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diff --git a/vendor/fguillot/picofeed/tests/fixtures/groovehq.xml b/vendor/fguillot/picofeed/tests/fixtures/groovehq.xml deleted file mode 100644 index dd6eda3fd..000000000 --- a/vendor/fguillot/picofeed/tests/fixtures/groovehq.xml +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1767 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?> -<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'> -<title type='text'>Groove Blog</title> -<generator uri='http://nestacms.com'>Nesta</generator> -<id>tag:blog1.groovehq.com,2009:/</id> -<link href='/articles.xml' rel='self' /> -<link href='/' rel='alternate' /> -<subtitle type='text'>Configure your subtitle</subtitle> -<updated>2014-10-16T00:00:00+00:00</updated> -<entry> -<title>SEO for Startups — How We Got Over Our Fear of SEO</title> -<link href='/blog/seo-for-startups' rel='alternate' type='text/html' /> -<id>tag:blog1.groovehq.com,2014-10-16:/blog/seo-for-startups</id> -<content type='html'><p>I used to think of SEO as a “scammy” strategy for startups. Here’s<br>why I changed my mind.</p> - -<p>This is a post about being wrong.</p> - -<p>About totally misjudging something, and waiting too long to try it because of preconceived notions.</p> - -<p>And about how finally digging into the potential value of doing SEO “right” convinced me that it was worth pursuing.</p> - -<p>If you’re in the same boat — that is, curious about SEO but not really sure where to start or why — then this post is for you.</p> - -<h2>Three Reasons We Didn’t Do Any SEO Before</h2> - -<p>There are a number of reasons we hadn’t given much thought to SEO in the past. Looking back, some of them were completely valid, and others totally misguided…</p> - -<h3>1) Focus</h3> - -<p>Our team is big on <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/focus">focus</a>. We believe in optimizing our time to spend it on the things that we know will drive results, and cutting mercilessly in the areas that don’t bring much of a return.</p> - -<p>That’s why we <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/focus">deleted our Facebook page</a> last month.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/deleted-facebook.jpg" title="Focus" alt="Focus" /> -<b>Focus</b></p> - -<p>Things were already going well, and in a world where we’re spending hundreds of team hours per week on product, blogging, content promotion, support and customer development, we didn’t really have the capacity to shift focus to SEO.</p> - -<p>At least, I didn’t <em>think</em> we did.</p> - -<h3>2) Lack of Knowledge</h3> - -<p>I’ve started four businesses, and grew them all without even thinking about SEO.</p> - -<p>I don’t say that to brag; I say that to explain that SEO simply isn’t something I’ve come across in my career. It’s not something I’ve ever worried about.</p> - -<p>Because of that, I knew next to nothing about it until I hired Jordan, our CTO, a self-taught search marketer who has successfully used SEO and SEM in his own businesses since 2000. Jordan has led the charge and taught our team a lot about doing SEO “right,” but before that, I didn’t really know much about it.</p> - -<p>Which leads me to…</p> - -<h3>3) “SEO Is Scammy”</h3> - -<p>I have no doubt that I’m going to piss off some SEO experts by saying this.</p> - -<p>But frankly — probably because I didn’t know anything about it — before last year, I had the pre-existing notion that SEO was not a whole lot more than a scammy tactic to “game” Google.</p> - -<p>My experiences with “SEO” mostly consisted of:</p> - -<ul> -<li>Struggling to finish reading blog posts and company websites that were obviously built to house keywords, and <em>not</em> interesting content.</li> -<li><p>Seeing (and deleting) posts with generic comments and links back to business sites on this blog, every single week.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/spammy-comments.png" title="Spammy comments" alt="Spammy comments" /> -<b>Spammy comments</b></p> - -<p>(Note: I actually don’t mind people linking to their business on our blog <i>at all</i>. If you’re adding value to our community, I’m all about spreading the good word. It’s those who don’t even take the time to read or contribute before spamming us with their links that I can’t stand.)</p></li> -<li><p>Getting pitch after pitch from offshore SEO “agencies” offering to write keyword-optimized articles and submit them to hundreds of sites around the web.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/black-seo-offer.png" title="“SEO”" alt="“SEO”" /> -<b>“SEO”</b></p></li> -</ul> - - -<p>Unfortunately, this was a case of <em>only</em> seeing the bad side and assuming the worst. And even more unfortunately, that ignorance was costing us traffic.</p> - -<h2>Why We Decided to Optimize Our Website</h2> - -<p>We first began to consider the idea of optimizing our marketing site for Google when we did our last <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/long-form-landing-page">redesign</a>. And while we didn’t do it then, I was warming up to the idea.