Complete Beginner’s Guide to Analytics

Article Source: UX Booth

There’s no one magic way to create an experience that will be universally and automatically loved. That’s not the goal—rather, we seek to create experiences that will intuitively work for and delight a specific target audience. Similarly, there’s no one method for measuring the success of our creations. That’s where analytics comes in.

If you can’t measure it, how will you know if it was successful?

This is the question that drives UX practitioners to collect and analyze data. Online and off, we gather data that tells us things like how many people clicked, where they navigated to, when they exited, and what they searched for. We use this analysis to gauge the effectiveness of our designs. In other words, when we see what actions people take, we see how well our designs communicated with them.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll look at the methodologies that came together to create analytics, the daily tasks and deliverables that are part of working in analytics for UX. We will also enumerate some of the tools, conferences, and books that will help newbies get started.

Table of Contents

• What are Analytics?
• Common Methodologies
• Daily Tasks and Deliverables
• People to Follow
• Tools of the Trade
• Conferences and Associations
• Analytics Books

What Are Analytics?

The internet has changed drastically since it’s inception, and so has user behavior. Users have shifted from typing remembered URLs into the address bar to relying on search engines to find a site for them. A user will open and skim multiple tabs, rather than devoting full attention to one page. All of this complicates the metrics of a site or application: to measure success, an analyst cannot simply measure hits on the web server. They must measure human behavior.

When gathering information, researchers employ both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative data is gathered through user research: observing people to understand why they do certain things. Quantitative data is garnered through analytics: identifying what actions users take when they come to a page, and how many users take those actions.

This quantitative data allows us to measure baselines, use those baselines to inform design decisions, and then measure the success or failure of the design. While there are myriad things that we could measure, we use data in only a few ways: to describe, to diagnose, to prescribe, and to predict.

• Descriptive analytics are similar to the counters of old. Descriptive analytics show baselines, such as how many people visit a page, click on a button, or watch a video.
• Diagnostic analytics might use the same metrics as descriptive analytics, but with a different purpose. Diagnostic analytics help us understand what happened, and why. For example, if an online retailer is losing money, they might measure the clickthru rates of the links and exit rates of pages along the customer journey, to see where they are losing people.
• Prescriptive analytics refers to data that informs someone of what they should do next. For example, when Google Maps collects data about traffic at rush hour, they are able to prescribe a better route for drivers. For those of us who are measuring the effectiveness of design rather than traffic, prescriptive data still identifies patterns, and can thus inform our future design decisions.
• Predictive analytics are the final category. Predictive analytics tell us what is likely to happen in a scenario. For example, if we A/B test a new site header against our current site, that test will tell us which header is more likely to convince people to stay on the site. If the new header is more popular, we can predict that our traffic will grow if we implement the new header.

All four types of analytics use metrics, often based around Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A KPI is a measurable action or signal that is correlated to business success. For example, retweets on Twitter don’t directly increase how much users like or know an organization. However, a marketing team may correlate their retweets to brand recognition, in which case they may use the retweets as one KPI. Ideally, an organization should have multiple KPIs for one business objective, which increase the reliability of the data.

Common Methodologies

Although analytics may seem convoluted to many designers, the basic methodologies behind the field are simple and straightforward. Essentially, the field of analytics is based on research, measurement, and analysis.

Research

While web-based analytics is a fairly new area, research has been around for hundreds of years. Researchers exist across every field from science to marketing to anthropology, and the techniques they use directly influence the way analysts do work, and the things analysts decide to track. The work of researchers, particularly when combined with analytics, is closely analogous to the scientific method:

Researchers begin by prioritizing their goals or questions, in order to focus their attention. Once they know the goal of their project, they create a hypothesis, and test that hypothesis. Data analysts can then measure the results of the research and tests. Based on these tests, researchers and analysts may both begin to recognize outliers, or results that aren’t indicative of the greater whole, as well as patterns in the results. They then come to conclusions, and even predict future outcomes based on the patterns they identify.

