It’s Day 3 of Product Awareness Month. Today’s post is about discovering new use-cases for your products that can be useful for different functional users in your customer’s company. — Unbounce co-founder Oli GardnerIf you read the opening post of Product Awareness Month, you would have read about the concept of Productizing Our Technology (POT).
Productizing Our Technology
By taking our core tech, combining the available features, with new jQuery scripts, CSS, and some 3rd-party integrations, it’s possible to create a plethora of new “mini-products” that if embraced by the community, could inform future product direction.
When we created an initial list of product ideas, expanding upon what the base product can already do, I realized that — as we’ve moved from a single product to multiple — we’d not changed our perception of who the functional buyer persona is.
If you look at the table below, notice how product #1 is a standalone landing page used primarily for paid ad campaigns, but products #2 and #3 are designed to be used primarily on your website.
| PRODUCT | |||
| #1 Landing Pages | #2 Popups | #3 Sticky Bars | |
| Primary Use Case | Use standalone landing pages to convert more of paid (AdWords) traffic. | Use on website pages to convert more organic traffic. | Use on website pages to convert more organic traffic. |
| Primary Persona | Campaign Strategist | Website Owner | Website Owner |
| Secondary Persona | Designer | Campaign Strategist | Campaign Strategist |
| Tertiary Persona | Copywriter | Web Designer / Developer | Web Designer / Developer |
Note: that for the personas listed, these are intentionally general, as it’s still part of our discovery. My goal is simply to show that they are most likely different.
We didn’t immediately realize that the teams using these products may not even be in the same department (marketing vs. web team vs. software development), for example. Or if they are in the same department (marketing), they might not work together on a daily basis.
This is a huge problem because it assumes that someone who runs paid campaigns is also going to be optimizing the organic traffic to a website, and is no doubt one of the reasons for low adoption of product #2 and #3.
A WTF Moment – How Could We Be So Blind?
When we talked to our customers and community members, we uncovered a startling fact: most people thought that the new products could only be used on Unbounce landing pages.
WUUUUTTTT! Not true.
Yes, you can, if you want. But the primary use case for the new products is for your website. We really didn’t see this misconception coming, which shows how important it is to always talk to your customers.
Who uses your products?
If you have more than one product, or if the users of your single product have different job roles, are you targeting and communicating with them in different ways? Or have you assumed that everyone will understand the same messaging?
Web developers are not very likely to be downloading an ebook about marketing, and thus will not be on our mailing list to hear about new products that could, in fact, make their job easier and more productive.
So, today, I’m going to share some of the functional use cases of popups and sticky bars that would be used by the UX and web teams that work on and manage your website. This is a very different market than we normally speak to, but super important as some of our research has indicated after the initial launch.
As I explore these use cases, try to follow along with your own products, to see if there are ways that you can create new mini products from the technology you possess.
(Click image for full-size view)
Across the top (in yellow) are the core products, their features (such as targeting, triggers, display frequency), and the different hacks, data sources, and integrations, that can be combined to produce the new products listed in green in the first column.
To recap, each mini product is labelled as either NOW/MVP/NEW depending on how easy it is to create with our current tech:
NOW: These products are possible now with our existing feature set.
MVP: These products are possible by adding some simple scripts/CSS to extend the core.
NEW: These products would require a much deeper level of product or website development to make them possible. These are the examples that came from “blue sky” ideation, and are a useful upper anchor for what could be done.
The core technology is denoted as LP (Landing Pages), POP (Popups), SB (Sticky Bars).
In the table below you’ll find 25 of the ideas we came up with — that I selected from of a total of 121.