</p> - -<p>The more I read about <em>real</em> SEO — and not the scammy stuff I had come across — the more I began to see the real value in taking this on.</p> - -<p>Some of the resources I found invaluable were:</p> - -<ul> -<li>Neil Patel’s <cite><a href="https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/">SEO: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners</a></cite>.</li> -<li>David Zheng’s guest post on OkDork, <cite><a href="http://okdork.com/2014/03/26/how-we-grew-okdork-200-with-these-exact-seo-tips/">How We Grew OkDork 200% With These Exact SEO Tips</a></cite>.</li> -<li>Brian Clark’s <cite><a href="http://scribecontent.com/downloads/How-to-Create-Compelling-Content.pdf">How To Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well In Search Engines</a></cite>.</li> -<li><cite><a href="http://unbounce.com/seo/the-adaptive-seo-approach/">The Adaptive SEO Approach</a></cite> by Yomar Lopez on the Unbounce blog.</li> -</ul> - - -<p>Finally, I looked at our own conversion numbers, and what I found sealed the deal.</p> - -<p>Visitors from external sources were signing up at a rate of 2.9%.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/conversions-external.png" title="Conversions: External Sources" alt="Conversions: External Sources" /> -<b>Conversions: External Sources</b></p> - -<p>Traffic from the blog was converting at just over 5%.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/conversions-blog.png" title="Conversions: Blog" alt="Conversions: Blog" /> -<b>Conversions: Blog</b></p> - -<p>But traffic from organic search? A whopping 9.4%.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/conversions-organic.png" title="Conversions: Organic Search" alt="Conversions: Organic Search" /> -<b>Conversions: Organic Search</b></p> - -<p>A new goal became clear: we needed to increase our search traffic.</p> - -<h2>Our Strategy: How We Built a Solid SEO Foundation</h2> - -<p>I want to be <em>very</em> clear: this is NOT an expert-level plan for SEO.</p> - -<p>This isn’t even an <em>intermediate</em> list of the things that you could do.</p> - -<p>This is how we, as a startup that was doing literally <em>nothing</em> for SEO, began to build a foundation to increase organic search traffic to our marketing site.</p> - -<p>If you’re an SEO expert, this will be <em>very</em> basic. But if you’re interested in taking the first steps — and seeing how we got <em>awesome</em> results from a simple process&nbsp;— then read on to see what we did.</p> - -<h3>Step 1: Identify the Problem</h3> - -<p>We had a single-page marketing site that, while converting reasonably well, wasn’t doing us any favors in search engines. In a crowded space, we were often falling onto the third, fourth or fifth page for searches relevant to our customers.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/falling-behind.png" title="Falling Behind" alt="Falling Behind" /> -<b>Falling Behind</b></p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> While our site was doing well when it came to conversions, we were leaving money on the table with a single-page design by not giving search engines anything to pick up.</p> - -<h3>Step 2: See What Prospects Are Searching for</h3> - -<p>We had a <em>bit</em> of a head start here, as we had done similar research for a small AdWords test last year. But essentially, we used <a href="https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner">Google’s Keyword Planner</a> to check how frequently people were searching hundreds of different terms (and variations of those terms).</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/google-keyword-planner.png" title="Google Keyword Planner" alt="Google Keyword Planner" /> -<b>Google Keyword Planner</b></p> - -<p>For some of the terms, we simply guessed, but for many, we used records from my <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/customer-development">customer development conversations</a>, which continued to pay off. As it turned out, many of the challenges and goals our customers described to me were high-quality targeted keywords for us.</p> - -<p>We also used <a href="http://keywordtool.io">Keyword Tool</a>, which generates a list of Google’s autocomplete suggestions for any search, to find long-tail keywords that people were searching for.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/keyword-tool.png" title="Keyword Tool" alt="Keyword Tool" /> -<b>Keyword Tool</b></p> - -<p>This research also proved to be invaluable for the strategy of our new <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/support">customer service blog</a>, which we were building at around the same time. I’ll dive much more deeply into the development of that blog in a future post.