I printed a few copies of our WTF notebook, and I’m seeking beta testers. Hit reply with your mailing address if you’re able to use it for a bit and provide me with brutal, unflinching feedback in return.
Our recent paid lessons have focused on some of the dynamics that occur in teams that are over, oh, say, 7 people. By that point, roles are defined, people wear fewer hats, responsibility gets meted out, and power structures become more readily apparent.
Most businesses are this large, but what if yours isn’t? How does value-based design manifest in smaller teams, or with solo practitioners?
Experimentation efficacy
It stands to reason that smaller businesses correlate with smaller customer bases. Smaller customer bases mean you’re less likely to run experiments.
There are, of course, exceptions. You can push a 10% conversion rate with millions of visitors as a team of 5. But in general, the smaller the business, the smaller the customer base.
The answer is to run your existing business’s conversion rate & MDE through a sample size calculator, and see if the traffic numbers math out. They probably won’t, but at least now you’ll understand what it takes to run experiments!
The alternative to experimentation
If you can’t run experiments, you can still always measure. Measurement is simple:
- Roll out a big change.
- Wait a few weeks.
- Evaluate the period-over-period impacts to key metrics.
- Determine if you want to keep the change.
In practice, this means you might need to move more slowly, so you can make sure you’re measuring everything accurately. This isn’t really how small teams behave! Their executional velocity is high, because there’s so little internal friction.
As a result, this process makes sense for significant, intentional changes to load-bearing elements, such as your overall branding, masthead, or copy voice.
The role of research
For newer businesses, establishing product-market fit is a very pure form of research. No matter your business’s size or age, understanding the voice of the customer is a form of research.
In fact, research comes more easily to small businesses than it does to large ones – precisely because they’re more likely to act with humility & question the way things are done. After all, doing so is often a matter of survival.
Research doesn’t need to come in the form of a giant 6-week project. It happens every day. Checking your analytics is research. Looking at heat maps is research. Answering customer support inquiries is research.
I want to invite a shift in what you do with that research. Most small businesses do one of two things with their research:
- Nothing
- Reactivity
Both are low-quality ways to respond to research, no matter your business’s size or age.
Instead, it’s worth assembling a common space for you & your team to keep your research, so you can discuss it and act in a more informed way.
To start, this can be as simple as a shared document. In that document, write the date, what you found, and what you think it means.
As you grow, you’ll probably want to shift your research to a kanban board or other project management tool. After all, research usually correlates with specific changes you’ll want to make.
Start somewhere
In short, start with research, in order to make sure your decisions are grounded in evidence. Be careful with measurement, since making many changes at once will affect your ability to measure accurately. And be suspicious of running A/B tests, unless your transaction volumes & conversion rate are high.
If you’re still curious about how to practice value-based design for a small team, and you wish to go deeper, check out our workshop. It’ll teach you everything you need to know.