User Obsessed | Ready for Takeoff by Wix

It sounds like a straightforward idea. You help your customers become more successful and you become more successful in the process. But in order to do that, you've really got to get to know them, to know their pain points and to help them reach their biggest goals. So how do you do that? Hi everyone and welcome to Ready for Takeoff, the new micro podcast series from wix all about Hypergrowth. I'm your host Rob Goodman, executive producer for content at wix. In each episode we go deep on one single topic in under 15 minutes, sharing insights and lessons learned from the leaders that built WIX as we talk about everything it takes to build a world class global organization. Today on the podcast we're joined by vice president of product at wix, David Schwartz, a self described user obsessed guy. David shares what he's Learned from over 20 years of working in production on how and why your users are the key to unlocking everything for your business. I started off by asking David what user obsession means to him, why it's so important and how to do it really well.

We work for our users and we have a very clear something we work for. We work for our user success. We build products to make the boss, our users more successful, to make them grow. The paradigm is that if our users will succeed, and that's what we do, and we don't look at anything but you know, working every day to make our users succeed, WIX will succeed with its users. Now in order to do it, I believe that you need to know your user intimately. And you know, it's a big challenge to get to know someone intimately. Especially when those users are spread across 192 countries and not all of them speak the same language, not all of them have the same business needs. And I get to know intimately those users by using. Basically I do many things, but there are two main things that I do all the time. I obsessively talk to them. I shit you not, I talk every day to three weeks users, either via the phone or via chat or I correspond with them in some way or another. But I made myself a habit to talk to three users every day, literally. I'm obsessed about it. Sometimes I do more, but I never drop under three. And you know, I have my guys in the customer care and the account managers, the one who talk to my users all the time. So I get to talk to them very often as well. And I listen to the business need to the intent, but I also listen to the emotions. The other thing I do, by the way, I obsessively look at the data and there are tons of way and signals and BA and a B test that give me tons of data. And I think they work very well together. I'll give you two examples for that. You know, there is something called a funnel. The user comes, they either log in or not. Let's say I'm talking in the context of WIX stores. They add WIX stores or not, they add their first product or not create shipping method or not. And then comes the stage where they add a payment method, which is a complex thing to do. Relatively. People tend to underestimate the logistical complexities that are in the way of someone who starts young, small business. And I build machines basically that make this process more professional and easier. So I see a drop in the funnel, I see that many people find it hard to connect a payment gateway. And while we have WIX payments, it was before we launched, it was many years ago. And they're going to other places, right to Stripe, to PayPal, to whatever. And I see a drop and you know, I spent a month, really a month, I sent an email, that's all I had to all these people and tell them, no. I'm David Schwartz, I'm the VP product of wix. I really want to talk to you. Will you be willing to talk to me? A few hundreds responded. It's a little biased because they're the ones who are more engaged. They knew that. And I basically spoke to a few of them every evening. US time, Israeli time, 7 hours difference from the East Coast, 10 hours difference from the west coast. So every evening I spent some time talking to them and I found a pattern. I found that many of them were intimidated by filling up this huge form required to onboard a payment gateway. So, you know, I had the signal from the data, I confirmed the emotion, fear, intimidation. I'm not ready yet. Why do I need to do that? And I went to my partners and I told them, can we get rid of the siege form? So I told them we cannot because maybe money laundering or financing terror or trafficking people or whatever. So no, but maybe what we can do, let's wait until they get the money and then we'll release the money for them only after they fill up the form, but then they're much more invested in the process already and we give them the chance. And we did that and that improved the results dramatically. Now, I wouldn't know that if I wouldn't talk to my users through the data and also through a talk. There are some methods I don't believe in. Like I'm a great disbeliever in surveys. Surveys have always misled me throughout my career. I don't trust them. I prefer the talk, the open questions and looking at the straightforward, objective data that kind of does not echo my own thoughts, but put the truth in front of my eyes. So I think you know this ongoing urge to know your user intimately and this acknowledgment of your goal. I work for the user's success. For me, these are the two pieces that create the user obsessed product manager. And then if you take this knowledge you got from these two things and there is this art, it's not science, it's more an artistic thing. You get this intimate knowledge of the user, you work for their success. You translate this ambition and this knowledge into a great product. And it's something that's very hard to teach. It's talented. And then you can create really the best products in the world. And that's what we aspire to do. I know it sounds like kind of a cliche, but that's the aspiration. So I think that's what it means to be user obsessed and keep on visiting those products and see that if indeed they create good emotions and answer the intent and answer the business needs and do the users actually in reality succeed by using them and if not, be obsessed about fixing them because you know your boss is not successful at something like, you should fix that.