</p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> Keyword research is a “get your hands dirty” process, but well worth it. Try to think like your customers, or better yet, actually talk to your customers to learn how they think. There are tools to make this easier.</p> - -<h3>Step 3: Plan the Sitemap</h3> - -<p>We ignored any keyword that had many tens of thousands of searches per month (e.g., customer service), and did our best to focus on smaller to medium sized terms (a few thousand searches per month).</p> - -<p>Why?</p> - -<p>Because ranking for a term like “help desk software” would not only be a <em>huge</em> uphill climb for us, but it would hardly yield the most targeted prospects (there are many, <em>many</em> people who search for “customer service” who will never buy customer service software).</p> - -<p>On the other hand, the smaller keywords (e.g., “help desk for saas startup”), while they didn’t have nearly as many searches, would yield far, far more targeted leads.</p> - -<p>Plus, by focusing on 100 smaller terms rather than one or two big ones, we would “diversify” our targeting so that the success of our site wouldn’t be dependant on the fluctuating interest in a single term.</p> - -<p>We took our list of keywords and began to build the sitemap. Our goal was to create enough pages so that we could target the most important keywords, but to stop before we began creating duplicate content; something that, aside from damaging the visitor experience, is a sign of those “scammy” tactics and an instant turn-off when I see it on a marketing site.</p> - -<p>We housed our map in a simple Google Spreadsheet to help us keep track of which keywords we’d need to hit for each page, along with titles and meta descriptions.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/sitemap-spreadsheet.png" title="Sitemap Spreadsheet" alt="Sitemap Spreadsheet" /> -<b>Sitemap Spreadsheet</b></p> - -<p>Each page had one or two “primary” keywords, along with long-tail keywords that we used to capture hyper-targeted searches. We would try to make sure that our primary keywords were included across the headers for each page.</p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> There are a number of guidelines and best practices for building a sitemap, but it comes down to picking the most high-value keywords and building content that people will want to read.</p> - -<h3>Step 4: Wireframe</h3> - -<p>We built simple wireframes for each page. Complete enough to give us some idea of what kind of copy we’d need, but basic enough that the copy could still take the stage without worrying about where it would “fit.”</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/wireframes.png" title="Wireframes" alt="Wireframes" /> -<b>Wireframes</b></p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> We’re big believers in “copy first” design, so while we mocked up basic wireframes, we left ourselves plenty of room to let the copy be the star.</p> - -<h3>Step 5: Copy</h3> - -<p>Even though the goal of this effort was to improve our SEO, our keywords still came <em>second</em> in our copy.</p> - -<p>We were sensitive to our fear of our site moving away from the customer-friendly messaging we have and losing our “voice” at the expense of trying to force keywords into our copy.</p> - -<p>So first, we focused on doing all of the things we learned how to do in our first redesign. We used language from our customer development interviews and tried to talk like our customers do. We hit pain points, goals, and important benefits; including many of the ones we knew were successful from tests on our existing site.</p> - -<p>And while we had the keywords in mind as we developed the copy, we didn’t worry about whether or not we “checked them off” along the way.</p> - -<p>Only after we were happy with the way everything read did we look at ways to incorporate:</p> - -<ul> -<li>Primary keywords into headers</li> -<li>Secondary keywords into subheads</li> -<li>Long-tail keywords into copy</li> -</ul> - - -<p>In addition, anywhere we linked to other pages within the site, we would try to include the primary keywords for the linked page <em>around</em> the hyperlink.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/optimizing-links.png" title="Optimizing Links" alt="Optimizing Links" /> -<b>Optimizing Links</b></p> - -<p>In the end, we were satisfied that we were able to maintain our voice and tone while improving the copy.</p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> By writing interesting, quality content <em>first</em>, we were able to incorporate our keywords afterwards and still maintain messaging that resonates with our customers.</p> - -<h3>Step 6: Design</h3> - -<p>After putting the pieces together, we were left with a site that looked and felt good enough to launch.