Follow our Product Awareness Month journey >> click here to launch a popup with a subscribe form (it uses our on-click trigger feature).
| Product Name | Product Description | Core Tech | Core Features | Extras |
| NOW: Can be built with existing features | ||||
| Micro sites | By using the URL targeting feature, a single Sticky Bar with links to multiple Landing Pages can effectively create a microsite. | LP + SB | Targeting: URL Trigger: Entry | N/A |
| EU Cookie Law Bar | You’ve probably seen them all over the place. “All websites owned in the EU or targeted towards EU citizens, are now expected to comply with the law.” The EU has always been very strict and this requirement is why these bars have been popping up everywhere. Good news is, they’re wasy to make with geo-targeting. | SB | Targeting: Geo Trigger: Entry | N/A |
| Two-Step Opt-In Form | Instead of showing a lead gen form, you use a button or link that shows the form in a popup when clicked. This can help remove the perceived friction that a form conveys, and applies a level of commitment when the button is clicked that makes people more likely to continue and fill out the form. | POP | Trigger: Click | N/A |
| Cart Abandon | Use an exit Popup on your ecommerce product/cart/checkout pages to provide an offer to encourage a purchase. | POP | Trigger: Exit | N/A |
| Multi-location GEO Redirect | If you have websites for multiple countries, you can present the entry Popup that uses geolocation to ask if the visitor would like to visit the site in their own country. | POP | Targeting: Geo Trigger: Entry | N/A |
| Poll / Survey | Add a form to a Popup of Sticky Bar to present poll or survey questions. | POP or SB | Trigger: Entry, Exit, Scroll Down, Scroll Up, Delay | N/A |
| NPS Survey | Present a Net Promoter Score in a Sticky Bar to ask your visitors and customers to rate how likely they are to recommend your product or brand to others. | SB | Targeting: None, Cookie Trigger: Exit, Scroll, Delay | N/A |
| Outage Notification | Present an entry Popup or Sticky Bar when there is site maintenance happening. | SB or POP | Targeting: URL, Cookie | N/A |
| Tooltips | Present a popup when someone clicks to show more info/instructions. | POP | Trigger: Click | N/A |
| Referrer Contextual Welcome | Present a contextually relevant message to people arriving from another site. | POP or SB | Targeting: URL, Cookie, Geo Trigger: Entry | N/A |
| Co-marketing Contextual Welcome | Present a contextually relevant message to people arriving from a campaign run by you and a comarketing partner. This could show the relationship (both logos) and the joint offer. | POP or SB | Targeting: Referrer, URL, Cookie Trigger: Entry, Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Exit, Delay | N/A |
| Mobile GPS: Closest Store | Present a Sticky Bar when someone on a mobile site would benefit from knowing where the closest store is to them (potentially with an incentive to visit the store). | SB | Trigger: Entry, Scroll Up, Scroll Down, Exit, Delay | N/A |
| Holiday Hours Announcement | Show details of changes in store hours. Could be used on exit to provide some urgency “We’re closing in 1 hour”. | SB or POP | Trigger: Entry, Exit | N/A | MVP: Can be built with existing features by adding some simple scripts/CSS |
| Sticky Nav | By removing the standard close button [x] from a Sticky Bar and adding smooth scroll anchor links, you can create a sticky navbar which can help increase page engagement. | SB | Trigger: Entry | CSS: Hide close button Javascript: Smooth scroll |
| Mobile App-Style Nav | By placing a Sticky Bar at the bottom of the page (on mobile), using icons/text, you can create a mobile experience that looks and feels like an app. Check out plated.com on your phone as an example. Adding smoothscroll Javascript lets you use the nav to scroll up and down the page. | SB | Trigger: Entry | CSS: Hide close button + mobile only Javascript: Smooth scroll |
| Mobile Hamburger Menu | A hamburger menu is the three lined icon that opens up a navigation menu. They typically slide in and out from the left side or top.Check out a demo in the unbounce.community. | SB | Trigger: Click | jQuery: Slide in/out |
| Progress Bar | Similar to a microsite, a progress bar could be targeted to appear on several pages. Using cookie targeting and CSS the progress bar could be updated to show which pages (steps) have been completed and which steps are remaining. | SB | Targeting: URL, Cookie | jQuery: Set/Read cookies CSS: Prev/next step visual state |