Measurement

When it comes down to it, most metrics help us understand how an organization or brand is growing. Marketers, entrepreneurs, and business consultants all create their own methods of measuring success. They measure numbers of users, speed of sites, amount of time spent on a page, and offline details such as the amount of money made, the number of sign ups for a new product or mailing list, or the number of purchases.

The danger for organizations who aren’t familiar with analytics is that they only measure, without prior research or future analysis. For example, a team might measure the number of people who visit the site. However, without research into how many people visited in previous days, weeks, or months, and analysis into how the two measurements compare, the measurement is a meaningless number. This is why we often refer to data tracking rather than measurement. Data tracking is ongoing measurement supported with research, with an intent of analysis.

Analysis

Analysis is the process of breaking down information into smaller pieces, and examining what that information means. It’s used in mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, psychiatry, and even computer science. Without analysis, all of the information gathered in research might be measured, but it has no meaning. Analysis of information allows us to make connections. For example, you might research how people access a website, and measure the number of people who come from search engines. Analysis is then used to provide context and answer essential questions: how many people visited similar sites? How many visited your site today, compared to yesterday or last week or last year? How many came to your site from Google, vs. from Twitter?

An interesting note: “analysis” comes from the ancient Greek work ἀναλύω, which means “I unravel.” One of the earliest known uses of the word “analytics” is in the title of Aristotle’s writing, Prior Analytics, a work about deductive reasoning and the scientific method. Since we, as human beings, are naturally interested in breaking down information and understanding it logically, there is an obvious reason we find analytics so immensely valuable.

Daily Tasks and Deliverables

Data analysis is a part of many professions, from marketers to UX practitioners to data analysts. In this section, we will review some of the analytics-related tasks a UX practitioner may undertake, and the associated deliverables.

Setting Key Performance Indicators

Any time that a new initiative is launched, the analytics expert will need to identify and set up the relevant key performance indicators. These are closely related to the experience goals of a project, which is why it’s so valuable for UX practitioners to collaborate with the data analyst and understand analytics and metrics. The KPIs, as we explained above, are the measurable actions that correlate to organization or project objectives. For example, is the organization’s goal is to become a global company, one KPI might be more website views from around the world, or a certain number of sales coming from foreign countries. Ideally, each project objective should have a KPI associated with it, which will allow the team to measure the success of the project.

Optimizing Content

While we’ve been focusing mostly on the measurement side of analytics, we haven’t touched on how this impacts user experience. Analytics tell us what content or site areas need improvements—and that means that often our analytics experts are the ones who can best optimize our work. This can include understanding how Google’s search algorithms work, how to handle and improve metadata, what keywords are most likely to reach our target audience, and many more handy tricks of the trade. Before a page goes live or a campaign launches, the analytics team (or person) will want to review everything, and optimize the content so that it is most likely to succeed.

Setting up Analytics Tools

Once the KPIs have been determined, we need to add code to the relevant pages in order to track site engagement, conversions, and other metrics. Google Analytics is one of the most popular analytics tools, in large part because Google has made it very easy to add tracking code to almost any site. Sometime, development teams take on the task of analytics tracking, but more often the analytics expert will provide the dev team with the relevant code snippets required.

Monitor and Measure

Maintenance is a huge part of working with analytics. Depending on the project, an analytics expert may create reports on a daily, weekly, monthly, or bi-annual basis. For example, a social media campaign may require daily updates. However, a new product launch could take 6 months to bear fruit. Regardless of the time period, it’s in the monitoring, measuring, and reporting that an analytics expert digs into the analysis. It’s not enough to report on the KPIs; working with analytics means interpreting what the KPIs show, and creating recommendations for the UX team that reflect those interpretations.

People to Follow

Analytics in UX can be very intimidating, but these people make it more approachable. Their writing, talks, and podcasts help us all to improve our ability to analyze and use data on the web.

