As Qu’s debut into polite society draws closer, the dance card fills with suitors emerging from brands and agencies, sales teams and C-suites. Above the pomp, one question rings loud – will the market love our product? The honest answer is I don’t know. I would love to say yes and I can say that early feedback has been terrific – but having the coolest new toy is not a guarantee that it will fly off the shelves.

What’s certain is that Qu was built deliberately and thoughtfully, from concept to launch, to be as user friendly as it is powerful. And in the mountain of Qu stories, there is one that best illustrates the energy and passion that went into our solution.

Solving for Smart

Qu had to solve the brand questions of what to post and when to post it. Brands had received that data in analytics reports and spreadsheets but Qu needed to go further. A truly intelligent solution would provide rich post syntax - after all, what good is data without a meaningful way to sort it - but we wanted to remove the middleman completely and bake post performance right into the tool.

Wrong Way

Our first attempt simply improved the status quo by providing a post analytics dashboard. This wasn’t user friendly enough; Qu needed to guide users through post creation. Next we tried a posting “wizard,” presenting users with a series of menus that built posts one step at a time. This wasn’t flexible enough; community managers need to work quickly and they prefer their own workflows, not a “one-way” option.

BINGO!

Then we had a breakthrough idea – let’s add a gaming layer to the post creation experience. We could present our checklist for the perfect post, and as users began creating it, they unlock an icon with each successful criteria met. This was the perfect combination of smart, powerful and flexible. One question remained – when do users get the list? Our research concluded overwhelmingly that users wanted the list first but some of us disagreed. Our fear was that over time, Qu would homogenize community content. If a publisher was advised what to write, and built content around that advice, their posts would eventually become too similar. We wanted them to do the work first, come up with the creative content, and use Qu to perfect it. That workflow would require the checklist at the end of the creative process –the opposite of what our researched users preferred. Many loud and lengthy discussions at dry erase boards and over fish tacos ensued before we reached a solution. Draft a post, tell us what’s important to you, and before you send it out into the world, Qu will provide some final optimization guidelines. This method empowers brands and more importantly, it empowers community managers.

Now imagine - if the post recommendation tool had this level of thought and love put into it – how powerful must the rest of Qu be…?