As businesses and product managers we love to shout about being "data-driven." Data is obviously fundamental, but with an industry average conversion rate of 3%, most of our data is internal-facing and biased towards the minority of existing customers who have successfully converted. What about the majority who are non-customers? We are often blind to why non-customers fail, yet break-through products can come from understanding the potential customers who never show up in your dashboards and models. Let’s stop navel gazing and consider how we can better uncover insights that can drive growth, as well as useful, usable and delightful products.

1. Fooling Ourselves with Data
@chadjennings

2. 50% Survival

3. McGeddon, Wikipedia

4. Survivorship bias
Concentrating on the people or things that
made it past some selection process and
overlooking those that did not.

5. Do we invest too much in the
wrong data?

6. 45%, average bounce rate Source: Localytics

7. 65%, bounce rate, mobile Source: Localytics

8. 25%, use an app more than once Source: Localytics

9. ~3%, Ecommerce conversion rate Source: Localytics

10. ~1.5%, Ecommerce conversion rate, mobile Source: Localytics

11. 98.5% Non survivors. Non customers.

12. Why do we tend to invest so little in
non-customer insights?

13. We look at the data which we can
easily collect, not the data we need

14. Data is loud
Photo by Jason Rosewell

15. Data only looks at the past. It is
limited as a predictor of the future.
Photo by Luiza Sayfullina

16. Photo by Carlos Muza
Facts are not insights.

17. Our customers’ world is not structured
the same way our data is.
Tom Hulme, Desire Paths, TED

18. People and decision making
are complex and messy.

19. Distrust of qualitative data.
Photo by Björn Simon

21. How can we gather more
non customers insights?

22. A few tactics..

23. Get a budget.
Ask a friend (in marketing).
Start with “soon-to-be” non-customers.
Use web and mobile intercepts.
Get out of the building.

24. Get a budget.
Ask a friend (in marketing).

25. Get a budget.
Ask a friend (in marketing).
Start with “soon-to-be” non-customers.
Use web and mobile intercepts.
Get out of the building.

26. Our Market
Soon-to-be
Non customers
Waiting to jump
ship
Refusing
non-customers
Consciously
choose against
our market
Tier 1 Tier 2
Unexplored
Markets distant
from ours
Tier 3
Blue Ocean Strategy, Mauborgne and Kim

29. Soon-to-be Non Customer

30. Get a budget.
Ask a friend (in marketing).
Start with “soon-to-be” non-customers.
Use web and mobile intercepts.
Get out of the building.

32. Get a budget.
Ask a friend (in marketing).
Start with “soon-to-be” non-customers.
Use web and mobile intercepts.
Get out of the building.

33. “One non-customer is 100%
better than none.”
- Steve Krug (paraphrase)

34. Product View
Business Cards and Identity Collateral

35. Demographic View
Creative Professionals, SMBs,
Enterprise, Insert Vertical here

36. JobsTo Be Done View
Acquire a lead, Stand out, Impress potential client, Look
bigger than I am, survive my first year in business

37. “Stories are just data with soul.”
- Dr. Brene Brown

38. McGeddon, Wikipedia

39. 3% avg ecommerce conversion rate

40. Thanks!
@chadjennings