| “Maybe Later” | Maybe Later is a new concept for ecommerce entrance popups that I will explore in depth on day 9 of Product Awareness Month. A large number of ecommerce sites have discounts/offers that show on arrival. This can often be a major disruption to the experience, even if the offer is of interest. The way ML works is that the popup would present 3 options: Yes/No/ML. If “Maybe Later” is clicked, the Popup closes and a persistent Sticky Bar appears at the bottom of the page to act as a subtle reminder of the offer – ready for when the visitor wants it. | POP + SB | Targeting: Cookie | jQuery: Set/Read cookies, Log “Maybe Later” click |
| Video Interaction Offers | Having a CTA embedded in a video is great, but it’s very limited in its ability communicate more than a few words. | POP | Targeting: Cookie | jQuery |
| End-of-video Talk to Sales | Present a popup to someone who completes a video such as a demo. | POP or SB | Trigger: Custom script | jQuery |
| Sticky Video Widget | You may have seen this on news blogs, where a video at the top becomes a smaller video stuck to the side or bottom of the window as you scroll. It’s a great way to ensure higher engagement with the video. Noah made a demo of a sticky video widget in the unbounce.community. | SB | Trigger: Scroll | CSS |
| Guided Tour | Show a popup that begins a guided tour of the page/product. If you close it, the tour is over. If you click a next button it closes and a new popup is opened, positioned close to the feature it’s describing. | POP | Trigger: Click | jQuery | NEW: these require a deeper level of product or website development to make possible |
| Ship it Faster | By setting a cookie based on the shipping method on an ecommerce site, an exit Popup or Sticky Bar could be used to suggest a different shipping method (more expensive) to get it delivered faster. A smart upsell feature. | POP or SB | Targeting: Cookie Trigger: Exit Feature: Dynamic Text Replacement | jQuery |
| Out of Stock | By setting a cookie based on stock availability on an ecommerce site, an exit Popup or Sticky Bar could present an email address field to ask if the visitor would like to be notified when the item is back in stock. | POP or SB | Targeting: Cookie Trigger: Exit | jQuery CSS |
| Sold Out: You Might Like | By setting a cookie based on stock availability on an ecommerce site, a Popup or Sticky Bar could be shown that presents a set of recommended products related to an out of stock item. | POP or SB | Targeting: Cookie Trigger: Exit Feature: Dynamic Text Replacement | jQuery CSS |
As you can see, there are a ton of new use cases for the products, which are useful to a completely different set of functional users. Unless we do something to specifically target these new functional users, adoption won’t be our only problem, acquisition will be too.
How can you target different functional users?
Approach 1: Product Pages for Organic & Paid Traffic
One way to start validating these use cases is to create new product pages for them to see if you can attract some organic traffic. In our case, this would allow those searching for this type of product to arrive on our website where we may be able to demo the product as part of the experience.
Approach 2: Cross-Function Advocate Email Marketing
Another approach is to explicitly connect the different team members, through suggestive email copy. For instance, we could email our customers and educate them that our product can help others on their team – getting the conversation started. This has the benefit of communicating through an established brand advocate.
Prioritizing Product Development
One of our goals with POT is to gather insights into which new product ideas are in demand. There will without question be an increase in technical support questions based on the implementation requirements of these ideas, but I consider that a good problem to have. If there’s enough call for full productization, that’s a great way to increase adoption and the stickiness of our products.
How many new products could YOU build?
I’d love to hear in the comments how you can imagine doing this with your own software/products/services. Please jump into the comments and let me know. If you’re worried about your competitors stealing your ideas (I definitely thought about that when I decided on this approach – but I’m erring on the side of our core Transparency value), you could simply mention how many you think you could come up with, which is also very cool.
Now, everybody POT!
Cheers
Oli Gardner
p.s. Tell your web/UX teammates about this blog post :D
