Episode 083 - Special Guest Jake McKee - Dinner 5, User Testing and Onboarding

You know bunch of bunch of people over the years in a bunch of different forms and fashions and you know, so I got 20 coming on 25 years of Community experience now right.

And there was a lot of really great content, but it was all very targeted to the to the folks who were showing up, which were you know people had been in the industry, a few months, or maybe a few years. And I kept looking around and saying where's my peers right where were the other senior folks who've been doing this long time and. I was complaining, this is the first one was in October next one was in November and December I was sitting around two days after Christmas and.

Telling a buddy of mine, you know my my trials and tribulations about all this, he said, well, what would you want to do, and I said man, I just want people to have as much experience as me sitting around my kitchen table with pizza and beers and talking Community dirt.

And I tried very hard to convince them to do it, nobody said sure i'll pick up the mantle They all said great when you start it i'll be happy to join us. yeah and I guess I got to start it now right. yeah so January 15 or something 20th somewhere in there, that that your.

Had the dinner first dinner five, and it was in person did in person events for a year and then pandemic what i've been doing virtual events for the last two years, two plus years now, but you know five senior leaders that run Community programs. yep get together and in the cone of silence every event i've done has had some form of food at it, even in the early days, the pandemic.

And you know nowadays we're doing virtual and i'm starting to plan back to some some amount of in person, but, honestly, the the virtual spit working really well but it's very small group. very intimate honest conversation and kind of in the in the cone of silence friend da type of environment and I designed them so that it's not competitive, so you don't have to people from competitive companies.

You don't have to people from the same company, at the same one and everybody, I invite I talked to make sure I understand what their vibe is what their background is what their interests are so I can curate the group to make sure it's a really great conversation as you've experienced.

All those there's a lot of activity there lot activity but it's a lot of you know more early on questions I won't say. Basic tough questions, but you know they're more early on in your career questions and you're not always, of course, but there's there's a lot of that and that's part of where you know, like our slack that's just for the dinner five alumni. yeah there's a lot of questions that get asked in there that are very big big questions.

had some wine, I mean it was just it was awesome like I kept what he does is really cool so you made it a really nice experience and. You know, it was a lot of fun to really get to connect with leaders at the same level right, and you know as i've progressed in the years, even as a community leader like you find even later that those conversations are super important because a lot of things that you're not.

You might not know you'll run into so you know if I run into you know i've been talking to like Nicole Saunders as of late she's the director of Community at zendesk you know she's she's had that Community for five years and so she's grown a team, she is really skilled their community.

And so, she has a lot to offer so me connecting with her, even on peers over beers but you know, having those higher level conversations to figure out some things that I can go, do you know, in my own organization, because we have similar communities, if you will. is just amazing you know what I mean so and then you're doing a great job of. Facilitating those conversations getting those senior level type people.

Together, which I think is important because it's not always easy to find you know so and you've done a good job of finding those.

Is is bringing others with you right because that's the whole goal here is to try and bring along people, people like us right. And the best way for me to help find those is making a you know, an impressive experience, then ask often people don't ask ask for the recommendation right. And you know it's it's been an interesting process for me because it's it's such a good reminder.

that the reason I do these five event the five person events, because because that's where intimacy of compensation happens right. it's hard in a group of more than it's it's the Community numbers right 515 2550 hundred 50 at each one of these marks that knit the social dynamic changes dramatically.

yeah you know and the difference between five people and 10 people doesn't seem like it's that big a deal numbers wise but it's the difference between a private conversation among friends and a group. yeah right and the moment it turns into a group is the moment that I started having to ask myself questions about can I share, how much can I share.

You know, is somebody there's somebody in this group going to know my boss right they kind of bring that back you start asking all these questions that makes you kind of shut down as far as the depth of conversation.

you're just not going to have those really good one on one facilitated conversation, but a group of 100 people and yeah you can't get as intimate and you can't get as much stuff as as you would like you know what I mean, so I understand clearly and.

i've got this event it's only five people but it's the right fight people they both teams instantly went yeah Okay, we understand. yeah and I talked to other folks that had a real hard time saying yes to the sponsorship, because they were saying well that's not enough numbers. yeah and I can't even though i'd say well yeah but 500 people funnels into five people that you want to talk to really.