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/final-result.jpg" title="Final Design" alt="Final Design" /> -<b>Final Design</b></p> - -<p>Our friends at <a href="http://lessfilms.com/">Less Films</a> also created an awesome product video for the homepage that incorporated everything we’d learned since the first time we made a Groove video. The making of the video was an in-depth and fascinating process with tons of research and background work involved, and I’ll definitely be writing about the experience here in the future.</p> - -<p style="position: relative"> -<iframe style="display: block; margin: 40px auto 40px -28px; border: 8px solid #FFF; background-color: #FFF; box-shadow: 0px 1px 5px rgba(0, 0, 1, 0.3), 0px 0px 18px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) inset; padding: 60px 20px 20px;" width="690" height="390" src="//fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/ipah6liii5" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><b style="display: block; color: #000; position: absolute; width: 100%; text-align: center; font-family: Helvetica,'sans-serif'; font-size: 24px; font-weight: normal; top: 30px; left: 0px;">New Groove Product Video</b> -</p> - - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> Our total time from start to finish was just a few weeks. A simple design process let us ship a solid site quickly and iterate from there.</p> - -<h2>The Results</h2> - -<p>It’s early, but the results have been promising.</p> - -<p>A week after launch, we were ranking on the front page for a number of our targeted terms.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/result-search.png" title="Results: Search" alt="Results: Search" /> -<b>Results: Search</b></p> - -<p>And with the lift from organic search, overall conversions were boosted, too.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/seo-for-startups/result-conversions.png" title="Results: Conversions" alt="Results: Conversions" /> -<b>Results: Conversions</b></p> - -<p>Note: these results might not be typical. We’ve spent more than a year building this blog, and our site has quite a bit of SEO power because of the number of links that it gets. But with time, you can do exactly the same.</p> - -<h3>How to Apply This to Your Business</h3> - -<p>We’ve still got a <em>long</em> way to go. And plenty left to do when it comes to fortifying our SEO strategy.</p> - -<p>But by just taking a few simple steps, we’ve managed to get some <em>very</em> exciting results.</p> - -<p>As I said, this isn’t an advanced, or even intermediate strategy. In fact, there’s a good chance that you know more about SEO than I do.</p> - -<p>This is meant to serve as a basic primer for businesses who were in the same position as us: afraid and unaware of how to actually do SEO right without becoming “those people.”</p> - -<p>If you haven’t started doing any SEO because you don’t know <em>where</em> to start, then I hope this post has inspired you to give it a try.</p> - -<p>It was certainly worth it for us.</p> -</content> -<published>2014-10-16T00:00:00+00:00</published> -<updated>2014-10-16T00:00:00+00:00</updated> -</entry> -<entry> -<title>Customer Development for Startups: What I Learned Talking to 500 Customers in 4 Weeks</title> -<link href='/blog/customer-development' rel='alternate' type='text/html' /> -<id>tag:blog1.groovehq.com,2014-10-09:/blog/customer-development</id> -<content type='html'><p>I recently spent more than 100 hours talking to Groove customers.<br>Here’s what I learned…</p> - -<p>In some movies, top military commanders have red phones that they only pick up when things start to go wrong.</p> - -<p>They’ll usually see that an issue is getting out of hand, and they’ll grab the phone (without dialing, of course), yelling something dramatic like “get me the President!”</p> - -<p>While I have no idea if this emergency phone exists, I <em>do</em> believe that something similar exists for startup founders.</p> - -<p>When your core metrics start to lag behind your goals — in our case, I wasn’t happy to see churn creeping up close to 3% as our customer base grew — there’s a lot you can do to start to right the ship.</p> - -<p>You can, and <em>should</em>, dig deep into your metrics to spot the weak points. You can, and <em>should</em>, ask the smart people around you for advice. You can, and <em>should</em>, test new tactics and approaches to improve.</p> - -<p>But the hypothetical “red phone” that always seems to help us the most connects directly to our customers.</p> - -<p>In the very early days, we spent many hours talking to every single one of our customers. We didn’t have a choice; exhaustive feedback was the only way to make our product good enough to reach Product/Market Fit.</p> - -<p>And we’ve continued to believe strongly in the power of qualitative research; we’ve done a ton of it, from collecting feedback in <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/non-scaleable-growth-tactics">onboarding emails</a> to <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/long-form-landing-page">Qualaroo widgets</a> to <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/net-promoter-score">Net Promoter Score</a> surveys.