Joshua Warren  0:00  
Oh I remember years ago, even researching what Facebook was doing, and they even back in like 2015, they had systems where their developers were pushing changes live all day every day. And they still do that. And Amazon has a history of that Netflix is doing that. And they really focus on MVPs, which is minimum viable product. So basically the smallest piece of functionality you can ship and getting those out the door as fast as possible.

Darin Newbold  0:37  
Welcome to Commerce today. This is Darren, your co host here. And as always, Josh is with me, and we're excited to have you here for this is gonna be a fun conversation. I can already tell this. And the topic if I can actually say it without my tongue tripping over itself. So our topic today is MB P, M, M, P O M G, when do I launch? Question mark. So say that three times fast. So we've got some fun acronyms there. Hopefully everybody at least knows the OMG portion of that I did. That was the one that I knew. So I'll play that one there for everybody. But ultimately, what we're talking about is when the heck do you launch your ecommerce site? And how's the best way to make that happen? And especially if it's going long. So anyway, this is your show, Josh? Oh, I'll shut up.

Joshua Warren  1:28  
I was just waiting to hear you say MVP, MMP OMG a few more times. So hey, I said I got through at that time. Yeah, so just wanted to talk about basically, every project and every ecommerce leader I've worked with, the question always comes up, whether you're launching a whole new side, or just a major new feature, like, what's the cutoff point? When you say, Okay, we're done, we're gonna go live with this thing. And everyone kind of varies based on their risk tolerance, the business requirements. And really, even sometimes just the corporate environment you're in can impact this. But I do think there's some key points that are common, all businesses that we're going to talk through today.

Darin Newbold  2:07  
We want to look at, hey, how do we how do we get this out? And so maybe, maybe starting off, and we're talking about MVP? How do the big companies do it?

Joshua Warren  2:16  
Yeah, so there's some I'm gonna try not to get too nerdy and Devery, in this. But I remember years ago, even researching what Facebook was doing, back when they still call themselves Facebook. And they even back in like 2015, they had systems where their developers were pushing changes live all day, every day. And they still do that. And Amazon has a history of that Netflix is doing that. And they really focus on MVPs, which is minimum viable product. So basically, the smallest piece of functionality you can ship and getting those out the door as fast as possible. And the kind of crazy thing with Netflix is Netflix is known for hitting up to 4000 changes per day. Now, obviously, they have a bigger team, a bigger footprint, a bigger business than a lot of E commerce merchants. So I am not saying that you want to go ask your team to deploy 4000 times a day. But definitely a big focus there on launching early launching off and launching fast making the process of launching as simple as possible. And not really, I mean, Amazon's a great example, Amazon doesn't hold things up to polish them. I might be kind of sharing too much here. And you all may all realize I'm an Amazon a Holic now and have a shopping problem. But if you're like me, and you're on Amazon a lot, every once awhile didn't work. And you'll notice your lightweight, they're changing something, they're like, the cart looks a little different. Oh, and this time the cart didn't work. But now it's working again. And that's because they're launching another one of those MVPs. They're doing another test. They're there instead of focusing on, let's make this absolutely perfect. They're just saying, hey, let's get this live. And let's see how real customers interact with it.

Darin Newbold  4:00  
So all right, on the MVP, I recognize this. And isn't this a product, a little bit of the mobile app development world and the fact that you literally had to be out there fast, and you had to have something before somebody else did? In a way it was kind of that rush to the proverbial Apple Store, you know, the App Store and all of that. Oh, yeah,

Unknown Speaker  4:24  
that was a big part of it. And Facebook, especially you're reminding me of back in 2017. They would do between 50 and 60,000 builds test builds of their Android app every single day, because they were just constantly iterating on being the first to add new features to their mobile app.

Darin Newbold  4:43  
Okay, well, that's that's crazy, slightly insane. But anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program here with with our E commerce side of things and the merchants. What what makes sense from an MVP and we'll get to MMP in just a minute but what what could make sense For for an MVP in my in my book, this this seems like the start of a project or a new project and looking at okay, what what is that minimum viable product that we can get that's live that's going to bring in some level of sales knowing that it can be then adjusted and fixed later.

