1. intro
I don’t like green tea. I don’t like it at all. I drink a lot of iced coffee, which is great because it gives me the caffeine and keeps me awake. But I have just discovered that green tea has a similar effect as coffee, so there’s not much point in bothering to drink it.
It all comes down to balance. Everyone has their own tastes, and they are different from everyone else’s, so you have to find the right balance for you and your body type, and that is what our reviews do for us. They help us choose products that we would not normally buy based on their features alone, but which we think are worth paying extra for simply because of their usefulness or other benefits to our lives.
This is why we work so hard on making reviews a priority in our product design process: we want to make sure that every product meets your particular needs, and does so in a way that works for you. And by making sure it does, we hope you will find yourself using them more often than you would if they were just some random piece of software running in the background without any benefit whatsoever to you at all (and with way too much cost).
2. cherry blossom oil
While it might look like cherry blossom oil, this post is actually about something completely different: the benefit some kinda gorgeous review.
In the last few years, I’ve been working on a project called Cherry Blossoms, which is an open source system for creating beautiful visualizations of data. It’s not full-blown scientific visualization — that is a whole other subject. The gist of it is that you write your data and then define colors that represent what your data looks like (e.g. “red” for heatmap plots, “red” or “orange” colors for maps of sales). Then you can run the system against your data and see the values change depending on how you color them.
The beauty of this feature is that it makes it easy to visualize big datasets (think billions of numbers), fast (a few seconds per chart) and completely free — all without requiring any additional software or any special hardware to run the system.
I have been using Cherry Blossoms as part of my job as a tech writer for about two years now, but over time I realized there are people out there who would benefit from this kind of tool: companies who want to use visualizations to make tough decisions about their business. They want to do a high-level analysis with their own tools and make sure they put enough weight on certain factors in order to get a better picture — and in doing so, avoid making costly mistakes in their decision-making process. In other words: it could be useful for them if they were able to present facts plainly in a way that helped others do so more easily too.
To put it simply: I am convinced that Cherry Blossoms can change lives!
3. smells like heaven (not)
I’ve been working on this little gem for a while (which I will probably never publish) and it is finally time to share it with the world.
I first started working with a company that had a pretty good product, but it was also quite an acquired taste — first, because of the framework they chose and second, because of the way they positioned it. So I spent quite some time tweaking the user experience and nailing down performance trade-offs that made sense to an engineer rather than just a UX designer. As I wrote in my last post, you can’t design for everyone: you can’t even try — as long as you are trying.
The company in question came across as very well-intentioned but buried deep beneath layers of bureaucracy, which made them seem like they didn’t really want to be there. The same goes for the way their website looked: aesthetically pleasing but understated. What we saw was quite the opposite of what we wanted from a product — we wanted something that would make users feel at home within that environment and feel like a part of their team rather than just another cog in the wheel.
So how does this apply to marketing? In other words, who is your target market? Okay, so not everyone is going to have your problem or have your idea. I mean, there are plenty of people out there who don’t need music; but some people do need music, especially if they’re marketing themselves online (or even offline). But who are these people? Are they on Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? LinkedIn? Or maybe not so much about marketing themselves as about finding work or networking opportunities through social media channels?
Given that most companies don’t really know who their target market are (and since many startups think that’s what makes them successful), all sorts of assumptions can be made when looking at who your customer base might be:
• Are you targeting someone who wants music now (with streaming services) or is it someone who wants more music in their life now, but with better quality and more variety later on? (This may come back to benefits some kinda gorgeous review.)
• If you’re targeting someone who already has money saved up for a few months’ worth of Spotify Premium subscription then perhaps your customer doesn’t fit into this picture either; perhaps they’re looking for ways to streamline their current network rather than expand it further into non-music related activities (
4. petals of love’s formula
How do you define a good review?
These days, writing a good review can be difficult. It is not just the content we provide but also the way our product is presented in relation to other products. And speaking as someone who has written reviews for a number of software products (a few of which are listed on this blog), it is pretty easy to get confused with the way other people talk about the same things. So, let me address those points in this post and share my experience:
What if I told you that all of these things…
1. The product does what it promises and does not fall short on any metric set by its users
2. You have an email list of subscribers that can grow as long as demand for your product continues to exist (in production or otherwise)
3. Your product performs up to what it promises without any downtime
4. You have received great reviews from people who have used your product and have been happy with their experience
5. Your company has taken the time to pay attention to their social media presence, even though you think you do not need them
5. the price tag of this product is $22 and it’s not cheap, but it’s so worth it!
A lot of people will buy a product just because it’s cheap. But what’s the real benefit?
What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to achieve? Why is this product crucial to your business?
In the first case, you should think carefully about how much value you want to create for your customer and make sure you can deliver on it reasonably. In the second case, though, a little extra effort goes a long way towards making things easier for your customer (and yourself).
If you find yourself asking yourself “Why am I spending money on this?” — go through the few answers below and try to get rid of one that isn’t worth your time:
1) This product is great for my business—we need it to succeed! 2) This product is great for my business—we need it now to succeed! 3) This product is great for my business—people love me! 4) This product is great for my business—my job depends on it. 5) I really love this product! 6) My audience loves this product! 7) I need this thing desperately! 8) It’s too hard not to have something like this in my life! 9) It’s too hard not to have something like this in my life! 10) I’m so impressed with how good is quality when made by people who actually know what they’re doing. 11) We make more money with this than any other competitor (but we don’t show our face anywhere). 12) People all around the world love what we do and if they don’t, then [fill in the blank] 13) We are here because [fill in the blank] 14) We are here because [fill in the blank]. 15) After reading some of these reasons why people will buy anything that says “benefit some kinda gorgeous review” or “benefit some kinda gorgeous review” or “some kinda gorgeous review” or “some kinda gorgeous review”, I could see where [fill in the blank].”
I would guess that most people fall somewhere between #10 and #13, which means that maybe those reasons aren’t really worth their time. Which takes us back to #1: if being able to justify your purchase doesn’t mean anything, then why spend money on it at all? If you have an answer (maybe something along the lines of “this is awesome because [your value proposition]”), then
6. conclusion
We’re all aware of how significant the impact reviews can be on a free product’s visibility and revenue. Most of us also know that it’s not just about the review, either, but also about its context. So, in this post I want to explore some of the benefits that can come from reviews (both positive and negative) and some of the ways they can be used to help you get your product noticed.
There are three main categories that reviewers bring to the table:
1. Positive: they do research and they write a review based on their experience with your product. They point out features that might address a real problem or peculiarity of your product. This is especially useful if you lack good data or you have limited information on your target market as well as little-known features or functions in your product.
2. Negative: They are generally less interested in providing specific details about what’s wrong with your product and more focused on highlighting their own frustrations with it — problems that make them look better than the competition (or worse). This is what happens when you ask for reviews from people who already like you (which is usually how it happens anyway): they will happily provide a glowing review so long as there is nothing at all wrong with your product (it doesn’t matter if there are no particular issues).
3. Mixed: A lot of reviews provide both positive and negative information about a given feature or function; sometimes a single reviewer may have an even split between both types of comments but other times one type dominates (e.g., 20% positive, 30% negative). These mixed reviews should be taken with caution when it comes to marketing purposes because they may easily skew the results towards one side or the other; so while it makes sense to include these kinds of reviews when trying to raise awareness among potential users, we should also be careful not to over-value these kind of comments by using them as points to promote our own products instead (see below for more discussion).
For this post I wanted to explore issues related directly to each category above and maybe provide some additional insights into how we think about marketing our apps — either for ourselves personally or for clients looking for their products featured in apps liked by others! So, let’s dive into it…
With regards…