Annie Cushing

Twitter

Annie Cushing has written, edited, marketed, optimized, pimped, and measured content. She provides practical strategies to help people use tools to analyze social media success and competitive intelligence through her blog, Annielytics, as well as her more data-oriented posts on Search Engine Land and her YouTube channel.

Avinash Kaushik

Twitter

Avinash Kaushik is the co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and the Analytics Evangelist for Google. Through his blog, Occam’s Razor, and his best selling books, Web Analytics 2.0, and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day (100% of the proceeds from both books are donated to The Smile Train, Doctors Without Borders and Ekal Vidyalaya), Avinash has become recognized as an authoritative voice on how marketers, executive teams, and industry leaders can leverage data to fundamentally reinvent their digital existence.

Gary Angel

Twitter

Widely considered one of the leading digital measurement experts in the world, Gary Angel currently heads the Digital Analytics Center of Excellence for Ernest & Young (EY). Gary blogs regularly, has published numerous whitepapers on advanced digital analytics practice and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He is also the author of Measuring the Digital World.

Joost de Valk

Twitter

Joost de Valk is an SEO consultant and web developer. His analytics work focuses on the development side. As such, he is responsible for the Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and runs Yoast, a company focused on SEO performance of WordPress blogs.

Luke Hay

Twitter

Luke Hay is a UX Consultant and Google Analytics Trainer. He has over 15 years industry experience in all forms of website management. Luke holds a Google Analytics individual qualification, and have five years’ experience in user research and testing for a variety of different clients. He combines his qualitative and quantitative research to get a rounded picture of user experience. Luke offers user experience services and tailored Google Analytics training for individuals or groups available on his site, where he also occasionally updates a blog on measurement and metrics.

Pamela Pavliscak

Twitter

Pamela collects stories about how people engage with technology. Her work is part ethnography, part data science, part behavioral psychology. She is the founder of Change Sciences, a design research firm for Fortune 500s, startups, and other smart companies that measures, among other things, emotion! She also writes on Medium, and frequently speaks at conferences about how to create better experiences using data of all shapes and sizes.

Tools of the Trade

Many different tools enable Web analysts to do their jobs. Here’s a selection of some of the most popular:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the self–described enterprise-class web analytics solution. What does this mean to you? Google Analytics gives you insight into your website’s traffic and marketing effectiveness through user session metrics, including bounce rate, keyword frequency, etc. It’s free, easy to set up and customize, and it works for both small and large businesses.
Learn more about Google Analytics

Moz Pro, from Moz

Moz had its start as an SEO consulting company, and it’s since grown into an organization with a selection of four tools for optimizing content and collecting and analyzing data. Moz Pro, their key search marketing tool, breaks down data using an “all-in-one set of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research and analytics tools.” The product has a variety of pricing options, ranging from $79/month to $599/month.
Learn more about Moz Pro

Clicktale

ClickTale captures and records every mouse move, click, scroll, and keystroke that a visitor makes inside a webpage, and then sends this information back to the ClickTale servers. This allows ClickTale’s users to replay the session, watching how their visitors interacted with the screen.

The system is fairly sophisticated, and includes optimization opportunities and qualitative as well as quantitative data tracking. Subscriptions start at $9 for individuals and $99 for businesses, and are priced based on number of recordings.
Learn more about ClickTale

KISSmetrics

KISSmetrics is a tool that helps UX practitioners identify, understand, and improve their business metrics. The KISSmetrics software code can be pasted into any website, allowing data analysts to track user actions such as how many people access a page and where they come from, how many people leave a page, and what demographics site users have in common. It’s a more expensive program; the starter license is $200/month, basic is $700/month, and pro is $2000/month, but the value is undeniable.
Learn more about KISSmetrics

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg’s pride and joy is their heatmapping abilities. “Show me my heatmap,” is their main call to action. Through heatmap tracking, Crazy Egg shows the number of people who click on various calls-to-action, when people scroll, and where they hover. Crazy Egg also has very low prices, starting at $9/month, and capping out at $99/month.
Learn more about Crazy Egg

Associations and Conferences

Analytics conferences bring together people from many different fields. Here are a few that explore diverse areas of data, research, analysis, and the web.

