Organizations must prioritize cross-channel customer journeys if they want the customer to be at the heart of omnichannel strategy.

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Omni-Chaos to Omni-Cohesion: Crafting a Customer-Centric Multichannel Strategy 

Amid the increasing complexity of the customer journey, the soaring number of cross-channel touch points and dwindling customer attention spans, it’s vital for organizations to master customer engagement within this ecosystem. Despite its enduring importance, few brands can claim to have truly mastered omnichannel (omni).    
 
<h3 aria-level="1">Promises, promises — how omnichannel can still deliver </h3>
While related marketing strategies like <a href="https://www.capgemini.com/insights/expert-perspectives/data-and-tech-the-future-of-commerce-channel-less/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">channel-less</a> approaches offer a new spin, the true power of an omnichannel strategy becomes evident when it harmonizes the customer experience across touchpoints. By pinpointing the exact locations of customer interactions, this strategic approach enables brands to closely match customer expectations, elevating <a href="https://www.capgemini.com/in-en/insights/research-library/the-new-rules-of-customer-service-enabling-a-personal-timely-and-seamless-experience/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">their overall experience</a>. When meticulously integrated, omnichannel delivers clear advantages for users and businesses alike. 
<a href="https://www.digizuite.com/blog/omnichannel-statistics#:~:text=Recent%20research%20revealed%20that%20two,offering%20a%20better%20shopping%20experience." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Digizuite</a> cites recent research that found that two-third of customers are unlikely to buy from a brand that fails to offer an integrated omnichannel experience. 
Likewise, based on the findings of the <a href="https://cxtrends.zendesk.com/?_ga=2.126357327.358229693.1695920111-495969513.1695920111&amp;_gl=1*eivz34*_ga*NDk1OTY5NTEzLjE2OTU5MjAxMTE.*_ga_FBP7C61M6Z*MTY5NTkyMDExMC4xLjAuMTY5NTkyMDQwOS41OS4wLjA." target="_blank" rel="noopener">2023 Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report</a>, 70% of consumers say a seamless experience significantly increases their likelihood of making additional purchases from a company and 64% will spend more money if businesses address their concerns through the same communication channel they’re currently using.  
The stakes are high. 
Omnichannel pledged to create a highly personalized customer experience across all brand touch points and interactions. Omni was supposed to advance the holy grail of metrics—customer lifetime value. But for most retailers omni has fallen short of that promise, held back by organizational silos, fragmented customer data and the lack of a shared vision for what a great customer experience looks like and how it shows up across channels. Instead, customers continue to endure disjointed, frustrating online shopping experiences.<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
It&#8217;s time to have a real talk. Organizations must stop pointing fingers at internal barriers and start aligning on an integrated experience vision centered around the customer. It’s not the channels, and not the technologies, but the future customer journey that should dictate investments. Getting this right will ultimately <a href="https://www.frog.co/designmind/building-loyalty-customer-experience" target="_blank" rel="noopener">enhance the customer experience</a>.
&nbsp;
<h3>Laying the foundation of a customer-centric omni strategy </h3>
<a href="https://cxtrends.zendesk.com/?_ga=2.126357327.358229693.1695920111-495969513.1695920111&amp;_gl=1*eivz34*_ga*NDk1OTY5NTEzLjE2OTU5MjAxMTE.*_ga_FBP7C61M6Z*MTY5NTkyMDExMC4xLjAuMTY5NTkyMDQwOS41OS4wLjA." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zendesk</a> found that 60% of consumers report interacting with agents who have little or no context, which leads to customers having to repeat themselves. This should not be happening in the age of GenAI. Don’t let this happen to your customers.<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
Getting the foundations right sets you up for long-term success. Getting it right is a two-part exercise—first, creating shared understanding of who your customers are and second, oftentimes parallel, aligning the organization and its incentives around serving that customer.<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
 Start with developing a thorough and nuanced understanding of your customers alongside a clear vision of how you want your own brand to show up in that relationship. This is most often summarized in an experience strategy, which includes a set of customer archetypes, customer journeys and experience principles to help drive alignment. 
Once you have an experience strategy in place, the organizational structure plays a pivotal role in enabling the execution of successful strategy. To succeed in omnichannel strategies, organizations should adopt cross-functional product teams, centralized omni-metrics/KPIs and clear top-level ownership of seamless customer experiences across all touch points.<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
<a href="https://www.forrester.com/blogs/retailers-give-the-gift-of-personalization-through-omnichannel-this-holiday-season/?ref_search=0_1696262685475" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forrester research</a> has shown that only 33% of US online adults believe “Companies do a good job creating relevant experiences for me.” Companies can do better than this. The time is now for organizations to step up their game and develop approaches to improve the customer online shopping experience.<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
As for the tactical elements, we’ve identified five design principles to help you get started on crafting an omni strategy that finally delivers on the omni promise.

