-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 22
Description
Context 💭
Let's talk about (sending|receiving) email
. 💬
In the past we have taken a very "MVP" approach to sending email in both our Node
& Elixir
Apps.
(I use that term "MVP" euphemistically to mean "bare minimum" not really long-term "viable" beyond sending "transactional" email... we must rethink our approach! 🙄)
We have included the email functionality in apps (e.g: "Welcome to the App!", "confirm your address", "reset your password", etc.) as a box ticking exercise not as a core UX/UI of the App. I feel that we have been letting ourselves and the people using our App(s) down by not focussing on the UX of the email
we send. Sending out unremarkable email
that have a low open/click-through rate (which we don't actively monitor!) or having an inbox full of unanswered email
(because we lack a proper system for prioritising/handling inbound email
) means all our other efforts building great features for our App(s) is wasted! If people aren't engaging with the email
they are by definition not engaging with the App. 😞
I don't want to throw shade/stones at anyone for the past lack of effort in
we are pretty much wasting our time with building the rest of the features in the App.
Both the Product Owner/Manager and the whole Dev Team need to make
Restaurant Analogy: 🥣
Imagine you're a Chef who has practiced for years to make great food. You have spent most of your life savings to build a restaurant where you have paid great attention to detail with the menu/food, service and interior decor. But on the outside of the restaurant, there's no sign/marking and the front door is through a dimly lit alleyway so it looks abandoned.
In this analogy the interface to your delicious food is the dimly lit alleyway which means you aren't going to get very many customers. Should you continue to focus on improving the inside of the restaurant (e.g: the food and service quality) hoping that people will ignore the alley? Or attempt to "fix" the "UX" of the alleyway by investing in some lights, signs and decorations?
After you have made an effort to improve the "UX" of the alleyway, you can get back to running your business. But you still need to maintain the alleyway as the interface to your product.
If we apply this analogy to building a Software App/Product, the inside of the restaurant (menu, food, service, etc.) are the features of the Product. The outside of the restaurant, the alleyway and front door are the barrier to adoption. If the Chef (budding restaurateur) does not treat the interface to their restaurant as a feature of their product, then it does not matter how good the food is.
This past week, I've been painfully reminded of how horrible the UX of a
noreply
We don't want anyone using the @dwyl App to ever feel unloved because of a crappy
Story 💡
email
is an integral part of the feedback loop of the App. ♻️
Without it we have no way of connecting with people using the App to welcome them to our community of people focussed on maximising personal effectiveness. If people don't open the email
we send (because it's unremarkable), we end up with no way of informing them to return
and use the App!
But its a lot more than glorified notification mechanism to remind people that a task they delegated has been completed (or has a follow up question from assignee), email
is the interface people experience when they aren't using the App which encourages them use it. email
is a make-or-break UI/UX!
There are a several stories that feature email
and they all need to have amazing UX if our product is going to be successful. Having a "meh" email
experience will mean people will not want to (a) open the emails we send them and (b) interact with them.
I am listing the "stories" in the order of impact to both the people receiving the emails and us the developers/owners of the product sending those emails i.e. the "bottom line". (highest impact first)
Each one of these stories will need to be split out into a separate issue with a checklist.
"User" (the person
using the App) 👤
The UX of the person receiving emails from our App is the focus of this Epic.
Registration > Welcome! 💌
As a person registering to use the @dwyl App,
I want to receive a welcome email
outlining what I can do in the App
So that I feel connected with the App.
Our welcome email
should have the highest open rate in the industry.
We need to track it from day 1. (see analytics story below)
Ideally we should give the person some useful information in the welcome email
with a single call-to-action (CTA) that a high percentage of people interact with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_to_action_(marketing)
Forgotten Password 😬
As a person who has forgotten their password and is "locked out" of the App,
I want a seamless way to reset my password
So that I can get back to using the App as fast as possible.
The sense of being "locked out" is a relatively stressful experience. We need to get people back on track as quickly as possible.
The focus of this email needs to be the link they need to click to reset their password. We also need to reassure people that's it's perfectly normal to forget a password.
The App should track how many times a person forgets their password.
So that if it detects that a person is consistently forgetful, the password reset email should suggest a password manager for their most used device.
Relevant/Useful Notifications 🔔
As a person using the @dwyl App to focus on my most important work,
I want to receive occasional email
notifications with SMART insights
So that I can stay on track toward achieving my goal(s).
As soon as we have the essential functionality for the App working, we should determine what the most relevant information is to keep people engaged with working on their goals.
We should never send people irrelevant/useless notifications the way most social networks do.
For the first 1k people using the App, email
notifications will be the primary feedback loop.
Later on we may end up using native notifications in our Native Flutter Apps and Browser Push Notifications based on demand/feedback from people using the app.
Log in 🚪
As a person authenticating with a Web/Mobile App using my email
address and a password
,
I want to be informed by email
when I log-in on a new device/platform
So that I am reassured that the App is protecting my highly personal data.
This email
should not be sent every time a person logs in otherwise the open rate will be very low.
We need a function that checks which device(s) have been used by the person in the past
and if a new
device is used, we should email
them to confirm that it is a legitimate login event.
Newsletter 🗞
As a person wanting to get useful/relevant actionable insights on personal effectiveness,
I want to receive a monthly/fortnightly/weekly newletter
a bitesize digest
So that I can be inspired to take action on achieving my goal(s).
The Newsletter use-case is not a focus while we are building the features of the App.
But just as I expect our "Blog" to be a significant source of SEO and inbound marketing.
I expect that the people who already using the App to want to get personal effectiveness insights/tips delivered to their inbox. This is not just a question of "repackaging" the Blog content. We need to summarise it for busy people!
Replies > Conversation! 💬
As a person using the @dwyl App and encountering challenges with (or ideas for) the UX/UI,
I want to be able to reply to any email
sent by the @dwyl App
so that with the @dwyl team via email
"noreply
" / "no-reply
" email addresses are a horrible UX antipattern!
But not replying to people's emails can be even worse than a "noreply" email address!
So we need to have a system for handling replies from people! A system that everyone in the company/team can access.
For this to happen, we need to work on receiving email: dwyl/email#25
Developer (the person deploying the email
system) 👩💻
As a person building/deploying a Phoenix Web App,
I want the email
sent by the App to be remarkable
So that people consistently engage/re-engage with the app.
Our App aims to help people be more effective with their efforts.
We want to ensure that our primary communication channel (email
)
is the best it can be.
Analytics 📈 📊
As a data-driven developer who makes informed decisions based on usage analytics
I want to collect data on bounce, open, click through and rejection rates
So that I know how effective our email
system is.
Without collecting data we are attempting to drive to our destination at night, without a map or head lights!
Product Owner/Manager 👩🍳
As a Product Owner/Manager for promising Software Product,
I want to ensure that the UX of every email
sent by the system is remarkable
So that the quality of the App is not let down by a poor feedback mechanism.
The Product Owner/Manager of the @dwyl App needs to be clear that they are responsible for email
quality. It's not enough to send "transactional" or "generic" email, we need each email
interaction to be remarkable.
Question: When Should We Focus on email
❓
I agree that we should focus on the "core" functionality/features of the app described in #262. I want to propose that we add email
the list either in MVP or "very soon" after.
We all have a decent amount of experience of working at companies that got email
right and horribly wrong and I want to frame the discussion from a "Product" perspective rather than simply a piece of "Business as Usual" functionality of the App. In other words we want the quality of the email
System we use @dwyl
to be excellent. 😍
We want the feeling people experience when they see/open an email
from us to be "spark joy"! ✨
We want people to be so delighted to receive email
from @dwyl that they forward it to friends/family!