9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve.

Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

4 phases of Product Improvement

Rameez Kakodker Follow
May 4, 2019 · 6 min read

Recently, I was in a conversation with my UX lead on how they implement a UX strategy

in an already launched product. We were discussing how a product prioritization
framework fails to tell a story of improvement — it helps you identify specific,
immediate areas of improvement, but it does not help you put an arc of the phases of
improvement. When we phase out improvement, we need to impose an arc which
exposes specific areas of:

1. Repair

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2. Refinement

3. Improvement

4. Differentiation

Each phase alleviates the customers problems and helps increase conversions. The last
phase increases the market share since it helps you create ‘hype’ around your product.

What follows is a discussion of what each of these ‘phases’ mean and how you can
identify and implement areas of improvement.

Preparation
Before we go into the phases, we must first setup feedback or input routes :
Stakeholders/customers/market research — all provide valuable inputs to prioritize the
coming changes. Routes are essentially people or sources that you keep in constant
touch to make sure you’re going the right way, like a mini-map on the screen. Keeping
steady, consistent and rewarded input-routes ensures that you’re always delivering on
the right things. Personally, I keep a few stakeholders and a few customer support
members for regular checkups on customers pulse. Rewarding the inputs is also
essential — they’re invested in you, only if you are invested in them.

Secondly, we must also ensure that the high-level plan proposed is understood by
everyone — if you directly start repairing, you’ll end up being viewed as someone who
lacks vision (more on that later).

Now, let’s look at the 4 steps to achieving the perfect product — for an already launched
product.

Repair
Coming into an already launched product, you’ll immediately notice large glaring gaps
in the user experience or customer journeys. Those are the ones you’d want to focus on
first. Using the Pareto principle, you’ll find that the 20% of the problems cause 80% of
the pain to the customer. Fixing those will get you the maximum bang for your buck.
While this might seem like you’re fixing only the symptoms and not the root problems,
sometimes alleviating the immediate pain leads to a better experience.

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9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve. Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Re ning https://ae.iherb.com/

Consider a simple ecommerce website — https://ae.iherb.com/. A quick look at the

website shows that the Information Architecture (IA) and the checkout need love —
whole lotta love. The IA is confusing to a new user, while the checkout sits to push away
customers:

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9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve. Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Guest checkout is de-facto experience customers demand.

A UX research will show high-drop off rates at the first step of the checkout. Note that
there is a business need to verify the account before proceeding with the checkout
formalities — it makes logical sense for the business to optimize for ‘real orders’ —
however, adding the verification later on, after commitment from the customer (by way
of payment), will drastically improve the business & customer experience.

These 20% issues will have 80% impact on your top line.

Refine
Once you’re done with the repairs, the next step is to refine the existing features that you
have — improving the user experience, product offering and matching the feature set
with the competition brings you at par with the competition.

Look for features that your competition has and see how feasible it is to implement them
in your product. Again, your target is to balance things out, get on par with the rest.

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9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve. Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

H&M (on the left) can bene t from a simple size drop down, shown on Namshi (on the right) that changes
the size, based on the size locale selected

H&M website on the left can definitely benefit from having a simple size locale drop
down (International/UK/US sizing), instead of tucking that away in the size guide.

Again, these refinements need not be only UX — simple things like offering next day
delivery, adding gift wrapping etc are low hanging, easy to solve operational challenges
that go a long way to refine your product offering.

Improve
By now, your product would be on a steady track — majority of the glaring experience
issues would have been fixed, and the rollout of refinement features would be in
progress. Taking the market/customer research, it’s time to work on making features
that improve your product offering. These are features that differentiate your product
from the rest of the competition.

Here are a couple of examples:

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Checking store stock is a good way to improve tra c to the site.

The above feature in https://www.kiabi.ae drives an important psychological aspect to

the visitors of the site. They connect with the site, not as a selling tool, but an
information tool — knowing if that trip that you’re about to take to the store will get you
the product you want, goes a long way to improve organic conversions. Even if a
percentage of those users use this to eventually buy online, it’s an organic, not-bought-
for conversion.

The second example is from Amazon Prime — the key thing here is what you get beyond
just the prime delivery option — the plethora of content at your disposal will imprint on
the customers mind the benefit of Amazon, making it easier for your customer to
transact on the site.

Differentiate
By now, your product would be on a steady growth path of success. Now is the time to
add the disruptive ideas — pivot certain experiences for creating PR value, adding those
crazy ideas that sit at the bottom of the pool — to create exceptional value. These
features drive the PR for your product, adding swag to the offering.

Here is an easy example:

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9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve. Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Pizza huts innovative build-your-own-pizza table

In the world of digital commerce, the examples are aplenty. Here is another from
Amazon: the (now discontinued) Dash button:

Tap the physical button to add items to your amazon cart; checkout when convenient.

These experiences are a pivot around the standard customer journey and bring in a lot
more PR than it brings conversions, driving brand recognition, association and value.

. . .

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9/10/2020 4 phases of Product Improvement. Repair. Refine. Improve. Differentiate… | by Rameez Kakodker | Noteworthy - The Journal Blog

Naming the phases in this way, and presenting the list with this framework in mind,
makes it a lot easier to sell your plan to the stakeholders. It shows Vision, and at the
same time, practicality. We cannot build skyscrapers on a weak foundation. This
framework ensures that a strong foundation is built and a plan in place to reach the
skies.

. . .

User experience and product management go hand-in-hand. They both feed of each
others inputs and go a long way in creating stunning products that are easy to use,
provide customer *and* business benefit. The friction induced by clash of the two pillars
— a yin-yang of ideas and priorities — benefit both business and the customer. When
both teams work together in harmony, excellent products can be achieved.

. . .

This article was written with the help of Annie Vandana, our UX lead. Her valuable
insights here made the article possible and showed us how UX insights are not only
beneficial, but an uncompromising part of Product development.

Thank you for reading.

. . .

📝 Read this story later in Journal.

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