The inclination is to retrofit existing single channel journeys and combining them. Instead, the starting point for the omnichannel journey(s) needs to be something entirely new, designed specifically for omni.  
Single channel journeys are more linear. Omnichannel journeys are dynamic and evolve—sometimes in surprising ways—based on the channels at a customer’s disposal. Unless we design with an omni-first approach that builds from the ground up, we’re likely to bias one channel over another and design for a static, linear experience.

Craft cross-channel journeys from scratch.

Avoid the &#8220;everything, everywhere&#8221; approach, as customers engage across numerous touch points. Instead, focus on delivering remarkable experiences at key moments. Identify these pivotal instances where brief, high-value emotional connections can occur. Strive to create standout interactions that leave an impression.  
Discovering these <a href="https://www.frog.co/designmind/making-the-most-of-your-signature-moments" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signature moments</a> enables us to meet, inspire and delight customers where they are.  Keep in mind, however, not every moment needs to be a signature moment. Having too many dilutes their impact and potentially overwhelms the customer, distracting from the core message. The challenge for businesses is to strike a balance between creating meaningful signature moments and ensuring they align with the brand’s overall strategy and message.

Begin with signature moments in mind.

A channel strategy enables us to think holistically cross-channel, pushing us to identify the unique role that each channel plays in the blended customer journey. With the ever-increasing number of channels that exist, each can play a unique role in the path to purchase—all while being closely stitched together. Few things disrupt the customer journey like a disconnect between channels, where the lack of a seamless handoff may mean a customer drops off entirely because they got lost in the fold. 
While the customer may not see it, we can be deliberate about advancing the customer journey, at every touch point. Unless we focus on providing a seamless, omnichannel experience that integrates various channels harmoniously, confusion, decision paralysis, loss of personalization, increased abandonment, customer fatigue, and brand dissonance will persist as part of the customer experience.

Harness channel strengths for seamless experiences.

Implementing omni successfully is complex due to its technical nature. Successful omni revolves around using centralized customer data—both longitudinal and in-session. Collecting data at every touch point and integrating it into a single customer 360 view creates a valuable proprietary dataset, enhancing the customer journey.  
Unless organizations invest in improving their data integration capabilities and prioritizing customer data centralization, they can expect fragmented customer profiles, inconsistent messaging and missed upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

Construct robust customer data sets for omni-channel excellence.

Today, numerous technology solutions are available to support omnichannel implementation. Instead of focusing solely on individual platforms, it&#8217;s necessary to evaluate the entire ecosystem and align technology choices with your specific requirements. Given the central role of technology and data in the omnichannel landscape, data strategies and the right technologies to deliver your required experience should be discussed from the outset.  
You have options like an all-in-one solution from a single vendor or a best-of-breed approach. These include tools like customer data platforms, inventory management and cloud solutions with communication platform-as-a-service (CPaaS), all demanding consideration of integration, scalability, automation and analytics. Unless companies align tech capabilities with omnichannel requirements and establish a clear strategy for omnichannel customer engagement, they’ll miss the mark on omni-channel experience. Business and IT need to work hand in hand to bring the omni dream to life.

Embrace next-gen tech for omni success.