</p> - -<p>But it had been a while since I dove in to hardcore customer development interviews. In-depth one-on-one conversations to help us understand the experience of our users like no survey ever could.</p> - -<p>And with a core metric slipping too far for comfort, it was time to pick up the red phone again.</p> - -<h2>How I Had 500 Customer Conversations in Four Weeks</h2> - -<p>On September 10<sup>th</sup>, I sent this email to every Groove customer:</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/non-scaleable-growth-tactics/a-request.png" title="The Ask" alt="The Ask" /> -<b>The Ask</b></p> - -<p>The response blew me away. I expected a couple hundred people to write back over the following week, but my inbox quickly began to fill.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/uh-oh.png" title="Uh oh." alt="Uh oh." /> -<b>Uh oh.</b></p> - -<p>There was no way I’d be able to schedule all of these without drowning under a heap of back-and-forth emails. Scrambling, I signed up for a <a href="http://www.doodle.com">Doodle</a> account, which let me send a link to people who were willing to chat, giving them the chance to schedule their call at a time that worked for them.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/doodle.png" title="Doodle" alt="Doodle" /> -<b>Doodle</b></p> - -<p>Slots quickly began to fill up (I had to go back and add more spots four times). While I only asked for ten minutes, I booked the calls in 30-minute blocks just in case they went long, and to give myself some breathing room to compile notes and digest each call afterwards.</p> - -<p>I used <a href="http://www.skype.com">Skype</a> — or my cell phone — for the calls, <a href="http://www.join.me">Join.me</a> for screen shares to walk through Groove with the customers when I needed to, and old-school paper and pen for taking notes.</p> - -<p>I compiled data in a simple Google Spreadsheet, which you can <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DB5Jippw-09583Qcu7ka7Zl5vhSGz6yE35e5pkWLPQw/edit?usp=sharing">find and copy here</a>.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/tools.png" title="The Tools" alt="The Tools" /> -<b>The Tools</b></p> - -<p>In all, I ended up spending more than 100 hours over four weeks on customer development calls, which are still ongoing. When I shared this with a founder friend of mine, he asked a fair, and obvious, question: <em>why didn’t I have someone else do it, or split the calls with other team members?</em></p> - -<p>Here’s the thing: I trust my team members tremendously. <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/building-a-team">I don’t hire fast</a> — I only hire people after I know I can rely on them to be a valuable asset to our company and a great fit for our team. It’s certainly not that I don’t trust anyone on my team enough to do customer development.</p> - -<p>It’s just that I consider customer development to be <em>such</em> a core part of building a company, that it’s simply the CEO’s job at this stage. It’s just as important as making strategy decisions or meeting with investors.</p> - -<p>Plus, talking to customers isn’t the same as reading the answers someone else recorded on a spreadsheet. I wanted to <em>feel</em> and <em>internalize</em> our customers’ perspectives so that they could drive the other decisions I need to make.</p> - -<p>And that’s why I tackled it on my own.</p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> You don’t need many tools to talk to your customers. And while it’s a time-consuming task, it’s one of the highest-ROI efforts you can tackle as a startup CEO.</p> - -<h2>What Questions Did I Ask?</h2> - -<p>I considered using a scripted series of survey questions, but ultimately decided against it.</p> - -<p>I wanted raw, off-the-cuff insights into how our customers think and feel about Groove… <em>not</em> how they think about specific questions regarding the features and elements that <em>we</em> think are important. I didn’t want to influence any of the feedback I got with leading questions.</p> - -<p>Instead, at the beginning of each call, I simply said:</p> - -<blockquote><p>Hey, thanks so much for agreeing to chat. I won’t take too much of your time. The conversations I’ve been having with customers have been invaluable in helping us shape the product and our plans for the future, so I’m excited to get your feedback. -<br><br> -My goal is to get an overall feel of how you’re using the app, what you like, what you don’t like, and what we can do to make it better. I’ll let you take the floor.</p></blockquote> - -<p>Usually, the very first thing that people told me turned out to be the most important part of their user experience, from their perspective. And often, those important elements didn’t line up <em>at all</em> with what I had assumed people would say.