Hi PX Tribe! 

Julie Pinto here… you may remember me from my customer posts, but now I’m writing to you as a member of the PX Client Outcomes Team! SURPRISE! Guess I liked PX so much I wanted to join the team 

For my first tip of the week, I wanted to share a simple idea I had to better characterize the features in the Product Mapper. 

In the Product Mapper, you create Features and use PX reports to measure those features by events, unique users, unique accounts, etc. But not all features should be measured on the same scale. For example, a page in your product will generate far more events than a button click. 

One quick way to better understand what each mapped feature means is to use an abbreviated naming convention at the beginning of each feature:

• View (V): use this for simple page views, mapped with URL rules
  • Example of Mapped Feature: V - Create New Dashboard Page
• Navigation (N): use this for buttons that indicate the user moving from one area to another, such as menu buttons, “+ New” buttons, etc
  • Example of Mapped Feature: N - Click Menu Button
• Action (A): use this for buttons/pages that indicate the user performed an action or completed a workflow
  • ​​​​​​​Example of Mapped Feature: A - Create New Account

Why does this matter? 

• You can understand how many navigation steps it takes users to perform a key action (think: Path Analyzer)
• You can more easily compare one action to another action / one page view to another page view (think of it like comparing apples to apples / oranges to oranges) 
• You can have a shared language with your team so everyone has a better understanding of your data 

It’s January, so let’s go with the analogy of a gym. I am a gym owner and I want to know what it takes to get someone to do a workout at my gym. 

• View (V): First, a potential customer visits my gym website. They might visit my website 10 times before they decide to become a member. They have viewed the process for this potential action 10 times. 
• Navigation (N):  Now that they’ve been to my website 10 times, they need to physically navigate to my gym. How many steps does that take them? If they have to get dressed, drive, find parking, find the entrance, wait at the front desk, fill out paperwork, and get a safety debrief, they have at least 7 navigation steps before they can perform the action of working out. 
• Action (A): Now, finally, if they made it through all those steps, they can do a workout, or 1 action. They’ve gotten some value from all their effort! 

Since my customers’ activities fall into the categories of View (V), Navigation (N), or Action (A), I can now analyze how many steps it takes for my customers to achieve their action. I can’t force them to get dressed for the gym, but I can ensure there are 1) designated parking spots for gym members, 2) a receptionist always available at the front desk, and 3) an option to fill out paperwork online beforehand. I’ve just reduced the friction for 3 of the 7 navigation steps, making it that much easier for my customers to achieve their first action.

Sure, you could apply the same principles to your product without using a naming convention; however, using consistent abbreviations to categorize your features can ensure that you + your team have common language to discuss and analyze your data. 

Hope that helps! Let us know if you try it or come up with something different