Joshua Warren  5:20  
Yeah. I mean, you kind of just nailed it right there. We got to leave more for me to say next time. But no, overall with an MVP, part of it, too, is looking at it and saying, okay, ecommerce projects, technology projects, software projects, it's not like you're building a house. And when you're done, the house is done, you move in. And that's it. It is something that constantly evolves, constantly changes. And so with that, you're not your MVP doesn't need to be a whole complete house, your MVP needs to be enough that it needs to be well, a minimum viable product enough, then maybe, maybe it starts

Darin Newbold  5:55  
as a lean to, as as crude as that is, but maybe maybe just getting out of the rain and out of the wind is all you need for the moment. And then you go from there.

Joshua Warren  6:03  
Exactly. And a big part of it, too, is just realizing that the work doesn't stop at the lean to and the planning doesn't even stop at the lean to that you can. I think there's been this misconception with a lot of retailers where they view it as okay, this is a one time project, we're gonna do this once we need to get right we need to do the whole thing all at once. When really to be successful. I think you need to have this MVP approach. But also start thinking, Okay, after the MVP is done, what's phase two? What's phase three? What do we do next? And realize that you are always iterating? On your website?

Darin Newbold  6:34  
Okay, yeah, that totally makes sense. All right. So something a little newer, and this was, this was definitely new to me the MMP, tell me about that. And and what's the difference? Yeah, so

Joshua Warren  6:46  
this comes from the kind of the the product design product owner world, and this is the MVP, the minimum marketable product, it basically makes the distinction between the smallest change you can launch, which would be an MVP, and the smallest change that will make a difference in your sales is really how it's summarize it. So the MMP, you could in theory, have an MVP that really doesn't change much of anything for your customers. And what an MMP would add is enough changes so that your customers notice that they're spending more money with you, or some other positive kind of financial outcome for the business.

Darin Newbold  7:21  
So is there? Is there some timing, the you might approach one versus the other?

Joshua Warren  7:27  
Yeah, I think a lot of it is scale. So if your project is incredibly, incredibly large, lengthy project, I think starting with an MVP makes the most sense, I think, pretty much for everybody else, looking at it MMP. So going a little bit further than an MVP probably makes the most sense. Because, you know, realistically, do you want to deploy something that doesn't have a financial impact on the business? Well, that's, that's not exciting, that's not going to get you promoted, or a bonus or a raise. So exactly, I would focus on that MMP level.

Darin Newbold  7:59  
So with that, you know, the the trick to all of this is that sometimes I guess, the most powerful word in the in the English language anyway, two letters, and oh, how do you say no, how do you? How do you say, Well, this is enough, this is where I'm going to stop for an MVP, or this is where I'm gonna stop for that MMP, that minimum buy, because they are the minimum sorry, marketable product, because your marketing team, there will be no stopping, because there's always something else they can do from a marketing from a marketable product to drive customers. So how do you do that?

Joshua Warren  8:34  
That's a really good point. And that's where, I mean, there's basically this spectrum, and we've been talking a whole lot about the far end of the spectrum. So your Netflix's your Facebook's your Amazon's they're just making constant changes at that MVP level, the opposite side, you're looking at companies that I mean, I've worked with companies that they have one launch window a year, they will make changes once a year, or they'll wait till the next year. And they are very slow and static. And I think in this case, when you're talking about saying no, I think the key difference is you don't say no, you say not yet, you say hey, that's a great idea. But that is going to be in the next phase that is going to be next week that is going to be next month that is going to be in some cases next quarter or next year. And that's where even just educating your team, you know, kind of picking a approach you want to use. So if you're using an agile or scrum approach, and you have sprint, so you have a live site and you want to break everything down into two week Sprint's well then your message could be not yet it's not going on in this sprint, but hey, that doesn't mean we're not going to do it. That means that we're not going to do it in the next two

Darin Newbold  9:42  
weeks. Well, and it could be then planned for whatever sprint number four in the in the following timeframe. So it could definitely fit in there. And that's and that's the way you have to create that philosophy and I think I think either either within the merchants or within the inner ration world, the integrators that help them. That's a challenging given take of being able to say no, it's not a no, it's just not now. And not yet.