</p> - -<p>There were more than a few surprises, including bugs we didn’t know existed, minor (to us) features that turned out to be hugely valuable for some users, and use cases for Groove that we had never considered.</p> - -<p><strong>Takeaway:</strong> There isn’t necessarily one “right” way to structure the conversations, but there is a clear wrong way: influencing your customers’ feedback with leading questions won’t get you the results you’re looking for.</p> - -<h2>7 Big Wins From Talking to 500 of Our Customers</h2> - -<p>The ultimate “win” from customer development is <em>deep</em> insights into how our customers think, feel and use our app. That insight is absolutely critical to the growth of any business, and it’s the biggest reason I took this project on. It had an immediate impact on how we approach our product roadmap and day-to-day decisions.</p> - -<p>Even if there were no other benefits, that benefit one alone would make it worthwhile.</p> - -<p>With that said, there were quite a few more big wins that ended up coming about from the effort…</p> - -<h3>1) We Learned That We Need Better Second-Tier Onboarding.</h3> - -<p>In more than a few of the calls, customers would mention particular challenges they faced that could be solved with new features or functionality. Thing is, sometimes they were features <em>we already had</em>; for example, third-party app integration (when looking at support tickets, users can choose to bring in data about their customers from other apps like Stripe and CRM tools). When I showed them the feature, I’d hear a painful — but valuable — reaction:</p> - -<blockquote><p>Wow! I didn’t know that existed.</p></blockquote> - -<p>To me, that’s a clear sign that we need to improve our onboarding as users get more deeply engaged with Groove so that they can better discover some of the more advanced features. We’ve already updated our onboarding email sequence to address this, and are working on building the guidance into the app.</p> - -<h3>2) We Turned Unhappy Customers Into Happy Customers.</h3> - -<p>I was able to repair a handful of relationships with customers who were unhappy with the product. In once case, a customer wrote me an email criticising Groove.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/not-happy.png" title="Not Happy" alt="Not Happy" /> -<b>Not Happy</b></p> - -<p>I responded:</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/the-ask.png" title="The Ask" alt="The Ask" /> -<b>The Ask</b></p> - -<p>I was a bit surprised when he agreed to get on the phone with me, but once he did, I explained that I wanted to understand why he felt the way he did, and what we could do to make it better.</p> - -<p>As it turned out, he was upset about the lack of a couple of features that we had planned to build in the immediate weeks ahead. When I shared that with him, he quickly warmed up, and he’s now a much happier customer.</p> - -<p>Note: it’s important to be honest here. No product is <em>perfect</em>, and there are parts of Groove that we wish were better. Those are the parts we’re working on. But never try to convince a customer that a shitty part of your app doesn’t actually suck. You’ll lose their trust in a heartbeat.</p> - -<h3>3) We Better Understood the Personas of Our Customer Base (With Some Surprises).</h3> - -<p>We’ve always had (tested) assumptions about the personas of our customers. And many of them held true in these conversations. But as we’ve grown, things sure have changed.</p> - -<p>I learned about several new use cases for Groove that I hadn’t considered before. For example, several of our customers are schools that use Groove to offer IT support to students and faculty.</p> - -<p>For some of the newly discovered personas, there were enough examples that we’ve decided to build case studies to try and attract more users that fit those personas, or at least test the market to see if there’s a strong fit.</p> - -<h3>4) We Built Better Relationships With Hundreds of Customers.</h3> - -<p>This benefit can’t be understated enough: the number of positive reactions, even from customers who complained about bugs or issues, was huge. Surprisingly, I heard from many of our customers that no other businesses that they used were doing this, and that the gesture of asking them for their thoughts — not just with a mass-emailed survey, but by reaching out for a one-on-one conversation — meant a lot to them.</p> - -<p>It’s amazing how easy it is to stand out with a bit of effort.</p> - -<h3>5) We Got the Chance for Some Quick Customer WOW’s.</h3> - -<p>Sometimes, things that bugged customers were easy fixes or updates that they had never reached out to tell us about. For example, one customer told me that about an issue they were having CC’ing people from a certain domain. This was a weird bug, but something we could fix in just a few minutes, and we ended up pushing a fix for her issue that night.</p> - -<p>Her response?