Features

It’s so tempting to add new features to your app. New features give your product something new and fresh. New features give you something to get creative and excited about. Usually a customer or prospective customer has suggested the new feature so it also gives you the sense that you’re adding more value. However, make sure you don’t get stuck in a new features trap.

The New Features Trap

The new features trap is when you keep adding features to your app until it becomes heavy, bloated and hard to steer. Just like athletes, the best performing apps are often lean and trim, with a clear, penetrating focus of energy on continuously improving the features necessary to win customers and revenue and the ability to ignore the features that don’t help them to achieve their goals.

The Danger

It’s easy to get caught in the new features trap, in an effort to meet customer requests and expectations, especially in the early stages of building an app. Product development builds up a vision of an ideal product with feature lists adding up to several years of development, and the sales and marketing team sell based on promises of future features. This leads to a never-end cycle of new feature development and an ever fatter, heavier, slower product.

Just say no

Have you noticed how simple most of the leading web and mobile apps are? They tend to do one thing and do it really well. They do it so well that their customers pay them money for their product as it is, without the conditional “I’ll buy it, if it can do this as well.”

“How is this possible?” you may ask…”My customers all want to do things a different way”… Here’s how: By listening to what is behind the customer’s request and thinking positively about your current feature set. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have, show your customers and prospects how your app currently handles the task.

Note: If your app just can’t handle the task, is there a simple and universal solution you could tie in to your current feature set, in a day or less, to give them what they need?

Any questions? Feel free to contact us.
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