The User's Journey
Page 5
• Crisis: Is it worth it to go through the effort to use this product to make the training plans? Should they go back to producing their plans manually by scouring YouTube for free videos?
• Climax/Resolution: The training plans they create look great—in fact, way better than what they could produce or find on YouTube. And they can personalize them and tailor them for their needs/level. The training plans are made of bite-sized videos that customers can easily fit into a regimen, and they are also easy to share and can be accessed anytime on the go.
• Falling Action: Customers see the value in using FitCounter and how it fits into their lives.
• End: They can see themselves using the product to get or stay fit and want to try it out.
FIGURE 3.8
The concept story that we gleaned from talking to customers that illustrated how FitCounter fit into people’s lives.
What we had here was a solid story for a concept for a product—one that we tested by talking to customers, running ads, and measuring with customer feedback, clicks, and eventually acquisition funnels that manifested different facets of this story. At the conceptual level, a product that embodied this particular story was something that people wanted and would pay for.
But this was not the concept behind our current product. That product, again, was video news about health and fitness. It was basically a way to watch exercise videos so that you could get fit. You could watch the videos, save the videos, and you had to pay to access more videos. And sharing was difficult. Finding content? Also difficult because the product was now structured more like a blog with posts, archives, and categories. It wasn’t organized around helping people create or share training plans.
Could we, perhaps, build an actual product around this concept? And was this something that people would actually use and pay for? For that, we needed an origin story.
CHAPTER 4
Origin Stories
What Is an Origin Story?
How Origin Stories Work
Mapping an Origin Story
Case Study: Slack
Case Study: FitCounter’s Origin Story
“The character must for some reason feel compelled to act, effecting some change…”
—John Gardner,
The Art of Fiction
In 2011, I got an email inviting me to join the social bookmarking site, Pinterest (see Figure 4.1). The email wasn’t pretty. The copy wasn’t mind-blowing. Still, this email caught my attention. It called me to action and helped me become a converted and dedicated Pinterest user within a few minutes. This email was an integral part of my origin story, or the story of how I started using Pinterest to do things like decorate, cook, and garden.
FIGURE 4.1
An invitation to join Pinterest.
While this might not seem earth shattering, this is the origin story that 100 million people around the world have with Pinterest, one of the fastest-growing social networks at the time. How did an otherwise innocuous-seeming email convert so many people? In order to understand how, you need to understand how origin stories function.
What Is an Origin Story?
An origin story is the story of how someone becomes your customer for the first time—it’s how that person goes from hearing about your product to actually using it. For you, it occupies the space between how you market a product and design the actual product itself. For your customer, it occupies the space between what they think about your product and what they do with your product.
As such, an origin story acts as a bridge between your concept story and your usage story—bridging the gap between the concept of a product or service and the actual usage of it. It’s where and when potential customers not only see what they can do with a product, but also how they can take an action with it.
Let’s look at how the Pinterest email worked to create my personal origin story. First, the subject line of the email was pretty straightforward: “Check out my stuff on Pinterest.” Next, in the body of the email, I could see that it was sent on behalf of my partner, Erica. The copy read:
“Hi,
I set up a Pinterest profile where I can share the things I like and I want you to follow me so you can see it! Once you join Pinterest, you’ll be able to create your own collections and share your taste.
Thanks,
Erica”
Finally, there was a link I could click to sign up, which I did without hesitation. But why was I so eager to sign up? A few key words in the email resonated with me and supported what could be my story if I signed up.
Here is the origin story broken down into the story format of a Pinterest user like me, as shown in Figure 4.2:
• Exposition: I love to cook and am redesigning my living room. I collect and share things like recipes and home decor inspiration by reading blogs, using my browser bookmarks, emailing them to others, and occasionally tweeting or posting to Facebook.
• Problem: Collecting and sharing is a pain. I can never find things after I’ve saved them. And bookmarking and sharing is typically text-based, whereas home décor and food are visual, so it’s hard to find things after I’ve saved them.
• Rising Action: I get an email invitation to join Pinterest. So I joined. What did I have to lose?
• Crisis: What? Another thing to sign up for? I already have ways to collect and share things. Maybe I should rethink this?
• Climax/Resolution: Someone wants to share something visual with me! It’s visual! And social! It sounds simple, but this is a very big deal. All the email has to do is say these two words, and I’m sold: share and see.
