A great product experience achieves two interdependent objectives: First, it addresses the causer’s needs and pain points. Second, those needs and pain points are addressed in an intuitive user interface that makes the experience efficient and enjoyable.

Solving a customer's problem or meeting their needs is table stakes. Understanding their problem-solving process well enough to design a thoughtful and delightful journey is a competitive differentiator.

How Do You Describe Product Experience?

As the name implies, product experience is a term that refers to a person's experience with your product. It includes:

• Looking over a product at a store

• Viewing a product for sale online

• Looking at a sales catalog

• Scanning a product QR code for more information

• Trying out a "free trial" offer for a product or service

• Buying and then using a product at home

• Viewing installation and set-up instructions for the product

The product experience meaning should not be confused with customer experience. While product experience is important, it's only a part of customer experience, as the latter includes factors such as ease of purchase, shipping speed, and customer service interactions.

What Is the Value of Product Experience?

Consumers in today’s world have options. If your product experience is lacking and doesn’t meet a potential buyer’s need, he or she will go elsewhere.

Recent stats show that up to 95 percent of American consumers make impulse purchases at a store while over 88 percent will make impulse purchases online. If your product experience grabs someone and makes him or her want what you have, the odds are that you'll make a sale. What’s more, once a person has bought something from you, the odds that he or she will do so again rise exponentially. When a new customer comes to your store or website, the odds of them making a purchase range from 5 percent to 20 percent. However, when an existing customer comes to you, the odds of that customer making a purchase range from 60 percent to 70 percent.

Granted, some potential buyers who have a good product experience may not purchase your goods right then. However, they'll remember your brand name in a positive light if they need your products and/or services at a later date. The Journal of Consumer Research reports that prior positive consideration of a product increases the odds that someone will buy a product later on.

However, a positive product experience doesn't just happen on its own. It's up to businesses to ensure consumers have positive experiences with their goods. Companies need a good product experience management strategy to help potential buyers have positive interactions with company products.

What Makes a Great Product Experience?

A great product experience is an experience that meets a consumer's needs at his or her point in the buying journey. For some buyers, it's fast answers to key questions, so they know which products to consider. Others need detailed information about two or three products, so they can make a final decision. Consider the following product experience example:

Mary wants to buy a new glass and wood dining room table with eight upholstered chairs. She visits an online store and finds there are hundreds of dining room tables in all shapes, sizes, and materials. However, the online store has plenty of filters that make it easy for her to pick out the ones that meet her specifications. There is a price filter, so she only views options that are within her budget. Furthermore, she can click another filter to only view products with free shipping.

Mary has now found two or three dining room sets that she's seriously considering. However, to make a final purchase decision, she needs details on each option. What type of wood is each table made from? Does each product come with a warranty, and how long does the warranty last? Are any of the tables hard to assemble? Is it easy to wash the upholstery on the chairs? If a company has good product experience management, each product will have these details listed, so a consumer can find the information he or she is looking for quickly and easily.

Lumavate provides analytics that show how customers are interacting with your products. This enables you to tweak your product experience management strategy for optimal results.

How Do You Evaluate Product Experience?

When developing a product experience strategy, you need to evaluate your data from a quantitative and qualitative approach. A quantitative approach examines customer satisfaction scores, retention rate, and market share. A qualitative approach, on the other hand, examines customer comments on social media and product reviews as well as feedback from previous buyers. It also compares your customer experience to that offered by your competitors. All this data, when combined, gives a clear view of how people from different target audiences interact with your products.

Another good way to examine your product experience strategy is to map out your entire product experience. Pretend you are a customer looking for a particular product and then go through your store or use your website to try to find what you're looking for. 

Are products easy to find? 

Can you find the detailed information you want to know about items you're considering buying? 

Is there information readily available for items that require assembly or how-to instructions? 

Mapping out your entire product experience journey will help you identify pitfalls that could be causing you to lose customers. It can also enable you to tweak your strategy and make improvements to reach new target audiences.

Creating an ideal product experience for each customer is a tall order. What's more, it's not a one-time job. Consumer needs change. Market developments can affect how people view your products and what they expect from your business. Thankfully, you don't have to do it alone. Lumavate offers the Product Experience Management (PXM) platform you need to create and implement a great product experience management strategy. It provides the tools needed to not only improve product experience but also monitor user experience to continually improve your strategy. What's more, our platform costs a fraction of what other, similar PXM platforms cost, and you can start using it as soon as you sign up for the plan of your choice. Get in touch with us to find out more or request a free product demo.