All Things Data

While not specifically UX-focused, All Things Data is a great opportunity to learn how to gather and use analytics. All Things Data’s mission is to make better business decisions through data analysis. The speakers are professionals from well-known companies, and they provide attendees with actionable information to fuel company growth.

More information available at: https://www.atdconf.com/

Data Science Conference

This conference is for business analytics professionals working in data science, big data, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or predictive modeling. There are no vendors, sponsors, or recruiters allowed, so it’s a particularly great event for networking and discussing work without any fear of being interrupted!

More information available at: http://www.thedatascienceconference.com/

IoT Data Analytics & Visualizations

This event is dedicated to data visualization and analytics, specifically for the Internet of Things. It’s free for CIO’s and CDO’s, though everyone is welcome. The conference includes a lot of case studies from companies who use data visualization and analytics to improve ROI and improve value from the IoT.

More information available at: http://iotdataevent.com/

Global Big Data Conferences

The Global Big Data Conference team hosts a number of different analytics-focused conferences. All conferences discuss different aspects of data management and uses of data analytics. They recognize the competitive advantage available for business that use data analytics to improve their market position, audience targeting, and make other business decisions.

More information available at: http://globalbigdataconference.com/

Web Analytics Books

These books are a great place to get started in web analytics. In addition, there’s a lot to be learned from blogs by groups and people like Google Analytics, Occam’s Razor (Avinash Kaushik), and Moz.

Web Analytics 2.0

Avinash Kaushik

Written by web analytics thought leader Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0:The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to customers.

Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics

Brian Clifton

This book teaches readers how to use Google Analytics’ many features to best advantage. The details and advice in Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics is designed to help readers implement new methods and concepts, track social and mobile visitors, use multi-channel funnel reporting features, understand which filters to use, and much more.

Lean Analytics

Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz

Designed for startup founders and entrepreneurs as well as “intrapreneurs” trying to provoke change from within, this book shows readers how to validate ideas, find the right customers, decide what to build, monetize, and spread the word. Lean Analytics includes more than thirty case studies and insights from over a hundred business experts.

Ask, Measure, Learn

Lutz Finger and Soumitra Dutta

This non-technical guide shows readers how to extract significant business value from big data with Ask-Measure-Learn, a system that helps us ask the right questions, measure the right data, and then learn from the results. Authors Lutz Finger and Soumitra Dutta originally devised this system to help governments and NGOs sift through volumes of data. However, the system can apply to social media analytics for marketing, sales, public relations, and customer management.

The Human Face of Big Data

Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt

This book of photographs and essays captures the ways in which big data and analytics impact business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life. Unlike the other books listed, this is inspirational rather than directly educational. Compiled by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, The Human Face of Big Data literally adds a sense of humanity to the process of data collection.

Book Excerpt: "The User's Journey"

Article Source: UX Magazine

In an excerpt from her book, "The User's Journey" Donna explains what story arcs are necessary for people to feel satisfied using Back to the Future movie as an example.

Article No :1674 | March 1, 2017 | by Donna Lichaw

Chapter 2: How Story Works

For, the more we look at the story (the story that is a story, mind), the more we disentangle it from the finer growths that it supports, the less shall we find to admire. It runs like a backbone—or may I say a tape-worm, for its beginning and end are arbitrary. — E. M. Forster, "Aspects of the Novel"

Humans are sense-making creatures, and story is our most critical sense-making tool. As humans, we’ve evolved and innovated story over millennia as a way to understand our world. For example, there is evidence that ancient cave dwellers learned how to trap an animal and not go hunting alone through the use of stories.