Five ways to build engaging omni customer experiences

<h3><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW92332673 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="normaltextrun" data-ccp-charstyle-defn="{&quot;ObjectId&quot;:&quot;d26197cd-84bb-4cd6-8ba1-031e7e8bb78c|52&quot;,&quot;ClassId&quot;:1073872969,&quot;Properties&quot;:[469775450,&quot;normaltextrun&quot;,201340122,&quot;1&quot;,134233614,&quot;true&quot;,469778129,&quot;normaltextrun&quot;,335572020,&quot;1&quot;,469778324,&quot;Default Paragraph Font&quot;]}">It’s time to realize the full potential of omni</h3>
<span class="NormalTextRun SCXW102355195 BCX0" data-ccp-charstyle="normaltextrun" data-ccp-charstyle-defn="{&quot;ObjectId&quot;:&quot;d26197cd-84bb-4cd6-8ba1-031e7e8bb78c|52&quot;,&quot;ClassId&quot;:1073872969,&quot;Properties&quot;:[469775450,&quot;normaltextrun&quot;,201340122,&quot;1&quot;,134233614,&quot;true&quot;,469778129,&quot;normaltextrun&quot;,335572020,&quot;1&quot;,469778324,&quot;Default Paragraph Font&quot;]}">frog has helped dozens of organizations redefine their omni strategy and deliver value to their customers. We believe that omnichannel is first and foremost about humans, not just work streams and capabilities. We’ll start with helping you get the foundations right and staying laser focused on always keeping the end customer in mind. It’s what we do best. <a class="Hyperlink SCXW102355195 BCX0" href="https://www.frog.co/contact" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Get in touch with us</a>.

Jess Leitch

Kamil Klamann

Tatiana Piedrahita

Author

Design Mind frogcast Ep.37 - Window Shopping for the Digital World

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Podcast

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Article

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It’s time to elevate in-store experiences, create next-gen brand destinations and evolve far beyond the transactional.

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What’s in Store for Brick-and-Mortar?

We’re at the beginning of the retail revolution.
The retail world is changing faster than ever. The intersecting effects of the pandemic, the climate crisis, inflation and technological advancements means we’re seeing developments across the sector. Thanks to frog’s <a href="https://www.frog.co/work/by/sector/retail">partnerships with leading retailers and consumer brands</a>, we’ve got a front row seat.
In a new report, we hone our focus to an area undergoing fascinating shifts: brick-and-mortar retail. Reimagining physical retail, we focus on the broad set of new customer needs: from seeking unique discovery experiences and on-demand convenience, to the more fundamental need for connection.
Download the new frog report: <a href="https://go.frog.co/the-future-of-retail-store-experiences" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Future of Retail: What’s in Store for Brick-and-Mortar?</a>
Via six transformative archetypes, we explore new ways to connect with customers and evolve beyond transactions:
<ol style="padding-top: 40px; font-size: 18px;">
<li>The Showroom: Give customers access to experts by putting “show and tell” front and center.</li>
<li>The Playground: Provide a space for imagination and exploration to take over.</li>
<li>The Clubhouse: Drive loyalty by reimagining the store as a hub for like-minded customers to connect.</li>
<li>The Oasis: Create a refuge from traditional shopping and daily stressors.</li>
<li>The Studio: Unlock the ability of customers to co-create, experiment and customize.</li>
<li>The Garden: Get (and give) stores new life as places to repair, restore and recycle goods in line with brand and customer values.</li>
</ol>
Read the report to learn more about each archetype, then take the <a href="https://form.typeform.com/to/ywzsEGfE">Store Archetypes of the Future</a> quiz to find out which is right for your brand.
&nbsp;
Make space for the untapped potential of brick-and-mortar. 
Thanks to the rise of ecommerce, the humble store (with its origins stretching back to antiquity) saw some of its most tumultuous years. The proclamation, “the store is dead!” grew louder. However, signs point not towards death but towards an opportunity for metamorphosis. 
While ecommerce’s share of retail is expected to continue to grow in the coming years, it currently represents <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/187439/share-of-e-commerce-sales-in-total-us-retail-sales-in-2010/">less than 15% of the entire U.S. retail market</a>. The metaverse and other emerging channels are hot topics, yet linger at a fraction of a percentage when it comes to market share. This means stores—as unglamorous as they have become for many brands—are still where the battle for customers’ money is won (or lost). Physical retail provides a uniquely tactile opportunity for brands to differentiate and <a href="https://fro.gd/3DSLd4i">connect with customers</a>. Now’s the time to create in-person synergy and invest in the store of the future. 
&nbsp;
Brick-and-mortar in numbers
<ul style="padding-top: 40px; font-size: 18px;">
<li>72% of digital shoppers said they consider in-store experience the most important channel when making a purchase. (<a href="https://www.invespcro.com/blog/state-of-omnichannel-shopping/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Invesp</a>, 2022)</li>
<li>82% of consumers are more likely to return if they have a positive in-store experience, and 64% said there’s an increased likeliness they&#8217;d spend more. (<a href="https://www.resonai.com/blog/retail-foot-traffic-trends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Raydiant</a>, 2021)</li>
<li>+30% is the increase in lifetime value of customers who buy both in-store and online, as opposed to those who only use one channel. (<a href="https://www.invespcro.com/blog/state-of-omnichannel-shopping/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Invesp</a>, 2022)</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
<h2>So, what’s next for physical retail?</h2>
New measures of success
Store experience will be assessed by the customer lifetime value created across channels, visits and multiple retail revenue streams.
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<table width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px; text-align: center;" valign="top" width="50%">From&#8230;</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px; text-align: center;" valign="top" width="50%">To&#8230;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Transactions. Store as sales and fulfillment channel.</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Relationships. Store as stage for brand experiences and services.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">One-Way. Store as a site for brands to control the conversation with individuals.</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Multi-Directional. Store as a place where brands invite participation and cocreation by communities.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Closed Off. Store as a single, controlled branded experience with strict rules of engagement.</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Open and Collaborative. Store as an open platform, enabling collaboration amongst unique brands, products and services.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Fixed. Store as a permanent location, pre-planned with seasonal program.</td>
<td style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 5px;" valign="top" width="50%">Dynamic. Store as an ever-evolving place to experiment as well as measure, learn and respond to trends.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