</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/customer-wow.png" title="Customer WOW" alt="Customer WOW" /> -<b>Customer WOW</b></p> - -<p>An easy win that helped us delight a valuable customer.</p> - -<h3>6) We Learned How to Improve Our Marketing Copy.</h3> - -<p>We’re always working to improve the way we position and write about Groove (see our <a href="http://www.groovehq.com/blog/long-form-landing-page">landing page design</a> post for more). Hearing our customers talk about the app and its benefits, along with their personal stories, challenges and goals, is the only way we can write marketing copy that actually connects.</p> - -<p><em>Talking to our customers is the only way to talk like our customers talk.</em></p> - -<p>While I heard a lot of phrases that I was <em>very</em> familiar with already (“Zendesk was just too complicated,” for example), I also spotted some new trends that you’ll see on our marketing site very soon.</p> - -<h3>7) We Got Great Feedback Even When We Didn’t Get to Chat.</h3> - -<p>Some customers couldn’t — or wouldn’t — get on the phone with me. And I completely understand; there’s nothing more valuable than time, and it’s a huge ask to disrupt someone’s day, even if for a few minutes, to talk about a product they use.</p> - -<p>But while there were those I couldn’t schedule talks with, many customers chose to email me their thoughts instead.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/email-feedback.png" title="Email Feedback" alt="Email Feedback" /> -<b>Email Feedback</b></p> - -<p>These were, in many cases, just as valuable as the conversations I had.</p> - -<h2>How to Act on Customer Development Feedback</h2> - -<p>The feedback you get from customer development, just like any data, is useless if you don’t act on it. In fact, it’s <em>worse</em> than useless, since you wasted no small amount of hours collecting it.</p> - -<p>So to ensure that we got value out of this exercise, here are the steps we’ve taken — and are still taking — to make use of the feedback we’ve gathered:</p> - -<h3>Step 1: Organize Feedback to Help You Spot Trends</h3> - -<p>After each conversation, I added labels (e.g., <em>Search, Mailbox, Support, Automation, Pricing</em>) to capture the most important things covered in each conversation.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/organization.png" title="Organization" alt="Organization" /> -<b>Organization</b></p> - -<p>This has helped us go through the data and see which topics trended throughout the conversations, so we know what customers are most vocal about.</p> - -<h3>Step 2: Process the Data</h3> - -<p>Once things were organized, it was easier to go through and decide how to act on various trends. Core fixes and feature requests that bubbled to the top were added to the roadmap. More ancillary features or less popular ones that had potential were added to our wishlist for future releases; we’ll continue to collect data on these requests.</p> - -<h3>Step 3: Line Up Customer Case Studies</h3> - -<p>In my conversations, I unearthed quite a few customers who were having a lot of success with Groove, as well as (like I mentioned) new personas that we hadn’t been targeting before. Those are both great candidates for new case studies to feature as example of Groove’s value, and we’ve already reached out to several of these customers to make it happen.</p> - -<h3>Step 4: Send Thank You Emails</h3> - -<p>If a customer takes time out of their day to give you feedback on their app, it’s a gift. They have a thousand other better uses (from their perspective) of their time. So thanking them is important.</p> - -<p>I’ve always appreciated a thank you more when it was personal and made me feel like my contribution was valuable, so I try to do that with my own thank-you’s.</p> - -<p>Each thank you notes included a brief recap of our conversation, along with any action I’m taking because of it, if any.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/thank-you.png" title="Thank you." alt="Thank you." /> -<b>Thank you.</b></p> - -<h3>Step 5: Write About the Experience</h3> - -<p>This one is pretty meta, I’ll admit.</p> - -<p>But as hopeful as I am that sharing my experience will be for you, it’s also incredibly valuable for me, giving me a chance to reflect on the results — and importance — of customer development. As I’ve researched this post, I’ve caught a number of things that I missed the first time I looked at my notes.</p> - -<h3>Step 6: Make It a Habit</h3> - -<p>We’ve now added a call to action for a customer development chat into our onboarding emails for every new customer.</p> - -<p><img src="/attachments/blog/customer-development/talking-to-every-customer.png" title="Talking to every customer." alt="Talking to every customer." /> -<b>Talking to every customer.</b></p> - -<p>Thankfully, it’ll be a lot easier to schedule calls one at a time than 2,000 at a time.</p> - -<h2>How to Apply This to Your Business</h2> - -<p>Getting qualitative |