Dear Entrepreneur,

We, your audience, have been talking, and we have some things we need to get off our chests.
Hopefully it makes sense of why things haven’t been going as well as you’d hoped.
We still really like you, but your product just isn’t doing it for us.

Specifically: 

·Nobody wants to download a new app.
That novelty wore off in 2011. 

·Nobody wants to pay a dollar for an app they’ve never heard of.
Google might take us slightly longer to do the task but it’s free.

·Nobody trawls the app store looking for new things to buy.
If your app is good, someone will tell me about it.

·Nobody wants to make an account.
YOU want us to make an account, WE couldn’t care less.

·Nobody wants to think of a password.
What do you mean my password is “weak”? Capital letters and special characters?
How will I remember that?

·Nobody understands your website.
We browsed for five seconds and it all looked too hard so we closed the tab.
We’re sure your information was great? Sorry. 

·Nobody is happy to pay for shipping.
It feels like we’re getting penalised for shopping online or living in Australia.
If you built the cost into the price we probably wouldn’t have noticed?

·Nobody wants to follow you on social media just to see a string of ads.
Either be interesting or be quiet.

It’s not you, it’s us.
We’re just so…busy.
We hope you understand.
Sincerely,
Your Target Audience.

You’ve crafted a compelling Value Proposition, and you’re confident that your customers will love it once they’ve tried it.
The problem is, you’ve put up all these fences, barriers and hurdles between the customer and the prize.

“But they’re all good things!” you say.
“Passwords make it secure, accounts save time in the future, social media spreads our message, our website needs lots of information….”

The problem is that in your customers’ eyes good things look like hurdles.

The easiest option is to do nothing – to stick with what they already have.
There are two main ways of solving this dilemma: through better Service Design and through clever Incentives.

First, map out your Customer Journey through the 5 E’s.
Then ask yourself – how can I reduce the number of hurdles between Entice and Exit?

Think of Amazon and their “1-click” system, or online stores that let you “Proceed as Guest”. Yes, they still need your contact details, but after you’ve made the purchase decision.
That doesn’t feel so laborious.

Maybe it’s the layout of your store.
Is there a better way for customers to make a good decision and then pay before they can talk themselves out of it?

Maybe it’s a mobile-optimised website rather than forcing users to download an app.
Maybe it’s putting purchase links into your Instagram tags.

The other avenue is Incentives – finding ways of sweetening the journey rather than reducing the number of steps.

Uber do this really well.
They offer promotions for new users – the one that got me was free Gelato Messina delivered to your office.

UberEATS got me signed up with the offer of $10 off for each of my first three orders.
Trying a new user interface isn’t often much fun, but this made the process more exciting, feeling like you’re getting a bargain.

Humour is a great sweetener – it keeps the process interesting, friendly and upbeat.
Slack have a nice, casual approach to onboarding, which makes the mundane details feel effortless.
This costs nothing to implement - although will certainly require a lot of thought.

Another incentive is social currency – getting my friends to use it, and in turn have them tell me about it.
Think of the ads that start by telling you how many of your friends “Like” that company or already follow them.

Or think about services that offer referral programs – if my friend gets me to try something new, we both get a discount, and the company gets a new, happy customer.
Win-Win-Win.

Complexity kills spontaneity.
The longer a customer has to think about their decision, the more likely they are to talk themselves out of commitment.

If we can make our processes as smooth and pleasant as possible, we make it easy for our customers to give us a chance – and ultimately boost our revenues.

Have a go: map out your current Customer Journey and remove as many barriers, steps and decisions as possible.

If you can’t remove something, brainstorm ways of sweetening the process:
keeping people happy to give you a try.