Leadership practice / Product strategy
Product strategy: Connect customer evidence to commercial decisions
How I use research to choose a product direction, make it testable and carry it into delivery without losing the business objective.
Explore my leadership experienceStart with the commercial question
Product strategy has to help a business choose where to invest. I begin by identifying the decision at stake: attract a different customer, improve conversion, give existing customers a reason to return or make a service easier to adopt. The research needs to reduce uncertainty about that decision. A collection of insights is useful only when the team can act on it.
At LoveCrafts, the starting point was a Magento-based online shop with limited differentiation. The opportunity was broader than improving the existing shopping screens. Our research and competitive analysis helped identify a community-first direction that could give the business a more distinctive proposition and support its next stage of growth.
Make research consequential
We combined qualitative and quantitative studies, competitive analysis and product-analytics reviews with the research team. My contribution as UI/UX Art Director was to help turn the emerging direction into UX architecture and a product foundation the team could build and test. Research influenced the proposition as well as the experience.
I look for the connection between a customer observation and a business choice. If an observation suggests that customers need help choosing, the product response might involve guidance, community or a clearer purchase journey. Those are different investments. The team needs to state why its chosen response fits the evidence and what result would justify continuing.
Carry the direction into the product
A strategy can become less coherent as it moves through separate briefs, designs and implementation decisions. At LoveCrafts, the redesign, UX pattern library and design system gave the community-commerce direction a tangible foundation. Architecture and user validation helped connect the proposition to an experience that could be developed and evolved.
My practical recommendation is to make the strategic intent visible in the work itself. For a proposed feature, identify whose problem it addresses, what behaviour should change and what the first useful version needs to demonstrate. That gives design and development a basis for deciding which details are essential and which can wait.
Read the results at the right level
The LoveCrafts case records +2.5% conversion growth for a business with 1M+ monthly users. The company also raised £26M as it developed its community-commerce proposition. These are different kinds of evidence: customer behaviour and a company financing milestone.
I describe the product transformation as contributing to the company’s growth narrative. A funding round involves the wider business and its investors; it cannot be attributed to one design intervention. Preserving that distinction makes the product contribution more credible and helps leadership judge what the reported figures actually establish.
Apply the same discipline to AI products
In Launcherry, I own the idea, strategy, UX and acceptance decisions while AI delivers implementation under my direction. The strategic question concerns helping a founder turn business context into marketing analysis and campaign preparation they can review. Automation needs to serve that user outcome.
The existence of a working generation chain does not establish demand or commercial success. I separate decisions about the proposition from checks of the implementation and from observations of actual use. That distinction matters when AI makes a feature quick to build: implementation speed can make an untested assumption more expensive to overlook.
Give the business a decision it can revisit
For a new initiative, I would record the customer problem, the commercial objective, the assumption most likely to invalidate the direction and the smallest useful test. Agreeing on those points gives the team a way to revisit its investment as evidence changes. It also makes stopping or changing direction an informed decision.
The value I bring to product strategy is connecting research, product judgment and delivery. Leadership should be able to see why the team chose this opportunity, how the experience supports it and which evidence will shape the next decision. That is how customer insight becomes a business tool.