User Growth Bootcamp

Activation Workshop
Condential Information and Materials

Acquisition
source person
comes from
SEO, SEM, viral, business
development, word of
mouth

Activation
getting someone to a
must have
experience
Getting to the core
experience,sign up,
email collection
OH: Websites are so complicated

Remember rst signing up for Twitter?
We dug in and tried to
learn what the aha
moment was for a new
user and then rebuilt
our entire new user
experience to
engineer that more
quickly.
Josh Elman, Partner at GreyLock and
Early Product Lead at Twitter

While Josh was there, Twitters active

user base grew 10X
While Josh was there, Twitters active
user base grew 10X
..Twitter has now reached 297M users
whove logged in over the past month.
Its now one of the most inuential
products today..
Activation, isnt just for social products.
Groupon, Square and DropBox work
hard to educate their rst time user.
So what exactly is activation?
Activation is the
process of getting
a new user
to a must have
experience.
Activation is the
process of getting
a new user
and a set of best practices to
get them active.
its a set of best practices to
get them active.
..and is a really
common
bottleneck.
The goal is similar to
onboarding although the word
onboarding suggests a process.
The best activation wont
involve too much process.
Good activation involves a
mix of selling, educating and
using your product.
..with minimal friction along
the way.
When you get it right,
what happens is the
boundary between trying
out a product and using it
disappears.
Ben Chow, Product Designer

Thinking about activation can

also be about protecting your
current users from things like
fake accounts and spam.
Why does it work?
Gets new users to understand your
products value now, instead of later.
Isolates variables to help you
understand what motivates or
prevents someone from becoming
an active user.
Motivation can be very powerful
But you do gotta
deliver on that
promise.
Whats is your
aha moment
and how are you
measuring it?
Ideally, everything - every word,
image, sound, video - should help get
someone there.
Also in an ideal world you already know
which user to focus on, which is hard.
Some tools to get you started
Optimizely.com
Easy a/b testing
Heres how it works
Goal: Increase sign up rate
Hypothesis: Create a long
form page
Which one won?
New hypothesis
Which one won?
And if we
combined
both?
Which one won?
The
testing
doesnt
end..

Conversion rate over time
Statistical Signicance
http://getdatadriven.com/ab-signicance-test
Unbounce
So How can we learn to do it
well?
We actually have the tool chest
available to us at all times..
The best way to learn is from
other innovative products.
Here are some tactics pulled
out from the best..
Disclaimer: This is just a happy place to
start.
..lets get started
Front load
Minimalism
Clear, simple value proposition
A subheading for more detail
Visuals
Youve already got their
attention, so get to the point.
1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Evaluation
4. Action
Social Sign in, with an option for
email
Quora
Say you wont post on their wall
Embedded form on homepage
Prelled forms
42%


completion
time
Inline form validation
-
Pop up navigation, because its easy to
create.
Keep with the simple, clear language
Relevant Faces (if not distracting)

Celeb
Customer
Friend
Smiling
Attractive
Female
William Shatner
..Or just an interesting waiting screen
Or on mobile
Import contact address books, early on
Facebook
Youll hit a lot more people in your
funnel that way, so test it out.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
100%
20%
5%
1%
Homepage
Import
Select Category
Rate Books
Users Funnel
..the main ones are gmail, yahoo,
hotmail
Import phone contacts
Step 2 Step 1
skip this step
Pre-populate with APIs
Link to conrm email
Use a progress bar
LinkedIn Groupon
Big, clear calls to action
And again scrolling down...
Large, relevant images
(Theyre easier to design too)
Say its free
Consistent calls to action,
Consistent calls to action, above the fold
768 Pixels
Social Proof: Quantity
Social Proof: People
Social Proof: Shares
Social Proof: Press
Social Proof: Customers
Arrows pointing to your call to action
Include nav links in the Footer
No footer below the fold for direct URL
Nothing here
30%
conversion
Localization
English Spanish
-
Landing pages
Amazon WillCall
Call-to-action button in the same spot
Call-to-action button in the same spot
Call-to-action button in the same spot
CEO Email
Relevant Email
What are some onboarding worst
practices?
Auto-carousels
Carousels are effective at being
able to tell people in Marketing/
Senior Management that their
latest idea is on the Home
Page.Lee Duddell
They introduce too many
variables so you cant gure
out whats working.
IF they can get to it in time, people
just click the rst image anyway..
Unnecessary form elds
Unnecessary form elds
At least 1% improved conversion for each
eld dropped
To many, conicting, calls to action
Horizontal navigation
As soon as we get on a computer, we all
start acting like we have a major case of
A.D.D.
Each additional link takes focus away
from your most important call to
action.
At a certain point this makes your
site pretty much unusable.
Just think deep when youd
like to cross-sell a feature or
product.
If you need to add a link, why not
include it in the footer?
And split each into its own page.
When you use weak calls to action..
..like Submit you lose an opportunity
to teach users what happens when
they click.
?
Who really wants to
submit anything anyway?
Do as Unbounce.com says and..
Side note
..anyone wanna do
a ower startup? :)
Too Strong on Design
Take 3 seconds to gure out what
this page is about. ..
While its beautifully designed, there
just isnt much being accomplished
here.

Spending too much time on form
over function can cripple your
iteration speed.
Explainer video for new product
categories
Helps dene the problem to a
user
DropBox new users didnt realize
they had a problem.
Consider longer form copy for this
or for high priced products where its
difcult to immediately get trust
Lets talk mobile for a bit
If someone doesnt FB Connect
Asking for permission
This is what happens if someone says no
Preface permissions
(Check out Poker Friends in iOS)
Preface permissions
Accessing Contacts
Accessing Photos
Make what you want someone to do
really obvious
Initial Screen and Description
Pre Onboarding
Rapid succession
Learn by doing
Focused feature set
Tuck away advanced features
Text invite
Now onto you