The decline of the store as solely for shopping
Throughout history, shopping has been synonymous with physical stores, but that link has been disrupted. We’ve seen a decade-long trend of retailers mirroring Amazon tactics: optimizing for efficiency, reducing physical footprints, slimming staff and cutting brand budgets. The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have contributed to the high numbers of stores closing globally.
<ul style="padding-top: 40px; font-size: 18px;">
<li>50,000 retail stores are projected to close in the U.S. over the next five years. (<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/ubs-50000-retail-store-closures-in-us-by-2026-after-pandemic-pause.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CNBC</a>, 2022)</li>
<li>There has been an 11% decline in the average number of retail building leases from 2019 to 2022. (<a href="https://leasequery.com/2022-lease-benchmark-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LeaseQuery</a>, 2022)</li>
</ul>
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The rise of the store as experience 
To win in this altered landscape, retailers should avoid obsessing over the transactional, efficiency-driven game. Instead, they should master the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2021/04/07/winning-in-the-experience-economy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">experience economy</a>, for which stores are the prime stage. Retailers need to unlearn what they know about the optimized store and adapt to discover and deliver new jobs-to-be-done better than any of their competitors.
<ul style="padding-top: 40px; font-size: 18px;">
<li>32% of brands expect to establish or expand their use of pop-up and in-person experiences in the next year. (<a href="https://www.shopify.com/retail/omnichannel-trends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shopify</a>, 2021)</li>
<li>Brick-and-mortar sales are currently growing at a faster pace than e-commerce sales. (<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/retail-real-estate-is-enjoying-its-biggest-revival-in-years-11664875802" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WSJ</a>, 2022)</li>
<li>47% of consumers consider local presence a significant factor when choosing which brands to shop from. (<a href="https://www.shopify.com/retail/omnichannel-trends" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shopify</a>, 2021)</li>
</ul>
Shopping around for retail innovation? Download <a href="https://go.frog.co/the-future-of-retail-store-experiences" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Future of Retail: What’s in Store for Brick-and-Mortar?</a>

Ready to learn more about our six store archetypes? 

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Alex D’Agostino

Joy Payton-Stevens

Viral Shah

Authors

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How to build health and wellness products people love by driving user adoption, increasing ongoing engagement, delivering better health outcomes and creating long-term retention

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Behavioral Science for Health & Wellness Product Design