Given how long we’ve lived with story, it’s not surprising that Aristotle uncovered a working model for it long ago. Basically, he said that every story needs three things: characters, goals, and conflict. What weaves these elements together is a structure or a series of actions and events that have a shape to them.

Fortunately, story and its underlying structure is straightforward, simple, and can be easily learned. That’s why it’s so powerful — for books, films, and products.

Story Has a Structure

First, every story has a beginning, middle, and end — with the middle typically taking up a longer period of time than the beginning or end, as shown in Figure 2.1

Figure 2.1 The parts of a story.

Next, every story has a structure, similar to what you see in Figure 2.2. It’s typically called the narrative arc or story arc, which is a chronological series of events.

Figure 2.2 A story arc.

While the X-axis in Figure 2.2 represents time, the Y-axis represents the action. In other words, you can visually see in the figure that the story builds in excitement, the pace of its action increases over time until it hits a high point, and the story winds down before it ends. When the story doesn’t wind down and instead ends while the action is still rising or at a peak, the story is called a cliffhanger.

Every narrative arc has specific key plot points and sequences, as shown in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 Plot points on a story arc.

Let’s dissect the narrative arc of a story. Narrative arcs are comprised of the following elements:

• Exposition
• Inciting incident or problem
• Rising action
• Crisis
• Climax or resolution
• Falling action or denouement
• End

Exposition

During the exposition, you are introduced to the world of the story, the characters, and some kind of big goal. There is a main character, and that character wants something. Big. The exposition functions not only to set the stage of a story, but also to get the person on the other end — you, the viewer — interested and engaged with the main character or characters and what drives them. At its most powerful, a good exposition will compel you to see yourself in and identify with a character or a set of characters. At the very least, it compels you to empathize with them.

Take for example the 1985 feature film, Back to the Future. In the exposition, you meet Marty McFly, who lives in Hill Valley — any suburb USA. His family isn’t very ambitious, but Marty has plans. He’s going to make something of himself. Marty has a friend, Doc — a mad scientist who built a time machine (see Figure 2.4). All very cool.

Figure 2.4

In the exposition to Back to the Future, you are introduced to Marty, Doc, and their time machine. In a movie like Back to the Future, you’re compelled to empathize with Marty. You don’t have to like him. You just have to understand him, his goals, and why he wants to pursue them.

Inciting Incident or Problem

The inciting incident is the moment where something changes or goes dramatically wrong in the world of the story. A problem surfaces and gets in the way of the character meeting his big goal. The moment when the hero is thrust into leaving his safe world in order to fix the problem is called the call to action.

Neuroscientists have shown that when you listen to or watch a story, it’s as if you are experiencing the story in real time. As action rises, your pulse might quicken or your palms get sweaty. Something startles you, and you jump. Stories are not just about looking or listening, they are about being. The inciting incident is the first hook or trigger point in a story that amplifies if and how you identify with the main character, what problems he has, and what he has to go through to fix that problem and meet his goal. It’s what gets you hooked. When the main character is called to action, it’s as if you, the viewer, are called to action. Your brain starts working in overdrive to figure out what will happen next and how the hero will right the wrong.

In Back to the Future, the excitement of a time machine doesn’t last long; militants shoot Doc in a parking lot in an attempt to retrieve plutonium that he stole from them (see Figure 2.5). Not good. In an attempt to escape, Marty ends up driving the time machine to 1955 and then finds out that he can’t get home. That’s a problem — a meaty enough problem to name the movie after. Marty’s call to action is simple: to get back to the future.

Figure 2.5

Inciting incident: this is the point in Back to the Future where the story kickstarts into action.

Rising Action

After the problem surfaces in the inciting incident, the protagonist of the story goes on a journey to right that wrong. We spend the rest of the story not just seeing how it all pans out, but also feeling how it pans out. A good story escalates during the rising action, creating new tensions and conflicts that help move the story forward. As the story builds, the audience’s anticipation and excitement builds simultaneously.

