Yammer is an awesome startup creating new social software for organizations. It is on the path to revolutionize how people interact within an organization. My thoughts on Yammer's sign up process its "Questions' feature, based on Yammer's current standing in the industry.

1. Yammer
Application Review
by
Ankit Chandra
ankitchandra@yahoo.com

2. Agenda
1. Signup Process Review
2. Questions Feature Review
3. Approach to Review and Analysis
a) Current Market Position
b) Business and Functional Strategy
c) Goals analysis

3. Signup Process Review
Minimalistic
Registration form
Direct access to
Only 3 mandatory
signup on homepage
fields for registration
Site’s clean Look and feel
Customer Quotes
Lack of search On Homepage
feature in
Un-compelling Communicate compelling Connection (Step 2)
incentives incentive Viral nature of Connection Pages
In email content 2 1 Signup invitations for existing users
Signup Process Strategic Goals 3 4
Lack of differentiation between mandatory
and optional fields
Unclear, but short Lack of field level
product description explanation in Missing ‘Skip’
and purpose process option on actually
Undifferentiated skippable steps
Value proposition on
Homepage Redundant steps (Step 3) Bug in the system1
in Signup process
User Experience
Click here for Tabular Review
See slide notes for description

4. Signup Process
Recommendations
Recommendations
Increase signups by:
1. Clearly communicating tangible benefits on homepage and in email e.g. “Boost
productivity”
2. Also targeting the Long Tail of users by highlighting the benefits for them e.g. “Build
relationships beyond boundaries”
3. Allowing users to invite people from other companies to try Yammer
Reduce Drop-offs by:
1. Reducing number of steps in signup process. Move ‘Add your photo’ in Step 3 to within
Step 1
2. Enabling quick formation of an effective initial social network. In Step 2:
- Sort relevant existing users by department
- Provide a search feature for existing users
- Enable importing contacts from Linkedin
3. Addressing users’ concerns about benefits, safety privacy etc, all across the Signup process

5. Signup Process
Evaluation Metrics
Evaluation Metrics
1. Deduce Performance metrics for Signup process like:
- Number and frequency of signups, per organization and overall
- Distribution of sources leading to the signup process (email, third party etc)
- Conversion rate of all kinds of viral invitations
- Percentage drop-offs and the location in the Signup process
2. Perform A/B testing with new and old messaging to measure any change in Performance
metrics

6. Questions Feature Review
Intuitive/easy to use
Enhanced product efficacy interface
with email-able answers Enhanced usability with
tools like Bookmarks,
tags, addressing people
Lack of clear indicators
Of tangible benefits Lack of contextual
Strategic Coherence
like number of invitation to new
Reduced Noise with With organization’s goals
questions answered members
thread/friend feed toggle
Effective solution to
Lack of clearly
Limited crowd sourcing with access Issue of Information silos
communicated
only to followers, groups and Immediately visible
incentive for people to
answer questions
Topics followed 2 1 value-add
Questions feature Strategic Goals 3 4
Possible user perception
of the feature as Lack of tools for
‘distracting’ consumption by Long
Lack of effective
Tail of users
feature description
(How to use/ FAQs)
Lack of tools to improve
quality of questions/answers
User Experience
Click here for Tabular Review
See slide notes for description

7. Questions Feature
Recommendations
Recommendations
Increase Crowd Sourcing by:
1. Enabling members to receive interest based questions independent of topics/groups followed
2. Enabling posting questions directly to a group without being a member of it
Improve Question & Answer quality by:
1. Implementing Templates. Members can use these to form well understood questions and
answers
2. Enabling sorting out of best answers by extending tools like ‘Like’ and creating tags like
‘Resolved’
3. Increasing incentive to answer questions by publishing members with most liked answers
Enhance value-add by for Long Tail users by:
1. Enabling advance search options to effectively search through volumes of data

8. Questions Feature Metrics
Evaluation Metrics
1. Deduce the Key Performance Indicatorsto measure the performance of ‘Questions’
2. Some performance metrics:
- Frequency of Questions asked
- Volume of Responses/Question
- Degrees of Separation between Responder and Questioner
3. Perform Multivariate testing to measure the correlation of recommendations with the Key
Performance Indicators
4. Log the usage frequency and volume of different tools (Bookmarks, Likes, Templates etc) to have
a finer evaluation of ‘Questions’
5. Log the volume of searches on Questions to evaluate its usage only for consumption by Long Tail

9. Approach to Analysis and Review
1. Understand the macro environment
2. Deduce appropriate growth strategy
3. Create a tangible set of goals for Signup
process
4. Establish evaluation metrics for the Signup
User Experience
process based evaluation
Strategy based evaluation
See slide notes for description

