"UXLG is the Future"!!
Ever wondered how some orgs manage to stay ahead of the pack? What’s it that sets them off on that northbound growth path indefinitely? Here's what they do...
The Objective
What’s the purpose of inventing new terminologies and coining / dropping new jargons onto the market?
Some would argue that the reason is very simple – “just to be in the limelight”.
When that logic isn’t altogether false, there is just one small problem there.
With people, users, perceptions, wants, markets constantly changing at the turn of the screw, would it be justified for organizations to formulate and adhere to principles / methodologies / processes that were drafted ages past under the “best practices” banner?
There are some inventors & then there are some others who are followers, but nothing's a given as to who would be ahead of the pack when it comes to success. If anything, what matters is the user adoption numbers & that's that.
This here is the link to the tweet that got this concept started about an year back (Aug 2022):
https://twitter.com/BgpInv/status/1557577788949155841?s=20
So, the objective as for this article is absolutely clear. It’s not about coming across as innovative or grabbing a slice of the limelight, but it’s just about hitting the right chord as for stepping one’s game up and moving along with the wants of the current market’s needs.
Consciously being Pro-Growth!
Q: What’s the one thing that any business leader yearns for?
A: Growth! It’s that simple isn’t it?
And, breaking growth further down one could be focused on a host of things and at any given point in time over putting those metrics northbound over things like say engagement, revenue et. al.
To be able to achieve all that is easier said than done and would need all teams to thoroughly understand, put in a unanimous effort aligned working passionately towards the goals. As and when one talks of teams thoughts branch towards focus and alignment which is why we have models like:
Sales Led Growth
Product Led Growth (AARRR)
Flywheels
that have been coined over the years.
Good, better & best:
Coming to the age-old debate of which one of those strategies is better, it is very important that one understands how it all depends on:
the stage of product
the organization
the leadership
MTMM – metric that matters most
I’ve always seen this as two sides of a coin given how the sample space is entirely divided over these strategies and it applies across corporates, multi-national conglomerates, startups either in the early or the growth stages.
Followers – they always seem to be behind in the race, could also carry a lot of apprehensions about doing something different or being innovative & the first ones to do something new, coin a new method / approach / apply some new thought process; these people would also pay a lot of heed to what the market thinks about their deviations from normal & may thus lead to throwing it all open to a consensus internally leading to a unanimous decision to adhere to one tried-and-tested archaic strategy putting them into retrograde motion as for their growth
Innovators – they are forward thinkers, always believe in thinking a couple of steps ahead their time or the market, believe in innovation and also list it as one of their most important pillars adding up to how the organization is structured; internally they hinge on and may also have appointed special teams / task force assigning them with the job of innovating constantly which gets done by keeping a close tab on their markets, competition, strategies, goals whilst identifying gaps & proposing, experimenting, implementing, learning & mending their workflows with a total focus on the value delivered to the users
So, the verdict is looking pretty clear.
“The gradation of good, better, best ought to be derived from your own historical performances & the strength of a given strategy ought to be correlative and expressed as a function of the perceived value and benefits offered to the users”
UXLG (UX Led Growth)
In recent times we’ve seen how some products have hit blinding adoption rates.
Take ChatGPT for instance.
It went from near 0 to 1 million users in a span of 5 days, yes you heard right – “just 5 days” when it took Netflix 3.5 years to achieve the same feat.
Such is the hypergrowth & blinding adoption rates we’re noticing off-late with many of the new-age products.
Now, a few questions:
Did you receive e-mails regarding the launch of ChatGPT?
Did you have a salesperson from the org. cold-call you directly in an attempt to briefly explain the benefits of the tool?
Did YouTube stuff you with those Ads when you were watching some other content totally related / unrelated to AI / NLP?
The answer to all those questions above is in the NEGATIVE isn’t it?
Then, how do you think the tool rose to becoming so massively popular that the org. was facing severe difficulties to keep it running.
I am sure most of you might have come across & do remember this screen over your usage of the App over the last 3-5 months.
The answer to that is what could be termed UXLG (User eXperience Led Growth) where the UX becomes the primary driver of growth which could hinge mainly on referrals. With the advent of social media predominantly Twitter & to some extent LinkedIn and also GitHub amongst the developer community this amazing feat. was pulled off.
Supposing you tried ChatGPT and asked it to write an essay on a totally dry & uncommon topic, the output from the tool might have been pretty mesmerizing for an LLM (Large Language Model).
“Large Language Model (LLM) is an AI – NLP model that can generate natural language texts from large amounts of data. They internally rely on neural networks, transformers to digest, map & retrieve learnings from trillions (GPT5) of words using it to produce texts on any topic or domain.”
What’s next?
The word would have caught on, canvassing the capabilities of the tool which might have then spawned newer trials over use cases depending on various users trying it for various purposes. Spreading the word happens at a lightning fast pace given the timelines we are living in today.
“That’s essentially the impeccable & surreal user experience leading to daunting number of referrals which in essence is the backbone of UXLG”
It’s like the pyramid marketing / multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes with a notable difference that the users are pushing up referrals to the masses and subsequently their conversions happen directly without any need for the interim steps / stages like leads / aspects / prospects.
Given how quickly the word spreads today, the conversion happens pretty fast and the growth could be pretty massive and very organic as well.
Let’s compare UXLG pitting it against the already well-known Product-led and Sales-led models:
Remember:
Just as much as strategic initiatives undertaken ought to be entirely tied to parameters internal to an org., the growth practice you follow / adhere to as a product team ought to be gravitating towards experimenting, measuring, learning, identifying & then earmarking the right one so as to “firstly - put you on a northbound growth path” and “secondly - put you much ahead in the race amongst all competition”. What’s more? This process ought to be an ongoing / continuous one and never a one-time / one-off affair.