We see this all the time when you look at you know when you talk to ux ui ux ui folks when you talk to marketing folks right there real big on your marketing folks love the touch point maps, you know that understand where where Am I communications hitting and all the right points right. which I learned yeah they're great, and I think you're one of the things that that.

i'm seeing more of and i'm starting to spend more time on, so I do consulting right I come in i'm joking i'm the Mr Wolf for the Community industry you got a problem i'll become fix it. yeah and what what i'm seeing more and more as we try and fix those things is how much back to the basics need that need to take place right because, if your community is is struggling with engagement, for instance, just to pick that one that's a pretty common when right but it. has more engagement.

I start asking some basic questions with with new clients like How do people get into the Community in the first place.

Are there is that Stat telling you that they have completed the password creation process, which is the first step. Or is there some glitch in that process that makes it easy to drop out of the workflow. and never actually you're tagging them when they log in but they're not really logging because they never complete the password completion process, which means they have a fundamental inability to log in a second time.

I do think you're I think that's absolutely right, so you know, a customer logs or a user logs into your community and doesn't. Ever log in again and you're seeing a lot of that you know, maybe there's something there on. You know, maybe they're not getting the email that they're supposed to so i'll give an example and it's a good point is when a user logs into the real to Community today they get an email automatically instantly it says hey thanks for registering for the real to community.

click here to activate your account boom click here, and then they click there and they go directly to the relative community and and they're logged in or they put their password and stuff like that and they're good to go right. And then from there, we have kind of this I wouldn't call it 30 6090 days it's like a. You know, every couple of days for the next at least two maybe three times they'll get an email say hey.

Thanks for creating your login here's things that you can do hey I see you haven't logged in and 10 days a lot, you know so there's kind of this journey that you push as well to kind of make sure you're engaging with the customer in an automated way you don't want to be doing this. You know manually to every customer right, so I think that you know you have to create that journey to you know that's one tactic to push in a very important tactic.

And if none of those work something yeah maybe it's not launching maybe maybe your initial email isn't going out maybe these things aren't happening. do some testing, you know, create a dummy login you know, create your gmail account you know, a new account login and create you know, make sure the process is working. And if it doesn't, then you know there's something wrong, I mean there's all kinds of tests that you can do from that point, you know to to knock that out.

of doing usability testing, as we design I don't think we do a good enough job at the yearly rotation saying okay it's it's the year mark let's go back and do another usability test. Think about the level of testing that e commerce sites do. Absolutely right, it is a daily activity in some cases, many cases they are tweaking things. regularly on our side, you know there's communities that are are successful don't get me wrong there's still successful.

But they have never done usability testing, not before, not during that in five years in right they are making tweaks they're making improvements, but they haven't done the full blown let's put some users in front of a formal process. yeah understand this right. And, and you know rich mix in our buddy rich millington. posted something a couple weeks ago. Talking about the homepage design. Right and how.

Most people have these Community homepage designs that are much more about welcome to the site when in reality. So many communities are destinations that are that people arrive at based on Google traffic. And the reason they get to the homepage is because they had a failure in that Google result right and so instead of a welcome to the experience but that needs to be as you clearly have had a problem, let me help you address that problem.

seo and yeah, and I mean we didn't we had organic signups sure, but realistically somebody had a problem that Google that. We did a great job of seo which bumped our results, up to the first or second result almost all the time and they click the button that show up at the site. And so the way that we redesigned that site and did our testing was to do Q amp a pairs right, so we did everything we could do to make sure that when somebody came they saw a big queue.

With it with the question and a big a with the best answer right and there was a whole process of you know soul dancers, your mark dissolved marked as helpful. And apple recommends which we had a team in place to go mark stuff that they thought was good if nobody came back and market themselves. yeah bump bump those up above and beyond the rest of the answers in a design that seemed very compelling when you had four seconds to grab somebody's.

Attention before this yeah, this is a bit go back to Google and start again right and our homepage.