Hey everyone, this is Rob jumping in on our episode with a super quick message. If you've been enjoying Ready for Takeoff, it would mean so much to us if you could show your support by doing these three super fast things to show your love. First, leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Second, share the show with a friend or colleague you think would dig it. Third, hit follow or subscribe anywhere you're listening right now to get new episodes first. Okay, that's it. Thanks so much for listening, for supporting Ready for Takeoff. And now let's get back into it. And I love that idea that it doesn't have to be a game changing product in terms of, wow, this is revolutionary. The world has never seen this before. If you're focused intently on the user's success, success, the game change might be that unlock that you're describing where it's just a change in the process, it's a change in the flow that makes them more comfortable, it makes them commit in a way that they didn't before and that unlocks their business, their potential, all those things. So just that idea that small things can make such an impact I think is critical because sometimes I think maybe folks think that you have to be ambitious and big and everything has to be kind of things. This fresh coat of paint and brand new vehicle. But that's not always the case. Sometimes the small tweaks are the biggest unlocks.

Totally. You know, there are game changers and we all have them. Of course the Ford Model T was a game changer. The iPhone in 2007, modestly, I dare say Wix ADI was a game changer in website creation. But you know, innovation is not just inventing new things for the new purpose, you know, and many people sometimes tend to do things that are exciting technologically or exciting product wise. I say, you know, innovation is only when you do a change. And for me a change is only a change in the success of my user. Really give me a game changer that doesn't contribute to user success and a good improvement of a product that contributes dramatically to the user success. I'll get more excited about the second one. I get really excited about things like shipping. You know, you don't know what a hellish process is for my boss, the user, to define shipping properly and do it like efficiently. So I get really excited about that. That's what product means at the end of the road, right? Like being a really product person.

I love David's take on data. It's a science and an art and it's not just about what your users tell you, but the feeling behind it. I also wanted to ask David about how the rapid changes we're seeing over the last few years have, have impacted how he approaches users and building products. Here's David on what happened at the start of the pandemic.

So, you know, I gathered my team and you know, I said, what's gonna happen to our boss, right? What's gonna happen? And you know, I had my stores. Stores is a great product for me. Like it's the E commerce product where you build a store with wix. So we didn't anticipate it but you know, eventually for us it was a huge boom. We knew that it's gonna speed things up. We were shocked from how much it sped things up. I'm talking about our users, right? So you know, our users that are selling food grew up in 600% in a year. Something like, you know, sci fi crazy shit. But that was not surprising. The size was surprising, but that was not surprising. And then we had our bookings users. Bookings users are people who sell services. They basically Sell their time. And you know, until Covid, selling your time meant meeting someone. You know, you're a consultant, you're a fitness trainer, you are in the beauty and wellness industry. So I sat with my bookings guy and bookings is a very personal thing for me. It's a product I started in Wix and I'm great at delivering it. And I told him, you know, we're in deep shit, what are we doing? And we believed actually our bookings business is going to shrink, meaning basically, you know, WIX business, but more importantly our users bookings business is going to shrink. But we said, you know, what are we going to do? And we really quickly understood that we need to connect Zoom because that's what people are using. So let's connect Zoom and that allow our users to move their online world to a virtual world. Knowing that you work and there is a catastrophe that comes to the world and you help people reclaim their life. You know, that is something very, very, very powerful. Leave the money aside and the huge growth WIX had at the time and what he did to our product. And I talk to these guys, right? I still talk to them. You know, I talk to all these fitness trains. You know, I didn't think about it. And then I moved to Zoom and I called my customers and you know, they moved to Zoom and I'm doing personal fitness trainings via Zoom and my business is coming up again and actually it's bigger boom, you know, so much fun. People are reclaiming their life under like a real crisis. And you know, for small businesses, this can trash your life or build your life. And we're in the business of allowing people to start their own business, which is something, you know, I'm an entrepreneur in my soul. I still remained one. So, you know, for me it was a very emotional surprise.