Joshua Warren  10:09  
Yeah, it's definitely it's a it's a big challenge. But I think the and that is where kind of back to one of your original questions, that's where you have to make your MMP compelling enough, that they understand why they understand what's at stake, they understand that when we get to this MMP, we're expecting these results that when we go live with this, when we deploy this, you know, we're gonna see this sales lift, or we're gonna have this amazing new feature. And when you try to add things, and don't say not yet, you're delaying when we get to that great positive result. And so it's, it's having that mindset of okay, the MMP is the most important thing, because we're going to see positive results, and then build on top of those positive results.

Darin Newbold  10:52  
When that drives us to some of the things that are in our, in our notes kind of in prep for this is looking at, okay, what's the risks? What's the risks of not doing it? And and then what's the, what's the impact? If you do impact? If you don't? What's that look like?

Joshua Warren  11:11  
Yeah, so my experience shows you really want to launch early and often that that is going to outperform the more conservative, slower approach. And I mean, the biggest risk to me is, I've seen so many times where you're you and your team are over estimating the risk or the impact of failure, as compared to the impact of inaction. And what I mean by that is, you're, you might be saying, oh, you know, if we, if we launched this MMP, we're worried that customers might not like it, because it doesn't have X, Y, or Z in it yet. But when you balance that against the fact that if you add X, Y and Z, you're basically realize your customer not changing the E commerce experience for even longer. I think that it's hard for people to understand that that that risk of inaction looks a lot worse to your customer, hurts your relationship with your customer, a lot customer a lot more than if you were to deploy an MMP that maybe it doesn't yet have that amazing new feature the customer wants, but you're gonna add it later, like just displaying that change, getting something new out responding to the new technologies. Again, I mean, look at Amazon, they don't they don't wait till Everything's perfect. And they obviously they're making a fair bit of money on E commerce well, and

Darin Newbold  12:20  
I was about to say something, yes. You know, using your example, you're on Amazon. And you notice because you kind of have a issue with Amazon. But that's a whole nother episode, I'm sure. But anyway, you notice that the carts changing and the in the performance and the feature functionality there is changing. But yet, then it ultimately works? Well, there's enough draw that it would take quite a bit right now, for Amazon to do to cause you not to purchase from them. I mean, they would have to it would be a pretty drastic. Now let's say you go to and I'm not going to pull a merchants name out loud here, but a much smaller, more boutique type of merchant, that maybe the purchase that you're making, there is maybe just a specialty gift or whatever. You may never shop there again or may shop there twice a year. If that same thing happens, could that cause you to step away and maybe try and find another solution or another path?

Joshua Warren  13:20  
I mean, it's definitely possible. I think that's where you really have to be careful on your planning and in your testing before deploying this MMP. But that's also where I've seen some merchants get really smart and agile, and I mean, leave it to marketing teams, they'll spin it. And then maybe if it is kind of a rocky launch with an MMP, well mannered goes up on the site and says, Hey, thanks for checking out our new site. We're polishing it up finishing out the bugs, we're even 15% off of this offer code, or that's when they'll do what they can to capture the person's email address, send out an email campaign that says hey, did you check out we have these awesome new features on our site? You're just creating more opportunities to encourage the customer to come back?

Darin Newbold  14:01  
Well, yeah, and that's where I figure the even the opportunity is from the customer service side of it is to really, really almost personalize it because the the ability to analyze and the CD activities on a particular site, if someone abandons a cart, I know I've done it on some sites and Good gracious, I am bombarded immediately, hey, come back. Come see us. We love you. We want you back no matter what. So in those cases, it could be built in that, hey, if someone abandons or walks away, you know, isn't there's no guarantee if someone's irritated, they may never reach back, but it definitely increases the opportunity. And you could end up in I forget the author's name but a raving fan, you know, type of situation where suddenly your NPS goes up because someone you took that extra step you the merchant took that extra step, to reach out and make it personal and say, hey, well, we saw it messed up. We want to make it right. We're build a new site, all the things you said? Don't you think those are those need to be in the plans is kind of what you're

