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What to do when users tell you one thing and data tells you another?

5 pointsby breckognizeover 14 years ago
My startup launched 4 months ago. We have software that online retailers (our customers) place on their product pages for their shoppers (our users) to interact with. So far, we've received great feedback from our users - they love our application. We're also positively impacting our customers through increased conversion rates and reduced returns.<p>Today, though, we discovered that the sales of the retailer are negatively impacted by one particular piece of our application. That is, once users engage with this particular feature, they become less likely to purchase (though on the whole the application is a net positive). The problem is that, from collected written feedback, this is clearly users' favorite feature. It has also been the source of a lot of buzz/press for us because it's something new/cool that has never before been part of the online shopping experience.<p>So what do you do when your users are telling you they love one part of the application, but you have data that says your customers might be better served by getting rid of it? PG says to do what's best for the user. Usually I agree with this, but our users aren't the ones paying us.<p>We've started by doing user interviews about the offending feature to see if we can better understand what it is about their interaction that may be deterring them from purchasing. It's not clear, though, that there's a tweak we can make that will change their behavior without ruining what they like about the feature. What should we do?

4 comments

middlegeekover 14 years ago
"once users engage with this particular feature, they become less likely to purchase"<p>"this is clearly users' favorite feature."<p>Your description is a bit vague, but here is what I am thinking. I am wondering if these folks were not going to buy anyway, but they stop to "engage" this feature because it has gee-whiz appeal. So basically you are presenting non buyers with a toy and since they are not busy with the task of buying anyway, they play with the toy.<p>Be careful. Correlation does not (always) imply causation.
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pluxover 14 years ago
Well, I do suspect that your startup is the one you have linked from your profile? Well, then I first want to granulate you do a damn clever idea. (The 3d model is damn sweet information)<p>But I can see how it can have an impact on your retailer have a negative impact, as you are delivering information to their customers, that they probably had to make a purchase to figure out before.<p>With that said, I don't see a problem with you providing this information to the customers, but I think your retailer need to find new ways to interact with it's customers and encourage them to buy.<p>I tell you what, fire a mail to mattias at plux dot se and I will make a suggestion, for free that you can use however you want. :)
zacharycohnover 14 years ago
"We've started by doing user interviews about the offending feature to see if we can better understand what it is about their interaction that may be deterring them from purchasing."<p>This. Something sounds fishy. You should collect more data and interview more users. Are you asking the right questions? If you can't find anything about the "offending feature" that is driving people away from sales, then there might be some other hidden issue.
thewileyoneover 14 years ago
Review your data capture process. Maybe your data is telling you the wrong information.