During the rising action of any good story, there is also plenty of conflict to keep the audience engaged. Without conflict, endings come too easily, and the audience is unconvinced or bored or both. In this sense, humans are easy — because to keep them engaged, you save the best for last.

In Back to the Future, Marty sets out to find 1955 Doc. They try to get Marty home. But they can’t solve the problem, or the movie would end. So things get weird. Marty meets the younger version of his mom. His mom has a crush on him (see Figure 2.6). Marty meets his dad’s nemesis, Biff. Biff becomes Marty’s nemesis. Things get tense. And more tense. And as a result, more engaging. We become more and more invested in how Marty will get back to the future, scene by scene.

Figure 2.6

In this scene, Marty starts to realize that his mom is taking an interest in him and his Calvin Kleins.

Crisis

The story culminates at the point (or series of points) of maximum conflict — the crisis. It’s the point of no return. Nothing the hero has done has worked, and he is further from the goal than ever. The story either has to right itself or end in tragedy. If the story ends with neither, then it’s a cliffhanger and is incomplete. At this point, the main character has gotten so far and is so close to meeting his goal that it’s impossible to just give up. Defeat or success is the only option.

In Back to the Future, the crisis starts when Marty is close to figuring out how to get back to the future. But because his mom falls in love with him instead of falling for his father, there is the chance that he will never be born in the future. Because he might never be born, Marty begins to disappear (see Figure 2.7). The only way to get over this hurdle is to make sure that his parents end up together. But how? And then what? Once he overcomes this obstacle, he still has to figure out how to get home. How will this all play out, you wonder, as you are now totally invested in the outcome of the story.

Figure 2.7

Marty starts to disappear while he’s on stage at a school dance. Will he or won’t he get his parents together so that he can live? Suspense!

Climax or Resolution

Just as it sounds, the climax occurs at the top of the story arc. It’s the most important part of the story. It’s the high point. The final showdown. This is the point at which the hero’s fate and the direction of the story are determined. As such, it is also the most exciting part of the story. It’s the point at which all of that tension and will he or won’t he from earlier scenes culminates in you jumping out of your seat, cheering, laughing, feeling satisfied that you solved the mystery before the main character, or simply smiling because well… that was awesome.
Climax is why you are glad that you tuned in and stayed tuned in.

Sometimes, this point is also called the resolution, which occurs when the main problem from the inciting incident and the hurdle from the crisis are resolved. Problems and hurdles are either resolved or they’re not, and you’re left with that tragedy or cliffhanger.

In Back to the Future, the climax begins when Marty’s parents kiss at the high school dance. At the very least, this means that he can finish playing his song on the guitar. Excellent.

But wait! There’s more!

There’s a clock tower and lightning (see Figure 2.8). The underlying problem still needs to be solved: Marty needs to figure out how to get home. In a bolt of lightning, boom, Marty gets catapulted back to the future. Even more excellent.

Figure 2.8

Climax and resolution in Back to the Future. Doc figures out how to get Marty home by harnessing lightning to power the time machine from atop a clock tower.

Think of the climax as a sort of pay-off. This is why you sat through one hour and 30 minutes. It’s exciting. It’s suspenseful. It’s satisfying. The climax is not only the best part of the story, but it’s what you remember most. It’s why you come back. It’s like a reward, or a thank you for tuning in and staying tuned in.

But then what? Imagine if Doc managed to harness the power of lighting, get Marty home, and the movie just ended. Stories can’t just end on a high point, or they’re as unsatisfying as a cliffhanger. Once Marty gets back to the future, he still needs to actually get home. For that, you have the falling action or denouement.