Would you like to be healthier? To eat better? To exercise more? To improve your daily habits? If you said yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. Most of us would benefit from making such changes—but wouldn’t the whole healthcare system benefit, too? U.S. healthcare spending is the highest it’s ever been and continues to soar. We all know that preventative care—that is, taking proactive measures before things get out of hand—could save the system hundreds of billions of dollars while improving the health of the overall population. So why has the adoption of health apps been so slow?
One reason is that the incentives are misaligned. Most healthcare providers are only paid when patients come in to see them with a condition that requires treatment. However, with the shift toward value-based care, preventative care will be a growing area of focus for well managed healthcare systems. In this article, we explore what health apps can learn from the field of wellness, and share a behavioral product design approach that can help maximize the value of consumer health apps for both users and businesses.
<h4></h4>
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<h4>Being human is being flawed</h4>
If you’ve read our report about <a href="https://www.frog.co/designmind/sprinting-toward-a-failed-product" target="_blank" rel="noopener">product discovery</a>, you know that to develop a product people really want, it must help accomplish a certain goal or solve a specific problem your users have. We call this finding a problem-solution fit, and it represents a promise you now need to fulfill by moving from the what and why to the how of delivering user value.
For the purposes of this article, let’s assume you already have some version of the product in the market. Let’s also assume you’re able to measure its effect on user behaviors, as well as how those behaviors translate into helping you fulfill your business goals (further assuming that the product was aligned with your business’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to begin with). What if your metrics aren’t meeting expectations? What if your users aren’t accomplishing the goals your product promised to help them accomplish? What could be standing in the way? 
Often, it is what we call the execution gap—the disconnect between what users aspire to accomplish when they first sign up for your product, and the actions they are ready to take in order to achieve that goal. Even when it comes to something as critical as our health, all human beings, despite our best intentions, struggle to do what’s good for us sometimes. 
Designers are familiar with this behavior pattern. During user research interviews, a typical first step in the design process, we ask users to explain their behavior or decision-making processes. Much of the time, their responses describe a rational process they think they followed, but one that does not reflect their actual behavior or decision-making. They aren’t intentionally lying to us—they’re just unaware of their own blindspots and the real reasons for their decisions. This helps explain why people notoriously fail to follow through on their desired actions, and it also shows why it’s not enough to simply ask users about their needs, frustrations and motivations. You have to observe what they actually do.
<h3></h3>
&nbsp;
<h3 style="padding-left: 40px;">To do the right thing for your users, you can’t just listen to what they say. You have to observe what they do.</h3>
This is especially pronounced with products that have a long reward cycle or lack immediate results, like those focused on health and wellbeing. A fitness app might provide us with a personalized exercise program, but it’s still hard to get ourselves moving. A nutrition app might offer us plenty of tasty and healthy recipes, but sticking to any diet for a set duration might still feel almost impossible. Even with a daily guided meditation app, it might feel challenging to fit it into our routine. Forming new habits is hard, as it requires us to replace existing behaviors and habits that may have been formed and reinforced over a lifetime.
&nbsp;
<h3 style="padding-left: 40px;">If the user fails to achieve the promised goals using the product, it is the designer’s fault.</h3>
Product designers are responsible for helping users navigate this struggle. Our job is to design products that empower users to live the lives they desire. That means we must find ways to give them that little nudge at the critical moment, and then remove any obstacles that might set them off track. If users fail to meet the goals our products promise to help them achieve, it is the designer’s fault. People fall in love with products not for their promise, but because they actually work. When they do, we are rewarded with their gratitude, rave reviews, referrals, engagement and loyalty. 

&nbsp;
<h2>Tapping the power of behavioral science for product design</h2>
Exceptional designers and product managers often pride themselves on their intuition about what makes people tick. They start with their gut instincts and then progress by trial and error. But there is another way—a shortcut of sorts borrowed from behavioral science, a field which draws on psychology, economics and neuroscience to understand human cognitive processes, decision-making and behavior. Humans might be irrational, but as Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely illustrates, they are <a href="https://danariely.com/books/predictably-irrational/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predictably irrational</a>. This means we can anticipate and design for their flaws and irrational behaviors.
<h3 style="padding-left: 40px;"> 
Behavioral science is a shortcut that helps you anticipate problems and design solutions by explaining what people are actually likely to do. 
</h3>
Over the course of decades, behavioral science has produced a wealth of evidence-based research. For much of that time, however, its theories have been largely confined to academia. Today, this knowledge is widely available and ready to be incorporated into product design work, amplifying our ability to design products that help people meet their goals and improve their lives. Even a basic grasp of some key behavioral science concepts will empower you to build reliably more effective products.

We’ve outlined six steps to harness the tenets of behavioral science within any product design and development process, along with real-world use cases for how to put the steps into action using a connected fitness company as an example. 

