Prathima's Miles & Milestones

Making smart UX changes can have a massive effect on growth and user retention without adding new features. If we focus on making small changes that affect key metrics, the wins quickly add up.

“It’s okay to do small wins. Small wins are good, they will compound. If you’re doing it right the end result will be massive,” says Kevin Li of Yahoo! Growth. And they would know.

1. On board effectively

Only when your users know how to use your product, they can become efficient users. Display your unique value proposition during on boarding.

a ) Reduce the # of Steps in Mobile Onboarding screens.

b) Introduce ‘No login’ flow

c) Improving the icons clearer + adding a label to the icon

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is the ability to change, move and hide UI elements like icons, text, images and buttons without re-submitting to the app stores. This makes changes such as the ones above low cost and high impact.

2. Focus on D1-D3 retention

“The best way to bend the retention curve is to target the first few days of usage, and in particular the first visit. That way, users set up themselves up for success.”

– Andrew Chen, Supply Growth, Uber

3. Drive Users to Core Actions

Our goal for user onboarding should be to get users to the Aha! Moment as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The Behavioral Model basically states that if you increase motivation, increase (user) ability, a trigger such as a CTA or button is more likely to work.

A good way to isolate data on how a change affects users is through A/B testing

4. Map the UI to Thumb Zones

It seems like a trivial detail, but moving the controls to easily reachable areas of the screen for one-handed operation can make your app a whole lot easier to use. Small wins like this can really add up matter.

Eg: In a gaming app, user should be able to hold the hand grip on one hand and should be able to play the game on the other efficiently. That’s a good UX.

5. Make CTAs Clear and Easy to Find

Doing so increases the likelihood that a user is able to complete the action.

While these changes should be a priority on your roadmap, it shouldn’t derail whatever large launches you have on your roadmap.While you’re spending time implementing the big wins such as gamification, adding small compounding wins to your roadmap will have profound effects as well.

Just be sure to track the effect of each change. You want to know what changes are really causing the big increases, whether they’re large new feature projects, or the sum of small changes.