A collaborative value proposition canvas for teams

Value proposition Canvas

What is a value proposition canvas?

The value proposition canvas is a great strategic tool to understand and showcase where a product offering overlaps with the customer’s needs. It provides a visual representation of how you create value for your customer and should answer the question: Why should the customer buy from you? The template helps teams get into the shoes of their customers, and discuss marketing campaigns and new product planning in a creative but structured way.

If you’re working with many people from different departments it can be tough to get on the same page. Our collaborative value proposition canvas template enables teams to work together on an infinite canvas and design a value proposition using online sticky-notes, shapes, sketches, arrows and more. This can be easily shared with all stakeholders and drive alignment on the core message or direction for a new campaign.

A value proposition canvas template for marketing and product teams

Since 2012, several different variations of the value proposition canvas have been created. For marketing teams, a useful version was created by Peter J Thompson. His version focused on getting teams to think more deeply about the customer user experience.

This template is divided into 2 broad sections. The product section and the customer section. The product section is a more internal perspective and focuses on the intended user experience, product features and benefits. This section is more tangible and brings together different aspect of product development such as UX, product design and  implementation.

The customer section brings together a user persona or a customer profile as well as design thinking principles such as customer empathy. The idea is to keep the focus on the human experience of the end-customer as well understand motivators and drivers of their behaviour.

value proposition template

Use template

How to use the template

We’ve created a step-by-step guide to help you create a value proposition canvas using our template. You can use sticky notes, scribbles, images, and videos to add ideas to the board. Keep the original board in a template project folder, and duplicate a copy of the board whenever you need a fresh version. This blank template is completely editable. Once the template is complete, you can also export it as a high-res PDF.

This guide also outlines the logical sequence in which the various sections and subsections should be filled out.

Product sections

1. Features – What does your product do? The first step in creating a value proposition canvas is to describe how your product works and what it does. Along with a factual breakdown of the features, this section should also mention the reason to believe.

2. Benefits – This section is really the core of the value proposition. What does your product do for the customer? How does it make their life better? How does it address pains and increase gains? The benefits of your product should be clearly expressed and outlined for all stakeholders.

3. Experience – While the earlier sections are about tangible features and benefits, this section shifts the focus to emotions. How does using your product make the customer feel? What are the intangible qualities you would want users to associate with your product or service?  For example, an Apple user is meant to feel like a nonconformist. Riding a Harley Davidson is supposed to make you feel like a rebel.

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Customer sections

4. Wants – Focus on the emotional drivers of purchase of the customer. This section dives a little deeper into the customer’s psyche. What do they want to be or become? What are their aspirations? For example, do they just need a powerful computing machine such as an IBM or do they need a Mac that signals to their peers that they are creative iconoclasts? This section is all about the neuroscience-based aspects of consumer behaviour.

5. Needs – The other side of the coin: what job is the customer trying to get done, and what do they need in order to get it done? Focus on figuring out the rational and logical motivators of your customer.

6. Fears – Fear can be a strong driver of customer behaviour. For any product that is adopted there is a also a secret “pain of switching“. Human beings tend to have an irrational preference for the default or familiar. It is important to understand how strong the inertia bias or status quo bias is for your product or category.

7. Substitutes – What are some of the products or solutions that your customer is already using to solve their problem? You may not consider these direct competitors, but whatever your product does, it must offer a better solution that whatever your customer is already using (or doing) to solve their problem.

Value proposition canvas example- Uber

To help you better understand how to create a value proposition canvas for your product or service, we’ve created an example of a value proposition canvas for Uber.

value proposition template with example

Use template

Don’t want to start from scratch? Edit this filled-out template!

The ultimate goal of the Value Proposition Canvas is about designing the value proposition that can make you achieve the so-called product-market fit.

Conceptboard also offers a wide array of strategy tools and templates such as the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas. Conceptboard’s real-time collaboration functionalities mean these can be designed collaboratively with a large number of collaborators and exported as a PDF.

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A collaborative value proposition canvas for teams

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