To get different people to do usability test to get different people do all this stuff for the main website, you know who they have to do Community radio.com Chris that's all and that's it. At the moment, you know, like and they think that, so I think that it's a good point because I would love to have you know all this budget to do usability testing to do. You know, to change up the website, from time to time to do some of the things that you talked about around you know, because now.

Since our Community is almost a year old you starting to get some really good seo right, you know because we've done a good job of the content but. You know, and so over time it gets more and more, you know, over time, or 80% 70% seo organic seo and right now it's not there, but it's just started. But then things I should be thinking about exactly what you're saying is people are going to get to our site through Google and when they click on a link.

would be really cool you know, to have that whole whether it's a blog or whether it's a Q amp a whatever it is. One is where's the cta so because they can get the answer, so we need a good, clear. cta because they're not logged in so can we potentially capture that one out of 100 people might log in. You know, but if we don't make it easy for them they're not gonna log in they just get the answer and they go to is is are they getting the answer that they need, unlike your little thought around.

To have somebody go in there and just assume that this is best answer I like that, because I haven't been doing that, and you know the one of the tactics that I think is important is that best answer and getting people to put that in there, but it's a hard thing to get people to do. said a lot of good things man, I like that I think that's you're probably right about these I mean I think about it, but I can't always do anything about it, you know.

know we revisiting that journey on a regular basis to a make sure it's working because we've also built in the measurements in the process is to pay attention to whether that's working. and be if it's not working, what do we do about it, how do we improve that right, rather than just saying we've bought a platform it works, a certain way we put it in place now we're going to worry about the content management part of it, the engagement part of it right.

yeah and and I think that's you know, putting this is the challenge to you to me to everybody, all of us and i've been trying to do this more with clients lately is say whatever our budget is let's set aside 30%.

Okay cool and then here's the way i'm going to prove that to you, and then I prove it to you.

The analytics and I saw that, for some reason there's this link that I go to when I click on it and or you know I. it's like this error link and i'm like what the hell is this This is like over the last month and clicked on 100 times, but why what's going on. And so, a lot of times whenever you go into the analytics and you find it easy, you can find hint of where people are having problems either in the login is the area in the.

You know in some part of the Platform, you know, and so you have to go dig to find those answers but positive is that. The analytics are there, the data is there, and so you don't have to just blindly think oh that piece, so you do the testing, but you also look at. what's working what's not through whatever analytics thing that yeah, but in this case for me and a lot of it is the Google analytics right, you know it's just look at that.

It tell you, you know don't you know go to your seo person say what the hell is this and then go to your platform people say hey what the heck is this, you know, like I don't. If you don't know, and so I think you have to do a lot of research, a lot of focus and then fix it, you know, whatever that is too, because this. 100 times in a month.

And it's going nowhere, you know that's a problem, why is it be clicked on 100 times a month who's who you know, maybe that's a user issue a problem, and if you fix it and maybe you get 10% of those people back and they actually able to login or do whatever they're trying to do you know.

And then i'll be done because, if not test it right it'll all work right if we you know Q amp a test it not usability tested then everything's going to work and it makes me fun. yeah but the reality is the reason I keep trying to pull that budget back to about $70 and keep the $30 in reserve, or whatever the number is you want to do right. Is because we always find those things you're talking about right that weird error that nobody could have foreseen.

yeah the strange user behavior that nobody could have foreseen. You know you put stuff in front of users, especially Community users. they're going to come up with some weird use cases that you've never in a million years thought of and it's not your fault it's just reality right it's not a bad thing it's just how things work. And I think that's again, we can really look to our colleagues in e commerce say you know they know that. they're prepared for that they don't.

Get upset when they've discovered when they get kind of excited celebrate that they found their don't have a problem, whether we can.

For the last two months it hasn't created hardly any leads in comparison to the last you know and you're like okay let's go test that chess what what changed for two months ago this this and then they can go pinpoint exactly what that problem was you know I mean. So maybe somebody moved the chat up to the top to the bottom, or to the side or. Something happen, you know, and then I figured out, you know so.

that's also important to do for us as as leaders. Because we know for a fact that we need to be. Excuse me dedicating more time. To stuff that is the random the administrative the data research all that stuff. But I don't know that we're as an industry that we generally put enough time into. And i'll give you an example. Or, more specific some background let's say sorry i've got the allergies sometime not to call friend, no.

