Product Strategies

A strategy is a product goal with a body of thinking behind it—not a bundle of tactics. Onboarding is not “the TTPs used in the first session”; it is a specific claim about how first sessions work and what they owe a new user, which then happens to be executed through a recognisable set of Tools, Techniques, and Practices (TTPs). Read a strategy’s What it is and Why it works sections even if you already know its TTPs by heart—they are where the reasoning lives, and the reasoning is what tells you when to break the pattern.

The twelve strategies below cover the full arc from a stranger’s first visit to a paying, habitual advocate. Most products need only two or three at a time; trying to run all twelve at once is usually a sign the team has not yet decided what stage the product is actually in.

Prerequisite: Customer Discovery — who this is for, what state they arrive in, how they work, talk, search, and buy. Shared vocabulary: Concepts.

• Onboarding: Get new users to first meaningful value with the least unnecessary ceremony.
• Activation: Get users to experience core value and become active.
• Retention: Earn return visits by making lasting value easy to resume.
• Engagement: Increase depth of interaction without designing for compulsion.
• Growth & Viral: Turn users into advocates and drivers of organic growth.
• Monetisation: Turn free or trial use into paid use when the upgrade feels fair and earned.
• Conversion Optimisation: Improve key conversion points without extractive pressure.
• Experience Refinement: Make competent products feel considered.
• Trust Building: Earn confidence through predictability, transparency, and protection.
• Intent Shaping: Invite users to declare intent, then design around it.
• Habit Formation: Create sticky, repeated usage without designing for compulsion.
• Premium Positioning: Make the product feel high-value through earned craft and clarity.