Solve the biggest problems (it doesn’t have to be pretty)
If there is an overarching theme to the slew of Web 2.0 companies, it seems to be “pick a tiny thing, and do it really, really well.”
As a consumer, how could I complain? It’s not hard to bookmark a half-dozen sites in order to get free access to incredibly useful tools like Tadalists, Posterous, Twitter, or Dropbox.
As a product manager, I think it’s a tempting way to paint your company into a corner. I’ve talked before about always asking yourself “what’s the alternative to using our product?” Understanding that is a good way to understand the value you provide relative to the friction of asking consumers to change their behavior. But on its own, it may paint too rosy a picture.
Let’s take the example of an online to-do list:
Alternatives: not making a list, writing lists on paper, entering tasks on online calendar or PDA
Friction: need to bookmark a site but setup and learning curve minimal
The alternatives are not that attractive (not making a list means I’ll forget things, writing lists on paper means I have to remember to carry that paper around and not lose it, entering tasks into an online calendar means putting personal stuff into Outlook or maintaining multiple online calendars…) and the friction is not very high. This is a recipe for pretty decent consumer adoption!
That’s great, until either the alternatives or the friction level changes, and those two items are not entirely under your control.
Next week, a competitor to-do list product emerges with more robust features, or a snazzier UI, or even just better buzz than you. Suddenly the alternatives include “use our competitor’s product”, and you have to lop a certain percentage of consumer adoption right off the top.
Or a sudden change at Google sinks your Adwords income dramatically. Now you need to either sell more ads (negative user experience) or start charging and now your friction has gone way up.
How well-prepared you are to cope with one of these occurrences can be predicted in part by asking yourself another question: “what would our users do if we disappeared tomorrow?”
In the to-do list case, I’d be disappointed. And then I’d make my daily to-do list on paper and move on. In contrast, my old company’s Yodlee MoneyCenter product would have a much more complicated extrication process. I relied on “bill due soon” alerts to pay my bills on time, I stored username/password combinations to my financial sites, and I had years of transaction history. Restoring the same level of service to my life would be a hassle – probably enough that I’d be willing to pay for a formerly free product in order to avoid that hassle.
The Yodlee product has plenty of flaws, but so do most of the products that I rely on. The key is that they are solving big problems, things that I can’t as a consumer tackle on my own. If I have a hangnail and a broken arm, and you offer me a flawless hangnail cure, I’m going to ignore you in favor of the company offering me a wooden splint.
Solve for the broken arm. Little problems are easier to identify if you’re not looking externally, and they make you feel confident: you can see the solution, there are few unknowns. But talking to customers it’s hard not to hear what their “broken arm” problems are, and they’re generally pretty willing to ride out the unknowns with you.
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