In order to apply behavioral science to design, you must first identify the specific business objectives you’re trying to achieve. Those objectives will help determine the behaviors you seek to elicit from your users. Since product managers and designers are ultimately responsible for creating business value, any new product decision must consider both user outcomes as well as associated business outcomes. This bears repeating, since aiming for the wrong target will inevitably cause you to miss. 
The most typical business objective are to increase revenue (either by growing the user base or increasing user engagement and retention) and to reduce costs. In case of health and wellness apps, for example, that could mean reducing the cost-to-serve by driving users toward lower-cost care options like telemedicine. Whatever business objective drives your decision making, being as clear as possible about your north star is critical. 
 
Wellness example: Connected fitness companies like Peloton, Tonal and Hydrow all offer free 30-day, worry-free trials of their hardware. But their companion apps, which provide virtual workouts, fitness tracking and community features, arguably deliver most of the value of their products. Their main business objective, therefore, is to maximize the number of users who remain monthly subscribers in the long run.

Define business objectives and key results (OKRs).

Once you’ve identified the business objective you want to target, you must determine which steps of your customers’ user journey they are associated with. Sometimes they will be clearly associated with a specific step of the user journey, but they often cover multiple steps. 
 
Wellness example: To maximize monthly subscriptions, connected fitness companies need their products to become an indispensable part of the user’s daily routine. That means they will do everything they can to get users hooked during the initial 30-day trial period. By giving users free access to premium features during the trial phase of their user journey, they can maximize engagement. High engagement is good for the user, but it’s also the best predictor of subscription retention.

Map your user’s end-to-end journey.

Business outcomes follow user outcomes, so you must be sure to understand user behaviors and how they affect your business. For most health and wellness apps, you’ll already know which behaviors you want to drive users toward—those aligned with your product’s promise, which is the reason people signed up in the first place. At frog, we like using issue trees to illustrate and understand the systemic connections and associations between various product touchpoints, user behaviors and business objectives. 
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<h3 style="padding-left: 40px;">Business outcomes follow user outcomes. Therefore you must define the user behaviors you want to drive. 
 
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Your product data will give you an understanding of current user behaviors. If you don’t have such data, your first priority should be user research. Quantitative and qualitative user data gathered during research will help you uncover how users are actually engaging with your product. If the data shows that users are not behaving in a way that helps them meet both their goals and your business objectives, you have possibly identified an execution gap.
Wellness example: Let’s say the user research gathered by a connected fitness company shows not using the equipment for two weeks straight is a strong indicator that a user will suspend or end their subscription. The company might decide that re-engaging users with personalized workouts, progress visualizations or social comparisons in the second week of inactivity is critical to maximize retention.
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Define the user behaviors you want to target.

Whatever your user’s goal, there are forces pushing them toward it and forces pushing them away. Once you’ve identified an execution gap, you can leverage behavioral science to amplify those forces pushing them toward the target behaviors. One of the most critical concepts that can help you understand the execution gap is that of cognitive bias, which is defined as a systematic deviation from rationality in judgment. 
 
The goal of a bias audit is to generate insights into user behavior through the lens of common cognitive biases documented by behavioral science research. Once you are familiar with cognitive biases, you can anticipate where they may appear throughout your user’s journey. 
 
Wellness example: To understand why user engagement is so low, a connected fitness company embarks on a bias audit. They learn that some users thought they would be able to make time for exercise every day after work, but later realized they were being overly optimistic (the Planning Fallacy); others struggled to get back on track after missing a few days in a row (the “What-the-Hell” Effect); yet another group disengaged from the app because they didn’t want to be reminded of their lack of progress toward their initial goals (the Ostrich Effect).

Conduct a cognitive bias audit.

Cognitive biases are a form of predictable irrationality. That means designers can anticipate them and deploy behavioral interventions that divert or even exploit those cognitive biases in order to promote desired behaviors. For example, by changing the default settings within an app, designers can maximize selection of a desired option. This behavioral intervention is known as choice architecture, but there are many other behavioral interventions at our disposal: rewards, incentives, peer comparisons. Although Nobel laureate Richard Thaler originally referred to such tools as “nudges,” today their use is often described as “gamification.” 
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<h3 style="padding-left: 40px;">Because people are predictably irrational, we can anticipate their behavior and design for it. 
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It is critical to state that behavioral interventions must always support the explicit promises of the product. When they do, we can be sure that we’re helping users accomplish their goals, rather than manipulating them into behaviors that serve only our business objectives. As social media platforms have illustrated, such techniques can increase user engagement tremendously, but in ways that foster arguably unhealthy behavior patterns. 
 
