A Product manager’s most critical jobs are to identify a problem, determine the business potential, lay out a business case, get the budget right, get the Design right, and build & ship the feature/product. Yes, this sounds like a lot. But if this is all that we think a PM is bestowed with, then we are grossly mistaken. The above is just the half job done. The other critical piece of the job is to drive Product discovery, and adoption to realize value from the investment made.
Of course, there are ‘n’ other things to get things right, but predominantly, the above two aspects logically make the circle complete.
“Can you quantify the value added?”. “Show me the success metrics?”
That’s what leadership is interested in, isn’t it?
In this curated case study, we will explore the feature discovery strategies employed by WhatsApp to drive adoption and achieve favorable outcomes.
First, let’s clarify what Feature Discovery means and how it can help improve adoption. Feature discovery is the process of making newly developed or underutilized features visible to users and encouraging them to use them. Feature discovery is a critical step towards increasing adoption. Organizations spend a lot of money developing and releasing new features. However, if users are not aware of these features, they will not use them. Without user adoption, there is no value realization.
In today’s highly competitive business environment, even a single missing feature can cause users to switch to a rival company. Therefore, while it is important to regularly introduce new features and improve your product, it is even more crucial to drive user adoption to maximize the benefits of those improvements.
Broadly, there are two stages where typically the feature discovery is deployed.
- Discovery for New User On-boarding – this is a product in itself
- Discovery for Existing Users
Let’s deep into the Feature discovery strategies for existing users.
Traditional Feature Discovery Strategies:
These are traditional strategies predominantly deployed outside the product. Below are some of the examples.
- New Feature Launch Updates on the Website
- Update on Social Media Channel
- Blogs
- Videos
- Marketing channels
- Product Help guides
- Release Notes Broadcasts
Modern In-App Discovery Strategies:
These are strategies deployed within the product and attached to the user journey.
- In-App Popups
- Banners
- Overlays
- In-App alerts
- New Feature announcements
- In-App Labelling
- Strategic Placements
- Attention seeking through visual/animation effects
The secret sauce for a successful Discovery Strategy:
- Combination of traditional & In-App discovery.
- seamlessly weave the discovery elements carefully into the user journey
- Target the right users at the right time at the right frequency
- Right and clean Messaging
- Measure the effectiveness & iterate
WhatsApp New Features and Their Discovery Strategies
1. Introducing UPI Payments on Whatsapp with Banner messaging
2. Launching the Communities feature with Banner Messaging
3. Call Link – Prominently docked to the top of the screen
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4. Whatsapp account for Whatsapp
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5. Feature to Add multiple accounts – Strategic Placement on top right
6. Chat lock – Contextual Placement
