[DECODED] The Key Roles of Product Development

This season on Decoded, brought to you by BigCommerce, we're going to break down the ways that winning brands build and launch new products, how decisions are made, how goals are set, and how an entire organization collaborates effectively to bring a new product to life.

In this episode, Phillip and Aaron talk with Penny Porterfield and Kabeer Chopra about this idea of concept to cart and bringing a new product, a physical product, to life. The website, the eCommerce site, that channel is a product, too. That product is in constant management, constant revision, and constant evolution. How does a brand strike the balance of experimentation while also meeting goals for profitability and customer retention? Listen now for this and much more!

Progress Over Perfection

• {00:05:48} - “One of the amazing privileges of having that perspective is seeing fads come and go and having seen things that become truth over long periods of time and the truisms that remain.” - Phillip
• {00:08:05} - “You can spend a lot of money making mistakes. So if you're working with an expert, an agency, they have a lot of experience they bring to the table and can allow you to not only get the biggest value for your money but also do it properly.” - Penny
• {00:24:29} - “If you are taking into account and regularly looking at your site and how it's performing and adjusting to how your customers are behaving, that's how you really build up the functionality, and then your costs are kind of contained a little bit and they're spread out over time and it allows you to kind of lean in hard, identify the critical stuff, but then grow over time as you see how customers are responding.” - Penny
• {01:04:47} - “Timing is so important when it comes to launching products, especially when you're a young company. One of the best pieces of advice we received early on is if you are not embarrassed of the first product that you've put in the market, you're too late.” - Kabeer
• {01:23:59} - “The payoff period may not be what you're expecting. Conditions in the market might be different. So one thing we've been very careful about is working with the right manufacturers whom we can place purchase orders with that allow us to take less risk, giving ourselves more breathing room and not investing everything into that one launch and hoping for success.” - Kabeer
• {01:28:15} - “Obviously at a certain scale, it makes sense to have a central visualization tool which we do, but more of the investment is keeping on going into more ways of looking at the data from a pure slice and dice perspective or enriching it as opposed to fancier ways of looking at it visually.” - Kabeer
• {01:32:26} - “The route we optimize often for removing the buyer friction, the end consumer friction for point of purchase. It's a conversion tactic. There's also removing the friction in making business decisions.” - Aaron

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Penny Porterfield and ZaneRay
• Learn more about Kabeer Chopra and Burrow
• Grab your copy of The Multiplayer Brand here
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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