Even I would say, yeah, I mean the idea that it fueled this product inspiration. But at the same time, I'm sure personally, as we're all individually going through this hardship, it must have fueled your soul as well to know that you can focus on helping people kind of pivot and maintain or grow what their livelihood is now.

You know, connecting video products to Wix bookings is not a game changer, but it's something that in a real moment of need really helped our users succeed. You see, it doesn't have to be Ford Model T or iPhone. It's really fun when it happens. I love the adi. It's really fun when you do a game changer. But sometimes adding Zoom to weeks bookings can make such a difference in people's life and their business success. It's as rewarding.

What a great conversation with David and getting to know how you know your users. What stuck with me most from our conversation was this idea of intimately getting to know your users, your customers, and showing up each day at work for their success, and how you can translate that ambition and customer knowledge into a great product. And to paraphrase David, if your boss, the user, isn't able to be successful, it's really your job to be obsessed with how to fix that. We're trying a new segment on the show called Quick Questions where we get to know our guests in some fun, unexpected ways. So let's get to it. What do you listen to when you work, Jethro Tull?

I'm a huge fan.

Oh, my gosh. That's awesome. All right, favorite piece of software.

Whoa, that's a tough one. So many of them around. Amazon.

All right, Amazon it is. Okay, back in the day, did you have an AOL screen name? And if so, do you remember what it was?

David s100ol.com okay, that's pretty good.

Not as wild and wacky as we've heard, but that's solid. Who's your favorite leader in technology and why?

Reverting back to the Amazon answer, that would be Bezos, probably. You know, he's a great leader, but I think the amazing thing about what he did in Amazon is that he kind of duplicated the great leadership system he had and created a bunch of amazing leaders. So I think that would be the thing.

Awesome. What's the very first website you visit each morning?

That would be an Israeli newspaper, Aretz.

Okay, no paper newspaper for you. It's all on the web.

I didn't touch a paper newspaper. I think in 10 years,

what do you want to build that you haven't built yet?

Whoa. I have a great idea for dating application that I really want to do. Like dating 3. 0. I never got to do that. Disappointing.

What's the favorite app on your phone that isn't a. A wix app?

I'm addicted to this game called Hero Wars.

What is Hero Wars?

That's my favorite app by far. It's a very stupid game when you have these characters and they fight with other people's characters. I'm a part of Guild of Crazy French Guys. We've been doing this for years. There is a character called Chaba. It's kind of this monstrous thing that eats the enemies. Mine, I think, is the strongest worldwide. I'M totally addicted. It's sad, sad story.

Well, congratulations on your success there.

Yeah.

Okay, last question. What inspires you on a daily basis?

The users. I know I'm kind of reverting back to what I said all the time, but the users, their issues, their problems, their challenges, their success, the way they do things, the way they build businesses online. Totally. The users.

Amazing. David, thank you so much for joining us. This has been such a wonderful conversation. We appreciate it.

Cheers.

Cheers. Ready for Takeoff is brought to you by wix. Now, if you don't know about wix, we're the all in one platform for running your business online, trusted by over 210 million people around the world. With Wix, you get incredible security, reliability, performance and SEO. No matter the kind of business you run or the size. With Wix, anything is possible. So visit Wix.com to start building and growing your business today. Thanks so much for listening. You can find more episodes and information on our website@wix.com readyfortakeoff. Ready for takeoff is hosted and produced by me, Rob Goodman at wix with production by Lindsay Jean Thompson at wix. Audio engineering and editing is by Brian Paik at Pacific Audio. Music is composed and performed by Kimo Maraki. Our executive producers from WIX are Susan Kaplow and me, Rob Goodman. We'll see you next time.