Yesterday Michaela Hackner, Head of Content Strategy at Capital One, came to talk to us at work about how they’ve used content strategy to improve their user experiences and business outcomes. She also mentioned that her team is part of the Conversation Design and that they design interactions using “talk bubbles” to imagine what the back-and-forth between C1 and the user will be, as if the person had walked into a retail branch (or in this case, was talking to Alexa).
It got me thinking to how great digital experiences mimic great real-world interactions – they all start with a conversation. A common place I see startups failing with this is asking users to register before demonstrating value or even understanding what the user is trying to accomplish. Don’t assume this person read your entire marketing site or your app’s entire description in the App Store or Google Play.
I’ve written about this before (with the shame-on-you example being LetGo). Asking me to register before even understanding what I’m registering for or the value to me of registering is like:
- A car salesman asking you to fill out a customer lead form the minute you walk into a dealership, before he greets you or you even tell him why you’re there
- Asking for my credit card as soon as I walk into a retail store, even if I’m just browsing
- A banker shaking my hand and immediately asking me for my Social Security Number and address so he can open a new account for me, without even trying to understand why I might be interested in a new account
Instead, imagine if you had a retail store – how would you train your employees to greet a prospective customer when he/she walks in the door? What types of questions or responses would you expect? Start there and see how much better the user feedback and business outcomes can be.
Product Elevator 