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I did a LinkedIn webinar with my friend Pulkit (CEO of Chameleon) the other day, and as we were prepping for the session, he shared a simple 2×2 that he uses to high-level bucket the different types of users that come through a product’s onboarding funnel: on one axis is your level of domain expertise around the problem the product solves and on the other axis is your level of buying intent.
I use the term FTUX (first-time user experience) as opposed to sign-up, onboarding, etc because that’s what we called it in my time at Kindle (which is where all my product thinking and biases come from).
The useful insight this grid provides immediately is that depending on the quadrant the user (that’s navigating your product) is in, you can and should manage the flow is a slightly different way (sounds basic, but many products are one-size-fits-all). This is of course very coarse bucketing, and you can get much more fine-grained, which ultimately would lead to a hyper-personalized experience for a single user. That’s what a lot of growth teams are working towards: either finding the optimal experience for the common segments or on-the-fly customizing the experience to match the user’s profile.
I’m also using the term “product” liberally – it’s meant to encompass not only the actual pixels, but also the documentation, demos, trainings, etc. And once you realize the breadth of assets that can be utilized to move the user along the customer journey, it becomes obvious that EPD and GTM teams need to collaborate. Debating whether it’s product work or growth work, and whether growth lives in product or marketing, misses the forest for the trees (those are real discussions but not the high order decisions).
I will add that when you are dealing with a “subject matter novice”, education is key, irrespective of intention to buy. If the intent is there, a really lucrative technique is to frame their understanding of the category around your differentiators, so that even if they compare to competitors, they will do so with a lens you gave them.
The “job to be done” for the user really shifts based on the quadrant, because in essence you are dealing with everyone from a tire-kicker to a power user to a buying agent. So much time and energy is spent on when and how to showcase the demo, but it really only makes sense when expertise and intent are lined up.
Another anti-pattern this highlights is that many sign-up flows ask the user for information that never gets utilized. In fact, the first set of questions you ask should determine the quadrant (if you haven’t already figured that out through other breadcrumbs by the time they arrive at your landing page).
Hopefully this mental model helps product / growth teams as they are designing key initial flows. As always, I’d also love to hear from readers about their approaches to FTUX in B2B – please chime in via comments👇 or join the chat via the Substack app.
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further reading / references
childish drawing / interpretation
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