The Mobile Spoon

So your product starts to show traction and you want to collect some data and start making data-driven decisions.

It’s time to think about segmentation.

You know the drill:
Different types of users => different usage => different needs => different priorities.
Different types of users => different spend  => different priorities.
Different types of users => different pain points => different messaging.
The list goes on…

You need a systematic, scalable way to divide your users into smaller segments based on the characteristics they share.


Here’s how I think you should do it:

1. Collect as much data as possible At the early stages of a product - scale, performance, and data efficiency shouldn’t be a concern.
The volumes are still relatively low, so you can store as much data as possible, even if you don’t need it right now.

Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time to optimize when you’re successful and rich…


2. Make sure it’s all in one place Whether you’re using a p…

Some readers have complained that my posts are getting too long.

Well, you’ll be happy to know that I black-listed all of them (they won’t bother us again), but for the sake of making a point, this post will be a short one:

Sign-up forms...
Conversion rates...
You want to collect the user’s name...

Should you go with a single “full name” field or split it to "first name" and "last name"?
My answer is: split it (see? told you it will be short).

The answer is: to split. 
Here's why:

Why you should use a single name field:  For the sake of the sport, here are the reasons to use a single "full name" field:
Better user experience - things go faster when using a single field.
More fields = more friction (unless, of course, you want to create some friction on purpose). Prevent confusion - having one name field eliminates confusion in some places (and cultures) where the name is handled a bit differently (i.e in Japan, Korea, and Romania the family name is pl…

I recently had the chance to help a young startup building a marketplace, and it reminded me of the long process we went through to find and refine our matching workflow (the one that help the buyers connect with the right suppliers). I decided to write this post hoping it will help other marketplaces analyze their challenges and come up with the model that fits their need.

If you’re leading a marketplace product, you know how important liquidity is.
Liquidity describes the chances of a buyer or a supplier to perform a transaction, and although it doesn’t have an accurate formula - it is driven by the number of options (number of buyers/suppliers) relevant to a certain service/product, in a given location and time.

Take speed dating as an example: if you invite 6 people to a speed dating event, the chances of some participants to find a match are pretty low. On the other hand, if you bring 100 people in - some of them will probably be able to find a match, and of course, the matching…

In product design, friction is usually the “bad guy”: a conversionkiller that prevents users from getting things done and accomplishing their goals.
Friction is that thing that causes anxiety, confuses the users, slows them down, or distracts them from doing what they originally wanted to do or what the product wants them to do.
Friction is usually bad for business.  Unless... it’s done intentionally...
There are situations where friction can help the product (or the business) perform better.
Users might still feel frustrated, but “good friction” is usually something that’s planned to achieve a certain goal that is more important than good user experience.
So when can friction be a good thing?
Here are 6 legitimate examples (followed bu some illegitimate ones): 


1. Filtering unwanted users Short sign-up forms lead to higher conversion rates and more users, but sometimes you just don’t want “anyone” to become a user.
Think about early-staged products that are chasing certain early adop…

In a world where quantitative data drives so many product decisions, interviewing users is still an important tool for understanding your users and get qualitative insights.

I invited Yael Oppenheim, a market and a user research consultant, and the founder of FitMyTime (a platform for online live personal fitness and yoga classes) for coffee.

Yael was kind enough to share some of her tips about conducting user interviews, and our conversation ended up with me interviewing her for the mobile spoon 😉. Is that a remarkable journalism work or what?


So here's an interview about how to conduct user interviews:


When your product exists, and you’re talking to your users, there’s a clear set of rules to make sure you eliminate biases and get genuine answers. But how do you do this when the product does not exist yet, and there aren’t any users to talk to? You would think that doing user interviews without having an actual product (nor actual users) would make your work more difficult, bec…