Wellness example: The connected fitness company can use a number of behavioral interventions to address specific execution gaps. To help users make time for workouts, the app could help users identify available windows in their calendar and commit to the most likely times to complete them (Implementation Intensions Bias). The app can help anticipate and prepare for the obstacles that will inherently arise by asking the user to visualize how they will respond to those obstacles, perhaps even writing down a rule “if X happens, I will do Y.” To avoid letting the users fall off the wagon for too long, personal metrics could include a consistency and training streak—it’s better to exercise even for 10 minutes than to skip the workout completely. Another tactic is to assign a human “accountability buddy” that taps into the peer motivation that an app alone cannot. If the user has lapsed for a few days too many, the app should bring them back with an encouraging message that recognizes life is tough and today is a new day, rather than reminding them of their missed sessions—they already know that.

Design behavioral interventions.

We A/B test behavioral interventions, comparing them both to each other and to the original design to find interventions and combinations that maximize desirable user behaviors and business outcomes. Be observant and patient in this process. Sometimes a seemingly small change has an immediate impact on business outcomes, but sometimes interventions require a longer timeline to translate into business results. 
Wellness example: The company has now designed multiple interventions to address specific execution gaps. They should try them all. Try them individually, together, in different sequences, and on different user groups to see which combinations yield the best results. There are no sure solutions—what works in one context doesn’t always work in another. It is a process of learning and optimization.

Experiment and optimize.

6 Steps to leveraging behavioral science for product design 

<h4>With great power comes great responsibility</h4>
If you’re uneasy about the idea of exploiting flaws in human cognition to influence individual behavior or achieve business gain, you’re hardly alone—behavioral scientists have spent tremendous energy debating the social applications and moral ramifications of their research. But as system, product and service designers, we should recognize that we’re always directing users toward some behavior, whether intentionally or not. That means it is our responsibility to direct users toward those behaviors aligned with the intentions and goals that brought them to our product in the first place. Like a trusted doctor, coach or friend, users disclose their personal goals to us and trust that we will help them on their journey, even if that means pushing them and holding them accountable in ways that might occasionally feel uncomfortable. 
The alternative is to ignore the wisdom of behavioral science, leaving our users to grapple blindly with internal barriers and biases that inhibit their success. As human-centered product designers, we should know that’s a bad choice. Particularly in healthcare, people depend on the wisdom and goodwill of experts to help them stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible. In the same way doctors seek out the most effective medications and treatments, shouldn’t we designers tap the power of behavioral science to maximize the results of the care we provide?
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<h4>How to operationalize it?</h4>
Many companies have a centralized behavioral lab that looks for opportunities to employ behavioral science across the entire organization. We advocate for the empowerment of product teams as behavioral science practitioners who will be able to see such opportunities on an ongoing basis for themselves. They are the closest to the users, their desires, and the ways your products help turn those desires into reality.
This starts with hiring the right people, training your team, or working with the right partners to implement behavioral insights in your organization. Whichever path you choose, it will pay off in improving the lives of your customers, building products they love, and driving long-term growth for your business.

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 Sprinting Toward A Failed Product

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Many organizations fall prey to the notion that shipping product is the most critical KPI, leading them to mistake lines of code or the number of completed sprints for progress. And at least part of why is because business pressures drive organizations to place a premium on speed. These pressures are not trivial, and neither are their consequences. While a few delivery-oriented product leaders end up with great products, many more end up creating solutions in search of a problem—or worse yet, creating problems in search of more solutions.
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While frog&#8217;s goal is always to bring products to market as quickly as possible, we value greatness over timeliness. And in this downloadable insights report, we explore how our approach ensures that we&#8217;re designing and building the rightsolutions to the right problems.
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In This Report:
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<li>How to find the right solutions to the most important problems</li>
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<li>frog&#8217;s tried and true product development philosophy: Go slow (first) to go fast (later)</li>
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Kamil Klamann

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