Start Without the End in Mind: Product Discovery Lessons Learned
Great product strategists fall in love with the user’s problem, not the solution.
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing” — Euripides
It seemed users hated the site or at least weren’t engaging as expected. Unable to come up with a reason, I kept asking myself why. I just launched a killer feature that should have significantly increased user engagement on the site. Who doesn’t love free content, after all? Especially an entirely free guide to search engine optimization (this was more than a decade ago). All I asked for was their email.
Yet, after working on the launch all night, I sat in my house wondering why. I was tired, frustrated, and bewildered. Maybe I just needed some sleep. Yes, that’s it. Take a break. So I stepped away for a few days. I wouldn’t look at the metrics.
When I came back, nothing changed. Now I was in full-on panic mode. Was there a problem with the site? Did I waste all that time creating amazing content only to fail? Of course I did. What I wanted wasn’t in line with my user’s expectations. I wasn’t solving their problem; I was solving my own. I wanted their email. They wanted free content first. It was a standoff.
Beginning with the end in mind — flat wrong
There is a famous saying from Stephen Covey, “Begin with the end in mind.” This quote is taken by many as business gospel. When it comes to product strategy, nothing could be further from the truth. It would be best if you begin without anything in mind.
All too often, we believe we already know the answer. That’s where we go wrong. I thought users would want my content badly enough to trade their email, no questions asked. I failed the first test of product strategy.
I started with what I believed. I started with what I wanted. I didn’t start with the problem my users had. I began with the end in mind — which was to get their email.
A hard lesson learned
At the time, search engine optimization was a bit of a black box. Business leaders knew it was essential, but it was the domain of search engine marketers and gurus. Gurus who, in my opinion, charged way too much money to train you on a discipline evolving at warp speed. I wanted to change that. To sell a course that evolved with what worked in search engine marketing. I wanted to provide it at a disruptive price point.
I knew that to succeed I needed to build a sizeable email list. With average conversion rates in the single digits, a significant number of emails was the only way to sales. The question was how to get those emails.
I think you can see where I went wrong. I wasn’t in love with the user’s problem; I was in love with my own challenge — getting emails to sell a course that met my objectives.
Falling in love with the user’s problem
What did I do next? Thankfully, I didn’t continue to believe in or execute a failed strategy. Instead, I thought long and hard about the problem — not my problem, but my user’s problem. Before you work or rework a product strategy, you need to know what your buyers and users will want. Only then can you create a product that will sell.
I just needed to find the right problem I could solve that would make a user feel comfortable sharing their email and simultaneously building trust. Unfortunately, I incorrectly thought users were so desperate to learn search engine optimization that they would jump at the opportunity to give me their contact information.
Finding the right problem to fall in love with
Finding the right problem to focus on is hard, no doubt. Yet, the success of your product depends on it. Ultimately, I believed in my heart that there was a market for my product. I just needed enough emails to prove it.
Stepping back, I stopped worrying about emails and refocused on the user problem. Why would a user want the information I had to offer in the first place? Great problem exploration starts with sticky notes you can put on your wall. My rough thoughts at the time were:
- Affordability: Was it a question of cost users were trying to solve?
- Delivery: Was it a question of hiring a guru vs. firm vs. DIY?
- Updates: Knowledge in the search engine optimization space was evolving at the speed of the internet. Was it a question of keeping up to date?
- Overwhelmed: Did users feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by the challenge of learning search engine optimization, which appeared to be a black box?
- Do it Yourself (DIY): Did users even want to learn search engine optimization in the first place?
I then started jotting down why my target, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), would hesitate to share their email.
- SMBs want to try before they buy in a low-pressure, low-risk way
- SMBs want to protect their email from spam
- SMBs need to understand what they are getting in return for their email
- SMBs needed to know they could trust me before sharing something personal, their email
While illustrative and not the exhaustive list, I think you can guess where I landed. Users needed to know they could trust me before sharing something personal, their email.
Then, after talking with a few users, I landed on the following revised problem statement.
Small and medium-sized business owners want to optimize their site to rank high in search results to drive sales. However, they could not afford gurus or marketing firms. Instead, they need to learn on their own. Yet, they fear wasting time, learning only to fail given the speed of change. Therefore, they needed not only to learn but keep their knowledge up to date, and they wanted to move at their own pace.
Fast forward to the solution. I would open-source the base guide and provide a free newsletter. Thefreeseoguide.com was born (note: I shut it down years ago). Users who provided their email address could download the guide (versus access online only) and receive the latest search engine optimization news in their inbox. This approach achieved the objective, built trust, and emails started coming in. It also allowed me to sell the course with ongoing updates at a disruptive price point. By understanding and focusing on the user problem, I achieved my goal.
How to prioritize potential problem statements
Over the years, I can’t count the times I have been asked how to pick the right problem statement. While there isn’t a magic formula to selecting the perfect problem statement, there is a framework I use to narrow down the options. Ultimately it comes down to prioritizing for impact at scale.
- Impact: What is the net positive impact of solving the problem statement for the user and your organization? For example, will it improve a key metric (e.g., revenue) by more than 50%? Will it reduce a user’s time to complete an action by more than 50%? Impact means significant improvement.
- Scale: How far does the problem reach? You want to know that the reach is far enough that the impact will translate to tangible results. 100% impact on 1% of the revenue or one customer will produce no value at scale. Better than 50% reach, of course, with the occasional exception, is the target.
- Sweet Spot Quadrant: The no-brainer category. You are above 50% reach and 50% metric impact. Your path is clear if you only have one problem statement in this category.
- Consider Quadrant: These are problem statements worth considering but should not be your first choice. If you have no problem statements in the Sweet Spot, I encourage you to take another pass. At the end of the day, if you can only come up with a problem statement that impacts 50% of the members but has an 80% impact, it’s still worth exploring.
- Why Bother / Not Enough Impact Quadrants: Do not move forward.
Your goal is to find a problem statement that hits the sweet spot. A problem that will reach enough users/buyers and have enough impact to generate meaningful results for your organization (e.g., revenue) and your buyers/users (e.g., time saved).
I can’t stress this point enough — make sure you nail a problem statement that will have an impact at scale before you move to the next step in the product strategy. If you can’t find one for the product you want to create, you should go back to the product concept drawing board.
Start with the problem in mind
In the case of my SEO training and consulting business, I finally landed on a problem statement that I felt had enough impact at scale. However, I also learned that you must first start your product strategy with a problem orientation.
It’s never good to build a solution that solves only your problem and one that is not big enough to impact your business. Instead, start by asking yourself, will this problem be meaningful for my user or buyer or organization — and have enough scale potential to be worth the time invested?
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Special thanks to Tremis Skeete, Executive Editor at Product Coalition for the valuable input which contributed to the editing of this article.
