Lizard Optimization: Unlock Product Growth By Engaging Long-Tail Users

Lizard Optimization is a technique for designing product development experiments by engaging long-tail users that seem to follow some unexplainable "lizard" logic. It can help you understand your audience better and improve your products.

The method is based on the author's experience managing an online software product that grew explosively from November 2021 to November 2022. The key user metric, tracking when people are getting value from the product, increased by more than 500 times in those 12 months (times, not percent). This happened after a period of unremarkable growth and a slow decline. Looking back, the key factor in reversing the decline and unlocking exponential growth was a counter-intuitive approach to engaging users.

This book is a summary of the key lessons from that crazy growth phase, synthesized into a simple process that you can apply to improve your products, and help you unlock growth, reduce churn and increase revenue.

This book is primarily for software product managers, product data scientists, senior engineers and anyone else involved in product management and guidance.

If your role involves coming up with new feature ideas, approving or rejecting proposed changes, or supporting people who do, this is a book for you.

If your product is still looking for a market, Lizard Optimization can help you find it sooner. For products that need to grow their user base, this technique can help you reduce churn and keep customers engaged for longer. For more mature products, Lizard Optimization could uncover new feature ideas, engage overlooked categories of users, and help you address larger markets. It can also reveal interesting ideas for increasing customer lifetime value.

Gojko Adzic is a partner at Neuri Consulting LLP. He is one of the 2019 AWS Serverless Heroes, the winner of the 2016 European Software Testing Outstanding Achievement Award, and the 2011 Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Award. Gojko's book Specification by Example won the Jolt Award for the best book of 2012, and his blog won the UK Agile Award for the best online publication in 2010.

Gojko is a frequent speaker at software development conferences and one of the founders of MindMup and Narakeet.