I remember just that blowing my mind going you mean i'm going to only get to spend a third of my time doing the cool stuff that I wanted to be. But it's true and it's you know, maybe the numbers aren't exactly right doesn't really matter, the point is it's three components right that all have to be making up your work day and you know to your point about like looking at the Google analytics right there's this there's this.

reactive maybe you know proactive reactive split that you have your proactive activities that. You know, you need know you need to put forth the sort of dashboard you know you needed to get these sort of. Content pieces in place because somebody said, in the knowledge base these five things have to exist, you know you have to moderate, you know those are the proactive things you're you know about, but you also have to be setting aside time to to work, the business for yourself right.

And figure out, you know how do I just go look at Google analytics with no particular point in mind, other than. That what's going on here right what am I noticing. And you know allow your your your creative brain to kind of take over and start seeing patterns paying attention to oddities that sort of stuff.

yeah and you know there's kind of the the the proactive pieces driven by questions right i'm how are we going to do X, how are we going to get this result you know and how do you plan for that the reactive piece we don't put enough attention into. You know how do you have three hours a week set aside to make sure that you're looking at Google analytics. and making sure that that's all where it should be in there's no on.

Yes, probably not because you're busy you don't have enough time because you have enough budget right because you all one guy and how do you protect that I didn't make that time for yourself the question.

Strategic type of things, because you know when I have meetings on my goddamn calendar. All day, every day, you know, like. How can I even do any work of thinking about Community and everything else. You know, you know, but some of the big things that those meetings some some of them are really important to kind of go back to your. I don't know if it was.

If we talked about this, but we definitely talked about it before the show is kind of this, you know journey of where customer starts up for onboarding. So when customer joins your organization, where is community in the conversation that's an important an extremely important piece right so. Customer needs to know about Community the Academy, and some other places to go, so that they can get educated, so that they can get help.

And if we're not talking about those things, then they're not really ever going to know about it, I mean unless they stumble upon it on your website, or whatever right and so. Those are the conversations I want to have and be in but sometimes it's hard to do that and then do the day to day and everything else, and you know so.

You know, I agree, I think you know I think as thirds the three things you talked about are good, but you know there's also more things in there when you're at when you're a one person team and, to some degree i've got a lot of. People bought into it, which is a good problem to have but also, you have to kind of rain things in and say look i've got to do things on my Community you know, and that has to be a big part of my time.

And it's spending that time doing the shit that you just mentioned it's highly important so.

If I don't look for the next business then i'm not ready, I have no pipeline when client a ends, I need client be to replace it right. yeah so you cannot get away from the reality that. Such as hard as that is. it's a reality, you can't fight so the question is how do I say you I mean all this.

yeah so the The challenge here, this is what I was you know sort of prefacing before I even said it a minute ago was, I know that the young people listening are gonna be like yeah but I don't have any time for this. I don't even time for that kind of work, I all I can do is spend my day you'll Keep it up. Sure, and I understand it, and I absolutely sympathize with it, that the trick is, it is a reality if you want to grow, that has to have some time to be able to prove your growth and.

That should allow you to draw your boundaries right.

Because there's nobody else there, the company doesn't have the ability to feel enough pain to say we need to solve this right, and you are not keeping your brain straight, so that you can come back to work after your vacation. Where you've actually set it aside actually allowed yourself to refresh and so you can be good to your Community members to your Community program to your to your teammates all that stuff right to stop moderating on the beach I need a T shirt for that.

headcount so that you can get budget to do some of the things that you want to do, and all that kind of stuff you know, Nicole and i've talked about this before is you get approve it before you know you can do it, you know, or you need to prove it out. And then you know it's chicken before the egg stuff so but you're also right you can't do everything so you also have to kind of be smart about your time and energy and where you're spending it, you know with your Community so.