On Tuesday Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer joined Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Dreamforce for a keynote fireside on Mayer’s leadership approach and the work she’s done at Yahoo since joining in July 2012.
From how she pushed Yahoo’s mobile strategy forward to her commitment to simplicity, here are five things we learned from Mayer’s Dreamforce keynote.
Taking a global approach means traveling the globe
As a product manager at Google, Mayer went on trips to countries all around the world to learn how Google’s products were used differently in different markets. Mayer said products need to be designed with a global audience in mind, and it’s hard to do that if you haven’t been around the globe. Knowing how consumers use phones in Israel or laptops in China and Japan can have a strong impact on the design of apps and other digital experiences, she said.
In digital media and technology, simplicity is key
In the past year, Mayer has directed a design refresh for nearly all of Yahoo’s products with the aim of creating more streamlined, easier to use products. At Yahoo, Mayer said she has pushed for her designers to create apps and sites that are easy to use for the average consumers, not the expert. “You shouldn’t design for the expert user. You should build products that are fast to learn so that in a matter of days to weeks you can be an expert,” she said.
Mobile adoption caught Yahoo by surprise
When Mayer arrived at Yahoo, she met with a mobile engineer and found out just 60 employees were building the company’s mobile experiences. She immediately moved some of the company’s strongest engineers into the mobile department and selected a new vice-president of mobile in an attempt to make up for lost time. Today the company has 400 million monthly users on mobile. “Mobile caught a lot of people by surprise,” Mayer said. “It’s really amazing how quickly it happened. When you look at the history, it wasn’t clear at first how quickly to make a move.”
Companies can get caught up in design
Mayer cautioned companies from leading with design, saying companies can “fall too in love with design.” She said she sees products as either useable or useful. A product may be beautiful and easy to use from a design standpoint, and still have no place in a consumer’s life. At Yahoo, Mayer said she is trying to create products that users want to interact with daily that are also esthetically appealing and easy to use.
Yahoo is focused on internal transparency
As a new CEO, Mayer would present to her board of directors and then give an adapted version of the presentation to the entire company. By doing so, she said Yahoo became more transparent and gave a boost to employee morale. Taking it one step further, Mayer created a system in which employees can suggest topics and then vote them up or down before board meetings, giving them a say in the direction of the company.