• Falling Action: I sign up.
• End: I collect and share something. I get to experience how awesome this thing is. I’m hooked!
FIGURE 4.2
The origin story of how someone becomes a Pinterest user.
NOTE CREATING SUPERHEROES
Life is a story. And in this story, you are the hero. If your customers are the heroes in their stories using your product, then just like comic book superheroes, they get an origin story—that’s the story of how they became a hero for the very first time.
Origin stories like the one that included the Pinterest email can be that simple: a few lines of copy in an email that help the business grow astronomically. Apparently, I’m not the only one who wants to collect and share visual things. Are you really going to go out and build the next Pinterest? Probably not. Can you really credit Pinterest’s email strategy and design for its explosive growth and new user acquisition at the time? Of course not. Many factors play into precipitous and even viral growth like this, such as word of mouth, press coverage, or paid advertising.
But what you can do is reverse-engineer an origin story framework by looking at successful products and how and why they acquired users. Then you can consciously engineer, build, and test an origin story for your own product or project.
How Origin Stories Work
Origin stories operate much like concept stories. The biggest difference is that where a concept story helps you define your product and its value proposition, the origin story helps you figure out how to communicate your value proposition, get people to take action, and get your customer to experience that value proposition for the very first time. You’ll even notice that because your origin story relies so heavily on elements you uncover and outline in your concept story, you can reuse some of the plot points.
Origin stories generally work like this (see Figure 4.3):
• Exposition: The current state of things (same as your concept story)
• Inciting Incident/Problem: The problem or emotional trigger (same as your concept story)
• Rising Action: The acquisition channels
• Crisis: The resistance or impediments that the user experiences
• Climax/Resolution: Why the user cares
• Falling Action: The user takes some kind of action
• End: The goal met—the end…for now
FIGU
RE 4.3
The mechanics of an origin story.
Exposition
During the exposition, you’re introduced to the world of the character or user. You find out who the user is and what he wants (his big goal). What does he need to do?
NOTE YOU’RE NOT SEEING DOUBLE (OR TRIPLE)
The material in the exposition is the same in all three stories: origin, concept, and usage.
Inciting Incident/Problem
The inciting incident is the problem or need that your user has. This might be a problem she knows she has, or one that you need to show her that she has. Both of them are valid. And most likely, it’s a problem that she usually solves through other means.
Concept Stories vs. Origin Stories
Where concept stories describe why someone might want to use a product, origin stories illustrate how they find it and then why and how they use it for the very first time. A concept story is big picture, while an origin story starts to get tactical. Additionally, an origin story provides a complete story for your users with a beginning, middle, and end.
Rising Action
Your rising action is represented by your acquisition or brand awareness channels—for example, how your customer hears about or finds your product. The rising action occurs when your story starts transforming from conceptual to something more like a journey with actual events. Here, your customer might find your product in a variety of ways:
• Hears about your product or service from a friend through word of mouth
• Does a Google search
• Sees an advertisement on TV
• Reads a tweet, Facebook, or other social media post
• Receives an email
Crisis
At the crisis point, the conflict and tension start to build. You might have uncovered potential crises when you developed your concept story. If so, consider and include them here.
Remember, conflict and tension are good; they make stories more enjoyable and satisfying for the person experiencing the story, whether they are watching a movie or even becoming a customer. If there is no tension, then your solution is probably not very exciting.
In origin stories, much like concept stories, these crisis moments will most likely happen in people’s heads as they think about why they shouldn’t take some kind of action. Or the crisis moment might be something that you uncover and want to avoid, like confusing copy on your website or in an email. Think about your customer’s journey. What might get in the customer’s way or what hurdles might she face? These hurdles can include the following:
• Competitor products or brands
• Other solutions (like doing things themselves or analog solutions)
• General resistance to trying something new or taking action
• Fears surrounding safety or security
Climax/Resolution
In a concept story, the climax occurs when your customer understands the value of a product; in an origin story, it happens when the user sees the value of a product. (As you’ll see in the next chapter, the climax of a usage story is where the user experiences the value of a product.) The user doesn’t solve her problem yet or meet her goals, but she sees that she can use your product to do so.