Falling Action or Denouement

Have you ever listened in frustration to someone having a conversation on her mobile phone? If you had to listen to the entire conversation in person, with both participants audible, it wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating. You could probably tune the conversation out or listen and just not care. It turns out that the main reason why these conversations are so frustrating is that your brain naturally wants to complete the conversation. Just hearing half triggers an automatic, unsatisfying response that leads to frustration. Researchers call this phenomenon a halfalogue: half of a conversation that your brain naturally and uncontrollably tries to complete.

Humans, it turns out, need closure. Stories, likewise, need closure so that humans can feel closure.

Imagine if The Wizard of Oz ended after Dorothy had defeated the wicked witch. Goal met. The end. You’d be frustrated. Your brain would jump into overdrive as you wondered what then?< What about Kansas? Your mind would jump full circle as you started to remember the exposition of the story and wanted to know not just how evil was defeated, but how the story ended. What happened to Dorothy after she defeated the witch? For this reason, stories need not just to resolve their conflict and show characters meeting their goals, but also to have a fancy ending called a denouement, a word derived from the French meaning “to unknot.” This is the part of the story when the conflict is resolved and the action starts slowing down in pace and excitement toward the closing scene. It’s how everything in the story gets wrapped up.

The line between the climax/resolution, falling action, and ending can be blurry and happen so quickly that it’s hard to discern the difference between one and another. What matters is that the climax is exciting, and it resolves the major conflict or problem—the falling action leads to closure. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly goes home (see Figure 2.9). This is the falling action for many adventure tales: the hero goes home.
Tension releases. Ah… all is good in the world.

And… it’s important that home is better than when the story started and where the character left it. In this case, it’s much better. Marty’s parents are successful. Biff is his family’s servant. Marty got the truck he always wanted. Not bad.

Ideally, the falling action or denouement should happen as quickly as possible. As much as humans need closure, they’re also impatient beings. Once the action has died down, there is only so much that can keep your attention. Just because you want closure, doesn’t mean it needs to be dragged out with a 10-minute long ticker-tape parade. (I’m looking at you, George Lucas.)

Figure 2.9

After his adventure through time, Marty lands back home in his present-day Hill Valley.

End

Quite literally, the end is the end. Characters grow throughout a story and should be changed by the end. Remember that big goal established in the exposition? How did it all work out? At this point, the character should meet her goal and hopefully learn something along the way. Along the same lines, just like your cave-dwelling ancestors, you should be changed and have had a new experience, or have learned something by the end of a good story.

In Back to the Future, the story ends with Marty’s girlfriend asking him if everything is OK. “Everything,” Marty says, “is perfect.” They embrace (see Figure 2.10). Now, if this were a classic Hollywood film, the two would kiss, the screen would fade to black, and the credits would roll. The end.

But as you may remember, this is the first installment of what would become a trilogy. Before you get too comfortable in your plush movie seat or sofa, you see a flash and Doc running up the driveway. Something’s not right. There’s a problem and Doc needs help. Where does he want to take them? To the future! And so a new story is kickstarted… a sequel. Just because a story has come to an end and has closure doesn’t mean it can’t lead to another story… and another. We call those serial stories. Serials keep us engaged episode by episode. Serials are fun.

Figure 2.10

All is well.

Building Products with Story

…in real life we each of us regard ourselves as the main character, the protagonist, the big cheese; the camera is on us, baby. — Stephen King, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft"

Let’s face it: you probably don’t make multi-million dollar epic movies like Star Wars; instead, you make websites, software, digital or non-digital services—all things that people don’t just consume, but actually use. Just as with a movie, story flows through how people find, think about, use, and recommend your products.

Consider this photo for a moment (see Figure 2.11). It tells a story of an Apple product that comes installed on every iPhone. You can probably guess what product it is.

Figure 2.11

Assuming you guessed FaceTime, you are correct. If you guessed “Tinder for seniors,” that’s not an Apple product. But, as some of my past workshop attendees have demonstrated, a product like that also has a compelling story to it: a story that you can easily use to prototype to test out a design hypothesis. What we see in this still photograph is an entire story encapsulated in one simple frame. Rather than spell it out for you, I want you to take a moment to consider this narrative within the framework I’ve laid out so far.