Joshua Warren  15:05  
saying? Yeah, definitely. I mean, it goes so far. And I don't know if this works for a lot of brands or if a lot of E commerce managers are brave enough to do this. But it goes so far as how to retailers working with that every packing list after they are, while they were in the process of deploying a new site, they actually put his photo, his name and a little personal message from him saying, hey, deployed a new experience for you, we really hope you like it, please give us your feedback, here's how to reach me. So definitely a way to build some service recovery into it. And you're talking about the user experience, and watching those users interact with the new site. And that's to me another reason to deploy sooner, because generally, when you're I mean, anytime you're deploying something new to an ecommerce site, you should be thinking what's going to make my customers happier, what's gonna provide a better customer experience? What's gonna make them spend more money? Well, those are typically educated guesses, you can't really test those, you know, best that might be a hypothesis, but can't really test those until you launch till you go live the whole time until you get this product out the door, you don't know how your users are actually going to respond to it. So if you build it up into this, you know, huge waterfall base year long two year long project, then go live with it? Well, first of all, it's probably based on how you thought your customers behaved a year or two ago, which might not be how they behave today. And also, what if you're wrong? And what if you just spent two years building something based on inaccurate data or an inaccurate hypothesis? Whenever you launch earlier and more often, that gives you time to start getting that immediate customer feedback, tailor the experience based on that?

Darin Newbold  16:43  
Yeah, and that one of the things I wanted to bring up to you, along the lines of the MVP MMP is, is there a difference if your merchant site is b2c versus a b2b? Because in a b2b situation, maybe it's a more established the customer experience? Maybe it's not maybe as high level or as, as focused on so but maybe there's some very key logic or very important pricing standpoints in there that might influence whether or not you could really, can you can you launch without some of those things, some of those really critical things?

Joshua Warren  17:20  
Yeah, there's definitely some key differences there. I think in the b2b world, you're, you're less likely to lose the customer. Typically, there's an application process. These are long term relationships, like your customers aren't gonna walk away because they had one bad experience on your website. However, in other ways, the stakes can definitely be higher. If you have an average order value on a b2c side, let's see if average or average order value 4050 bucks, you have a pricing error, gives them a 10% discount. Oh, crud, just over five. Yeah, b2b order. If it's a $40,000 order, you're off by 10%. It's a little more painful. That hurts. Definitely some differences there.

Darin Newbold  17:59  
All right, you started to mention, at one point, kind of the longer the project goes, the more expensive it gets. What's that all about? I know, you said, Hey, technology can change some different things. But I know you and I have even seen this happen and seen projects do this, that it goes so long that even the technology, the platform with which with which it's being built on is changing and needs upgrading.

Joshua Warren  18:24  
Yeah, yeah. So you might hear the longer a project, the more expensive it gets, I think, of course, but I don't mean just a incremental increase, I mean, often an exponential increase in cost. And that is basically the technical debt that you incur. So as you're building, there's going to be software updates, API updates, third party extension providers, module providers, things like that might have updates, you have to incorporate those back into your work. But then even the bigger a project is you start running into issues where if you're building so many different features and functions at once. Well, the work that was done on this feature a year ago, may no longer be as compatible with the work that's been done on this other feature today, where it versus if you've already finished that package it gotten it live, moved on to the next thing. So definitely, projects hit. It's quite not quite the same sense of what Malcolm Gladwell means about a tipping point, but projects definitely hit a tipping point where they suddenly become exponentially more expensive. And that's why you really want to err more on the side of launching that MMP. Interesting.

Darin Newbold  19:33  
All right, well, we hope you have enjoyed learning about the MVP MMP OMG and when should I launch my project? So with that, as always, we appreciate you being here for commerce today. And please definitely like like our show and leave us some comments. We always like to hear from you. And with that, have a great and wonderful day.

Unknown Speaker  19:58  
Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai