Hi folks, my second newsletter drop of unhinged thoughts woohoo. Before I deep dive into the real tea and given you might be new here, who am I? That’s a secret unlike Gossip Girl I will tell…

1. So what’s the product goss this week?

Spotify released courses woop…

That’s right, Spotify released what seems like an in-app experiment for courses to be available through Spotify. There are e-classes available that you can test out.

It’s currently through partnerships with things like BBC Maestro & Skillshare and not through an open marketplace, easiest way to test value with existing volume. I think this is great if you haven’t signed up to the others but I wonder if you have got a subscription, that you may cancel your subscription of the others and pay for Spotify instead, so the others could lose revenue if long term. However, what I love is the possibility of podcasts & e-classes merging. Great for content creation.

LinkedIn is ready to ruin our lives with TikTok type vids…

Yep that’s right, the horror. In the spirit of positivity though and less of my pessimism, brands & individuals can start to put career related vids/images in better formats. Things like a cool conference you’re at which is probably where this content should live, not on the gram, where your childhood friends in actual service jobs who don’t work in tech could literally not give a sh*t about it, and think you have a fake job anyway 👀.

_{2. Product stuff I procrastinated with this week…}

This week, I’m tapping into building emotional layers into your product or service (deep I know). We’re all brill at thinking about tangible features, paying, clicking a button etc what we often forget, is that it’s the emotion of a person that determines that decision, things like feeling safe, feeling looked after etc and ofc it has variable factors in the way a customer will ‘trust’ you.

People buy from people

Trust is an output of emotions (can be a BS buzzword if you don’t distill it). People buy from people. But what if you’re a brand? Or worse AI 😆. Your human voice needs to come through so it connects to how people truly feel. AI has the art of prompt engineering to make this better.

You can also leverage reviews & testimonials because again people buy from people right?

You’re just not going to stay at someones place on Airbnb or hotels on Tripadvisor for example if they have poor reviews and well, you want to stay alive, or worse bedbugs (Remember the weird period where bedbugs came over from Paris? I had paranoia of staring at seats looking for bedbugs on the tube). It’s also the same for digital products like your app, website, courses etc.

Feedback is a gift

But please, don’t be a bad vibe reply and kick off with pinkfish123 because they hated your app. The power of a reply is more converting than the review and feedback is a gift. Honesty will always manifest it’s way out of your product.

The voice of someone else telling your possible new customers your products worth it is priceless. You’re creating a loop of greatness and sentiment of product market fit, and it works for B2B or B2C. We all look for validation, so make this the heart of your product for uplift, retention & growth. You as the product or service provider have a voice in this engagement in the form of replies. It’s an organic conversation happening, so if you are replying to a poor review that might not be accurate, don’t lose your sh*t.

Making your products read the room

I started to think more broadly in the way I can get people to think about this more deeply. Products need a mix of the functional and the emotional. You need to find your way to get that across to retain loyalty. As a customer, you’ve given me some level of payment protection, I feel safe (emotional) & I will now pay (functional).

So here’s my ‘making your products read the room’. tool. What you really want, is your product, like the expectation of the average human, to read the room and be emotionally intelligent with great functional features. You need to build for how people feel not just what task they need to complete anymore, cause there’s a million things that do the same thing and so peoples capacity of giving a sh*t is significantly decreasing, so up your game. If you use this, or even nurture this, please let me know as this is something I have designed myself!

3. Product gems that made me howl…

My favourite thing about this was how dramatic & hilarious it is but really & passionately want this to be a real feature on every meeting tool.

and what I’m I up too? apart from writing and waffling in this newsletter?…

Flutter updates:

Last week I said I was learning Flutter. Why? I was bored so why not? (I have no desire to a be a full time engineer FYI). Flutter apps are cross device, which means they work across Android & IOS without having to develop for both. I’ve done all the Flutter/Dart installations and I’m looking at UI icons & widgets & working towards a magic 8 ball decision app as something I can show with everything I’ll pick up so far. I’m following a course by Dr Angela Yu (bit dated so if you want to download it, it’s useful if you have some basic coding background).

Inclusive product building:

I’ve also been looking at Ethnicity buying statistics in the UK. Building products for different demographics is a challenge. I’ve always loved this intersection of equity in product building by Google though. While they are global and quite different products, it’s so important for building trust, back to my earlier things.

And that’s all for this week peeps. Thanks for reading, as feedback is a gift, let me know your thoughts on my socials ❤️ 

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