10. Current Market Position
Value Proposition
Enhance employee efficiency by enabling easier collaboration and communication3
1. Relatively new Enterprise Social
Software space
S-Curve for 2. Increased market acceptance of SaaS
Enterprise Social Software and Enterprise Social Software
3. Early mover advantage; > 90000 users
4. Low barrier to entry
5. Increasing competition from:
a. Other startups
b. Established players
SAP1 c. Open source software
Socialwok2
Hashwork2
Yammer
Facebook 2.5 yrs
1. http://www.sap.com/press.epx?PressID=12100
2. http://venturebeatprofiles.com/company/profile/yammer/competitors
3. https://www.yammer.com See slide notes for description

11. Business and Functional
Strategy Analysis for Yammer
Business Strategy Functional Strategy
1. Differentiate the product in the 1. Develop product features inline with the
increasingly crowded market differentiation strategy
2. Increase customer awareness about the 2. Emphasize on:
need for Yammer - need for the Yammer product
- benefits to the users from it
3. Address users’ concerns and apprehensions
3. Rapidly increase user registration to achieve
4. Achieve critical mass of users in the social critical mass of users
network
4. Use the 1%1 rule to attract the Long Tail
5. Strengthen correspondence between
product strategy, features and messaging 5. Create metrics framework to monitor
correspondence of product strategy, features
and messaging
6. Develop scalable systems to:
- minimize downtime
- maintain service levels
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%29

12. Goals
Strategy
Goals for Signup Process Goals for Questions Feature
1. Clearly communicate benefits for all users, 1. Maintain strategic coherence with Yammer’s
including the Long Tail Business and Functional strategy
2. Make the Initial Signup process as efficient as 2. Quickly and effectively deliver the Value
possible proposition to retain new customers
3. Reduce Signup drop-offs from: 3. Assist in increasing Yammer’s user base by:
- Website registration process - providing a compelling incentive to people to
- viral email invitations invite others to join Yammer
- providing tools to enable people to invite new
4. Provide information to: users from within ‘Questions’
- compel user to act on an email
invitation 4. Provide information to:
- Allay users’ apprehensions all along the - Enable users to use ‘Questions’ effectively
Signup process - Convince user of the value-add provided
- guide users through Signup form - Enable users to become local champions of
- help users better understand the product the feature
(How/why to use Yammer)
5. Encourage viral Signups

13. Appendix 1
Signup Process
Signup Process
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14. Appendix 2
Signup process Review
Strengths Weaknesses
1. Direct access to Signup process from Homepage 1. Yammer’s value proposition on homepage is not
supports user base ramp up differentiated and does not address the needs of
2. Minimalistic registration form prevents majority of the users
overwhelming the user 2. Email communication does not offer clear and
3. Clean look and feel of the web pages enhances site compelling value proposition for leads to respond
appeal 3. Product description and its purpose is not clearly
4. Customer quotes encourage new users to signup mentioned
5. Opportunity for connecting with colleagues is 4. Number of steps involved in complete registration
provided within the process which facilitates quick could be reduced
formation of user’s social network 5. Lack of search functionality in Step 2 of process
6. Only 3 mandatory fields in the process make the slows down connecting with colleagues
registration process hindrance free 6. Field level explanations needed to explain why is
7. Viral nature of signup process invitation supports the field needed and how will it be used
user base ramp up 7. Lack of visible distinction between mandatory and
optional fields could deter users from signing up
8. Skip option not provided even when the step could
be actually skipped
9. There are bugs in the system which could reduce
users’ trust factor
Click here to back to Graphical review

15. Appendix 3
Questions Feature Review
Strengths Weaknesses
1. Inline with the strategy of offering performance 1. ‘Questions’ can be viewed as distracting and hence
enhancing Social Networking software counter productive
2. Effective solution to the issue of Information silos 2. Crowd sourcing of questions is limited only to a
in an organization, with a Crowd Sourcing platform user’s followers, groups and tags. This reduces the
3. Value addition is immediately visible when a value addition
question is answered 3. ‘Questions’ does not yet offer tools to improve the
4. Intuitive interface makes it easy to start using quality of questions and answers
‘Questions’ 4. Lack of effective feature description (How to
5. Increased usability with tools like Bookmarks, use/FAQ) limits users from fully utilizing Questions
tagging topics and people 5. ‘Questions’ is not being used to invite more users
6. Product efficacy is enhanced by supporting the 6. Questions does not offer many tools for the Long
ability to answer through emails Tail of users to usefully consume content
7. Noise is reduced with thread and friend feed view 7. Lack of clear incentive for answering a question
toggle might hold people back from answering
8. Lack of clear indicators of tangible benefits e.g.
Number of questions answered, popular questions,
Leading answer providers on a topic etc
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