What do you see?
How do you know that these people are using FaceTime?

Well, they’re older, so maybe they’re grandparents. They’re smiling. What makes grandparents smile? Grandchildren? And? Maybe their grandchildren are far away, and they want to see them. Why can’t they see them? It’s too expensive to fly and not realistic to do that on a regular basis. Why not call them up? They already have an iPhone or an iPad and use it to play the crossword puzzles all day. And so forth… they are calling them up. Just with video. Using FaceTime is as easy as using the phone. It is a phone. But with video. You just look at it instead of holding it up to your ear… like magic.

This is the type of computational math that your brain makes during a series of micro-seconds when you look at a photograph like this and try to understand what you see. Your brain seeks out a story in the data it consumes. And that story has a structure to it, whether you realize it or not. This behavior is so natural that you probably don’t even notice that you do it.

Story is not only a tool your brain uses to understand what you see, it’s a tool your brain uses to understand what you experience. In other words, the same brain function that you use to understand what you see in a photograph is the same brain function you would use if you were one of those grandparents using FaceTime. Life is a story. And in that story, you are the hero.

In Badass: Making Users Awesome, Kathy Sierra argues that creating successful products is not about what features you build — it’s about how badass you make your user on the other end feel. It’s not about what your product can do, but instead about what your users can do if they use your product.

Amazon, for example, is not a marketplace with lots of stuff. It’s a way for you to have a world of goods at your fingertips. Using this perspective, you can see how your job building products comes down to creating heroes. When I rush-order toothpaste with one-click on Amazon to replace the toothpaste I used up this morning? As boring as it sounds, I’m a hero in my household. This job you have of creating heroes isn’t just an act of goodwill. In the time I’ve spent over the past two decades helping businesses build products that people love, I’ve seen what happens when people feel good about what they can do with your product. They love your product. And your brand. They recommend it to others. They continue to use it over time…as long as you keep making them feel awesome. They even forgive mistakes and quirks when your product doesn’t work as expected, or your brand doesn’t behave as they’d like. People don’t care about your product or brand. They care about themselves. That’s something that you can and should embrace when you build products.

What’s great about story and its underlying structure is that it provides you with a framework—a formula, if you will—for turning your customers into heroes. Plot points, high points, and all. Story is one of the oldest and most powerful tools you have to create heroes. And as I’ve seen and will show you in this book, what works for books and movies will work for your customers, too.

If you want to read the whole book, you may find it at Rosenfeld

The Introductory Guide to Search Engine Optimization in 2017 [Free Download]

Written by By Kate Taylor Mighty for Hubspot

Think about everything you’ve bought in the last six months, specifically the big purchases. When was the last time you didn’t start a shopping trip with a Google search? If your answer is anything close to “I can’t remember,” you’re in good company. Every year, over 2.8 trillion search queries are made on Google alone.

A strong SEO strategy will help your business generate more leads and get found by potential customers, but search engines are constantly switching up and tightening up their criteria for high rankings. If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of search engines and their algorithms, how will you know what steps to take to help your business found?

OnPage.org and HubSpot have joined forces to bring you the answers you’re “searching” for with the foundational new ebook, What Is SEO? The Introductory Guide to Search Engine Optimization in 2017. It’s got data-backed, expert-recommended perspectives on:

• How search engines work, and what it takes to rank in them
• The keys to gaining inbound links to your site for improved off-page SEO
• Which performance indicators to track when analyzing SEO performance
• How to structure your web pages for maximum on-page SEO
• How to identify the keywords your target audience is searching for
• The keys to developing a successful SEO strategy geared toward ROI

Click here to download What Is SEO? The Introductory Guide to Search Engine Optimization in 2017.