time user experience, or FTUE, is where this empathy starts reflecting on the product design. While product designers dive deep into their craft to create the interactions for the UX and the UI elements, the product manager can enable the designers to understand the user’s background and expectations so that the most effective user experience could be formed. Finding the answers to the following questions can help the product manager make the most optimal FTUE.
1. Where the user comes from?
Even a first time user has some expectations and perceptions about the product. It can be very less, say typically in the case of a user landing on a web product via a display marketing ad. Or it can be very high, say for a user searching about the product online or on the app store having heard about the product offering from others or from marketing channels, and going past the installation barrier thereby showing high intent. The higher the intent of the user based on the acquisition channel and process, the higher is the importance of giving the user an experience which matches with those preset expectations and is aligned with the intent. The product manager can work on the following to get this right:
- Align with the marketing communication: This groundwork should be done before the marketing communication goes live. The product manager should work closely with the marketing team to ensure that the core value proposition of the product comes out clearly in the marketing communication. This core value proposition is the positioning the product will have in the minds of the target users. The product manager should ensure that the power user persona and the market segment this user comes from matches exactly within marketing and product development teams (i.e. tech and design).
- Know the core user expectations: The core offering of the product which becomes the positioning among the target users is the core expectations those users will have when they come to the product. Knowing it clearly and letting the user discover this offering as easily as possible is what makes the UX delightful. Getting it right for the first time user is like laying the foundation for loyal repeat users. Along with the core value, the product might offer additional features which might be of interest to some users. Knowing about these additional values that some users can derive from the product is also very important. Based on their priority, these can be showcased in the periphery of the first time user experience.
2. What the user can do here?
Now that the target user has landed on the product for the first time, and the product manager has confidence in knowing what the user is expecting, what needs to be ensured is to make a UX which validates these expectations and lets the user discover the core value and any additional peripheral value easily.
- Maintain the user acquisition context: Following on the above question on where the user is coming from, maintaining that context lets the user ease into the product experience smoothly. Showing the brand copy and tagline in the splash screen or web product header, maintaining the same UI elements in terms of logos and colours and motifs, repeating the same communication promptly helps maintain the context. Taking this one step further and judiciously localizing the UX for the power users based on IP derived location or app’s default language can help sustain the context even more.
- Validate the expectations: Second important aspect of building the FTUE is validating the expectations with which the user came to the product. Communicating the core value proposition, the product positioning clearly again is very important. E.g. a lot of products do this in skippable multi step tutorials in FTUE, but it has it’s own downsides…even if the product gets it right in the vernacular of the user, user can tend to simply skip as assimilating all that information is taxing for the mind. A better approach can be to serve the core value proposition upfront, after making close approximations for user’s choices, and let the user navigate easily to correct those choices. E.g. instead of skippable tutorial screens, big callouts around the navigation icons of the product and clearly communicating the assumptions made for the user which can be corrected, can make the user understand the interactions and anchor the icons and their usage in her memory map.
3. Where the user needs to go next?
Now if the product has captured the first time users’ attention and users are willing to explore further, the last part of the FTUE is to clearly guide the user inside the product. This guidance can be simply in terms of highlighting the navigation, or can be more profound in terms of letting the user make her profile on the product which can be the first step of using the product in some cases.
- Clear navigation: We cited the example of callouts around product navigation icons above. In addition, using the most conventional icons and logos for commonly understood interactions should be followed always. E.g. hamburger menus via 3 horizontal lines, contextual menus via 3 vertical dots, logo of a home to indicate home screen are few such usages. On top of these, using animations to make the users understand iconography of the product also helps. Few years ago when eCommerce products were shaping up among Indian users, cart icon was not understood as intuitively as it is understood today. So a lot of products used to show an animation where the merchandise would automatically be dragged to the cart icon whenever the user tried to buy a merchandise. Doing such animations at least for the FTUE might help even today, especially while making interactions for the next billion users.
- Transparent requirements: A lot of products require the users to create their profiles before any meaningful value could be derived from the product. E.g. ride hailing products, or finTech products, or even content offering products come in this category. One option is to simply make the profile creation step mandatory for the first time user and ask for all the information and app permissions. Assuming that the first time user is still forming a perception about the product and the trust required to give some information like payment details is still yet to form, going the mandatory step way can result in user drop off. An alternative to that can be to simply stick with the idea of giving the user the core value upfront, letting her try out the product, and letting her understand why some information and permissions are required to proceed further. E.g. in the ride hailing product, the core value of the product is to be able to book rides at users’ convenience. Profile required is user identity, user location, and user’s payment options. These can be asked by letting the user book a ride and understand why these are required as she goes along. So setting the pick up location can be manual where a lot of details need to be filled, or automatic by giving location permission. Contacting the driver requires giving the user’s own contact number, and authenticating it via an OTP takes care of identity. Similarly letting the user face the annoyance of cash transactions would organically make her shift to digital payments via saving the details in the profile. So by delegating the profile creation steps outside the FTUE, we can ensure smooth discovery of requirements and gain the users’ trust.
- Cold start recommendations: One very significant challenge with FTUE is lack of personalized UX. In fact this is the primary reason why some products resort to mandatory steps of user profile creation as that helps them personalize the offering for the user, and thereby increase the chances of the user finding some value in the product offering and sticking with it. The downside to this approach is treating all the users as high intent users who would understand the need of profile creation and take the necessary actions too. The approach contrary to this, i.e. treating all users as low intent users, in fact, would help reach many more users. So the product can make intelligent assumptions about the user’s profile and give the offering likewise, along with clearly stating the assumptions and clearly educating how to correct any out of tune assumption. E.g. content offering products can follow this approach. Treating the user with the content liked by most users on the product can help cold start the recommendations, and user actions from thereon can help fine tune her UX. Easy access to let the user alter her profile on the product will always help too.
4. What to measure?
One followup question once the FTUE is in place will help the product manager evolve the FTUE over time. Like any other product feature, the FTUE must be measured in clear quantifiable metrics and constant analysis of its performance on those metrics should be done. It is far critical a piece of overall product UX to be left un-watched. The product manager should measure the usual metrics of time spent and retention to see if FTUE is helping the users convert to high intent ones or not. But more importantly, the product manager should measure the time taken to reach the core product offering by the first time user, and also see if it happens on the first session itself or not. The learning coming out of this analysis, which would differ from product to product depending on what the product solves for the user, would help in understanding the user intent and enable the product manager to empathize that much more with the user.
User behaviour on consumer Internet products is often measured in user funnels to see where the users drop off in their flow. FTUE is the top of the funnel for the entire product. Like a typical funnel, the users passing through the top of the product funnel decide the overall conversion volume. Also with each step in the funnel, users’ intent and relationship with the product increases. So an effective FTUE not only ensures that the discovery of the product increases, but also ensures that the intent of the users increases as well. That’s one right step towards increased retention.