Because this is now an actual step in her journey, you need to consider carefully where this happens. Where do you want her to land after she first hears about you or heads out on her journey? This is the point when all of your story engineering manifests into some kind of interface, whether it be digital, print, or even a customer service script that a salesperson will communicate over the phone. If digital, you’ve got a few moments at best to grab someone’s attention and make him care. These can take place in a variety of ways:
• Home pages
• Landing pages
• App Store pages
• Brick and mortar stores
• Calling a phone number
• And a plethora of other key touchpoints
Falling Action
What then? She just saw that she can solve her problem by using your product. What do you want her to do now? You’ll want to consider one primary action that you ideally want people to take—a happy path, if you will—but also consider and plan for multiple actions and potentially branching paths. Broadly, you’ve talked to your customers, looked at your analytics and funnel traffic, and parsed your stories from all of the data, so what primary action do you want this person to take once she is sold on using your product?
Is there a secondary action she might take? You might want her to sign up for something, but what if she just wants to get more information instead? No matter what the action is, this is the point at which you not only want her to take an action, but you also have to get her to experience some kind of value. Nothing says “not coming back” like a sign-up form that takes you to a “thank you” page.
Think like a storyteller. How can this episode come to a close in a way that satisfies both your customer and the business? You don’t need to go into too much detail for the falling action. What you might find is that the falling action is probably its own story that warrants closer inspection (more on that in the next chapter).
Here are some common falling actions, each of which merits its own story:
• Try out a demo
• Sign up for an account
• Learn more
• Call a phone number
End
This is where she meets her goals. It’s also where the business meets its key goals. The key to developing successful origin stories is that you call your main character to action and determine how to measure that action once they acquire their goal and in every step that leads to the end.
Mapping an Origin Story
After you’ve drafted a concept story, you’re ready to start working on an origin story. Draft an origin story in any project where you are trying to figure out how to acquire or convert customers. Marketing strategies, landing pages, even something as specific as naming buttons and calls to actions all benefit from a clear and structurally sound origin story.
Map an origin story for any and all of your markets, personas, or customer behavior types that you are targeting, as well as the key touchpoints and acquisition funnels you need to explore. For example, the story of how a customer type finds your home page, landing page, or app through a Google search? Map out that story. The story of what happens after someone sees your TV advertisement or Facebook ad and then decides to buy or try your product out? That also gets a story. That home page that isn’t converting enough new users? Map out that story, too. Chances are, there is a cliffhanger in there that you can identify and troubleshoot.
When mapping out an origin story, you want to ask yourself these questions:
• Exposition: The current state of things (same as your concept story)
• Who is your target customer?
• What’s good in his world as it relates to your product or service?
• What is his goal as it relates to your product or service?
• Inciting Incident: The problem or emotional trigger (same as your concept story)
• What is his problem or pain point?
• Rising Action: The acquisition channels
• How might people hear about your product? How does this path toward discovery relate to their pain point? Acquisition channels and paths can include things like:
• Hears about your product or service from a friend
• Does a Google search
• Sees an advertisement on TV
• Reads a Tweet, Facebook, or other social media post
• Receives an email
• Crisis: The resistance or impediments that the user experiences
• What might get in their way or what hurdles might they face?
• Climax/Resolution: Why the user cares
• Where do you want users to land after they first hear about you and head out on their journey? These can be places like:
<
br /> • Home pages
• Landing pages
• App Store pages
• Brick and mortar store
• Calling a phone number
• This is the point when someone lands on a critical screen or step in his discovery process. How will you get him to care about what you have to show him? What parts of your story will you show him to make what he sees resonate? This is the point when all of your story engineering manifests into some kind of interface, whether it be digital, print, or even a customer service script. If digital, you’ve got a few moments at best to grab someone’s attention and make him care.
• Falling Action: The user takes some kind of action
• What action do you want him to take at this point in time?
• Try out a demo
• Sign up for an account
• Learn more
• Call a phone number
• End: The user meets his goal
• What is the user goal?
• What is the high-level business goal or mission? It should be something that is measurable (see Chapter 7).
• How will the user know he has met this goal?
NOTE WHO OWNS THE STORY?
For this reason, origin stories are where marketing, sales, business development, and advertising intersect with product design, and development. Uncovering and enabling a great origin story is not the job of one person or department, but rather an interdisciplinary, cross-functional effort.