Considering Propositions
“Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument” Desmond Tutu once said… on much more important matters. However, importantly we can learn a lot from his statement when it comes to communicating product value propositions (VP). Following on from our recent post on product VP development, we want to share an example to help reduce some of the pressure surrounding getting your VP right.
Sometimes improving product VP articulation is a simple matter of following basic communication principles. Consider the 4 most important C’s out of the common 7 C’s for effective communication:
- Completeness: convey all required facts users need in order to make a quick decision on the product.
- Conciseness: convey the message using the most direct language (i.e. the least possible words).
- Consideration: understand the users’ knowledge framework and preconceived ideas about the product space. Use only language they already understand and are familiar with. Direct the message to your users rather than talk about them.
- Clarity: focus on the goal at hand. Avoid trying to achieve too much at once.
It is rather trendy in visual communication design to employ storytelling principles to enhance the experience of websites. Apple created an excellent visual storytelling experience for their product pages which many companies later attempted to emulate, in principle. However, if you take a step back and compare the preconceived ideas users have about Apple’s products as compared to brand new and mostly novel solutions, then it’s a different (visual) story. It quickly becomes clear that, in many cases, the preconceived ideas gap is so great that borrowing Apple’s design solution leads only to confusion rather than clarity.
This problem is a consistent theme we see in our work, especially around complex subscription-based services. One particular example of visual and editorial content creating significant user confusion occurred for one of our wellness and fitness clients. A landing page took users through a journey detailing the various aspects of the supposed ‘full’ subscription offering available to signed up members. However, the user journey leading to the subscription sign up form, contained information about only one aspect of what was a three pillared, subscription-based VP. The narrative focussed on the member-only editorial offering (i.e. health and wellbeing articles) and omitted any mention of the fitness training programs and nutrition and diet plan offerings. This oversight in the original design approach occurred partly because the editorial offering provided more substance (e.g. compelling imagery) for the storytelling approach adopted on the landing page. The result was that at the end of the journey users perceived the service as heavy on the editorial side and had difficulties comprehending the full scope of the subscription VP.
Thankfully, the confusion was detected early through user testing as part of a UX and design audit program. To solve this, a more comprehensive introduction was added at the very beginning of the user journey on the landing page which concisely articulated the three pillars of the service, including an illustrative infographic visually reinforcing the three compelling benefits of the subscription offering.
Clarifying the VP in a concise introduction at the beginning of the user journey is a common solution applied to many consumer products and ecommerce examples (particularly when using a storytelling approach). User research highlights gaps which later inform the rewriting of many value propositions. The missing information or confusion is addressed right at the top of the experience and follow-up user testing is used to confirm and validate users’ understanding of the VP. When dealing with existing builds and designs this approach is rather time and cost effective and has a significant, positive impact on ROI.
If you are unsure about how your value proposition is being perceived by your users, send us a note and let’s look at it together.
