What can companies do to keep their users happy? Consistent user engagement and satisfaction may be one of the hardest tricks to crack, but there are several ways to overcome the challenge.
Nir Sadeh, the Head of Product at Wix Studio, has mastered leveraging user experience to create the highest-quality web design platform on the market and he’s here to share his tips and tricks with us.
In this exclusive interview, Nir jumps into evaluating user feedback, tackling user demand, and how to know when it’s the right time to take a gamble in product management.
Who Is Nir Sadeh?
Nir Sadeh is the Head of Product for Wix Studio. In his decade-long experience in the product field, Nir has held several leadership roles, including Head of Product for Editor X at Wix, Head of Product at DropIt Shopping, and Product Manager at Museloop. He has a vast knowledge of digital transformation and enhancing user experiences through insights gained from evaluating product performances, which enables his teams to create data-driven strategies for the best user experience.
Vianca Meyer: You started your professional career in television, working on projects like The Voice and The Real Housewives. What made you decide to transition to product management?
Nir Sadeh: It happened by mistake. I started doing product management as a hobby. It started 12 years ago with my boyfriend at the time, now my husband, who is a developer. We heard that Tel Aviv, where I was born and raised, is going to come up with a shared bicycle scheme and we thought “Hey, they're not going to have an app for it.”
So, we just created a very simple app and it was a success in the small market of Tel Aviv. I started going to hackathons in Tel Aviv, which was a big thing pre-COVID. I was meeting with a group of friends I met in a hackathon every Wednesday night, just creating apps and releasing them to the app store. That's how I became a product manager, without knowing that I am a product manager. I worked with four developers, then a designer joined us, and then marketing experts. So, learned it from the ground up.
What are some of the most significant challenges you faced and how did overcoming those challenges shape your approach at Wix?
It's always about listening to the user, which is easier said than done. Which user are you going to listen to? Are you going to listen to the existing user or the potential user who isn't using your product? How are you going to listen to them? Are you going to look at the data? Are you going to talk to them? How are you going to understand what they're asking for?
This is the magic trick that every product manager needs to find on his or her path, how to connect to users. In day-to-day life, it's hard because you're surrounded by current pain points - everyone needs someone from you because that's your role. You need to keep reminding yourself that you must represent the user and their needs
Throughout your diverse career, from television to apps to innovative services, what constants have you found in terms of user engagement and satisfaction?
First, users are always people. There's a person behind that user. There is something very confusing about the word “user” because you think of an idea but it's a human being. Another thought is that users always demand more. You need to learn to say no and to understand why you're saying no and how to explain it. That only works if you have a vision or a big goal that you're aiming for.
The third thought is that oftentimes product management is approached step by step. Sometimes you need to stop and say: “Hey, maybe we need to do a game changer.” This is a much harder thing to do because it’s a gamble. Sometimes it's hard to show the results along the way, but that's where you gain big wins. A big gamble, but sometimes also a big win.
As the head of product for Wix Studio, can you walk us through the inception and evolution of the product? What sets it apart from other web design tools on the market today?
For Wix Studio, we combined all the knowledge that Wix has gained from the editors that we launched through the years, and there have been a bunch. Wix started in 2006 with an Adobe Flash-based editor. Then in 2012, it was relaunched on HTML5. In 2016, we created an artificial intelligence-based ADI editor, which was very easy to create websites with. Three years ago, we launched Editor X, which is a very complex and advanced editor.
Wix Studio is trying to bring all this together so that you can have all the amazing and advanced capabilities that Editor X offers with the intuitiveness of the Wix Studio Editor. I think that's something that only Wix can do because we gain so much knowledge from our users. When you try this new Wix Studio Editor, you feel that it's an intuitive web design, but you can also really dig deep and have precision.
How influential would you say has user feedback been in shaping the product direction and features of Wix thus far?
That's what we do. We have an internal joke at Wix that the users are our bosses. Sometimes they are very micromanaging and sometimes they're demanding. Most of the time they are very fun to work with, but all we do is we want to make them happy. If they are happy, our business will keep thriving. Of course, there are marketing and business goals that we need to achieve, but it always comes from great user experience and user satisfaction. Not the other way around.
When approaching a new project, how do you prioritize what needs immediate attention versus what can be set as a long-term goal?
Once I join a new project, first I try to listen to everyone and not jump to conclusions. We have this hunch that we want to bring our prior knowledge and apply it to a new project. Sometimes it's helpful, but it can also be deceiving. I try to understand the users, the technology, and how the problems have already been solved. Then, I come up with a roadmap that makes sense.
Many times, it will be a combination of putting out fires and finding those quick wins that will bring big value to our users with a relatively small amount of effort. Finally, I think about the strategy. What's my strategy? What can I bring to the team that they haven't thought of, or they thought of, but neglected? It’s important to find your voice and I think that's true about every discipline, not only in tech.
