Your software is never really “done”. There will always be changes, improvements, and updates that need to be implemented because developing software is an ongoing . But while you always have the of creating the best possible for your in your mind, sometimes these fall flat and don’t hit their mark. They are always well-intentioned, but sometimes, you can misjudge what your users want or need.
We know that you just want to build the best for your , but how are you supposed to improve your when you don’t always know what your customers want or need the most? How can you be sure that what you’re building will be as impactful to your as possible? How do you make sure you are making the correct ? Let’s break down what a is (it’s more complex than you think) and review some to ensure that your changes result in overall improvements to your ’s experience.
What are ?
Sounds like a silly question, right? You’d think it’s really anything you add to your that ultimately improves your . And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but we actually need to be careful here for two reasons. One, improving your doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily added something to your . In fact, sometimes the biggest impact you can have is when you remove something from your . Second, we should define what an actually is. Is it something that leads to an increase in satisfaction? Is it an increase in the engagement, such as amount of times someone logs into your ? Is it an in the outcomes it creates for your users? Or is it something else entirely, like an increase in referrals, conversion rate, or sentiment?
An “” can be some, or all, of these things and is largely dependent on the kind of you have and ultimate goal of your . So really, a can include any change that affects the end and matches their needs in some capacity.
Benefits of
Incorporating into your to improve the or experience is a great way to show your users that you’re listening to them. Whether it’s through or bug reports, your users are constantly trying to communicate with you and instead of building an entirely , you can often update your to match their needs. Not only will you be satisfying your users, but you’ll be improving the of your .
Whether you’re removing that is no longer beneficial to your or you’re adding a that can provide an entire new to your , the overall of your will improve as you incorporate (hence the term !)
How to Improve the Q of a P
Alright, so we got the definition of a set. But how do you actually implement an ? Essentially, there are three common to do this; you can add a brand , you can improve that already exists in your today, or you can remove a that no longer provides value to your users.
Add a
Adding a to your can be a great for your , but it can be risky. You spent a bunch of time and resources planning roadmaps, building frameworks, designing the , pushing it out, the everywhere- and then it’s a total dud. Your users don’t find value in it, or it’s too complicated for them to figure out, or it’s not housed in the right area of your and is hard to find. Best case scenario? It’s just not an for your users. Worst case scenario? It actually has a negative impact on your ’s experience and could potentially cause churn.
But if you add a that aligns with what people need and will actually use, then the can re-engage your users and even attract new users, since you’ll be adding value to your . By creating a slam-dunk , you can address real pain points for your users and improve their overall experience with your , ensuring that they are a loyal and happy .
Improve
There are generally three ways of improving an existing feature:
- Intentional Improvements—this is when you make improvements because you know how and why your customers are getting value out of the existing feature. The goal is to only make the improvements that you know are going to be appreciated by your customers.
- Frequency Improvements—this is for features that aren’t regularly used by your customers, but that you believe can become a daily feature and add a lot of value with the right tweaks.
- Adoption Improvements—this is when you have a feature that’s not being used by a portion of your customer base, but there are some obvious integrations or features that could be added to allow for easier product adoption and use. If your customers have said “I’ll use this when I can…” it’s likely an adoption improvement.
While improving an existing may seem less risky than creating something entirely brand new, this can actually be even more risky. If there is an aspect of your that your users love and your completely changes the way it works or even looks, you can totally disrupt a ’s experience.
We here at Parlor call this expectation debt – your users come to expect your to work and look a certain way, and it can ruin their love for your if your completely changes that, regardless of if this change would eventually make their overall experience better.
But, if you can take a facet of your that was underperforming and revamp it, this can be a more cost-effective and typically faster method of adding value to your than implementing something new. This could include even just educating a about an existing in your that they might not have known about. Not only can you re-engage existing customers this way, but it can be a great way to snag new users by showing that you’ve added value to your .
Remove a
It’s important to note that an to your is not always additive in nature. The ultimate goal is to curate the best possible experience for your users, and that doesn’t always mean adding or improving features. Sometimes, removing that no longer resonates to your users or is distracting to them can add even more value to their experience than adding something new.
By removing weaker features or , you ensure that the average of your is of a higher level. Plus, it can be incredibly costly to maintain old features – the initial cost to build a only accounts for a third of the long term cost of maintaining those features. By improving your through removal of old , you’re not only improving the experience for your users but you’re saving your precious time and money.
5 Steps to Improve Your P with a N
So if you’ve decided on introducing a new feature, there are a few things you can do to ensure that the process goes well for your customers.
1. Identify gaps in your
Obviously, to be able to improve a certain , you need to find the features that need . There are several different you can go about doing this. Brainstorming with your , reviewing your usage analytics, gathering feedback from your stakeholders, or comparing your to your competition are all valid , however we think the best way to find gaps in your is to speak with the people who actually use your ; your users.
By directly engaging with your users on a regular basis, you will get the most relevant feedback and the best of what needs updating within your , because they’re the ones who would be benefiting from your . They’ll have the best of what actually works and what doesn’t, so they can give you into what needs to be improved.
2. Validate your ideas before committing
Validating all the you’re thinking of working on before committing any time or money to the project is incredibly helpful. Never again will you waste resources building something that might be helpful to your users.
You can validate your ideas through a couple of different means. For , sending out a survey to your users to collect feedback about potential would give you a good grasp on how your users feel. Or you can preview a of this and ask your users how they feel about the design or the usability of the .
3. Teach customers how to use the new feature
You can’t just throw a new feature into the wild and expect people to immediately know how to use it. Giving your users guidance on how to work the new feature is not only extremely helpful for the user, but also is a great way to engage with them and get them properly using the new feature. Through webinars, e-books, videos, or FAQ sheets, you can teach your users how to take full advantage of new features and give them helpful tips and tricks.
If you’ve added value to your product, people need to know about it. Whether you just revamped a few parts of your product or added entirely new features, product improvements can be a chance to make a splash in the market. By communicating through social channels, press releases, or blog posts, you can attract new customers, re-engage existing customers, or even just get your name out there to people who may not have known who you were before. People who may just become customers one day.
4. Build anticipation before launch
Get people excited about what you built! Before you launch, spread the word that you’ve got some exciting improvements coming around. Not only will this get your existing users excited about testing out new features or functionality within your product, but you can also attract new users if you’ve added something that makes your product applicable to them. Share it on your social media, write a blog post about it, share it as an announcement within your app – market this exciting update everywhere to capture as much attention as possible.
5. Track engagement and collect ongoing feedback
So you’ve launched your product improvements and you got some good momentum from it. Now what? You can’t just stop there. Collecting feedback is an on-going cycle, and you need to continue listening to what your users are asking for and continue improving your product. Sending out a post-sentiment survey about a new feature or just asking your users if they have explored the updates yet in an in-app notification can be a good starting point in continuing to collect user feedback.
5 Steps for P I with an E
As we’ve mentioned before, simply adding new features doesn’t always add the most value for your customers. So how do you look at your existing features to find out what can be improved? Here are five quick tips.
1. Analyze and identify weak features
You can’t update every single in your every single time you want to make an . When deciding which features to update, you need to find a way to separate the features that users really value from the ones they don’t. The best way to do this is to analyze the data of your ; which features are people using the most? Which features are people using the least? How often are people using each ? You need to identify who is using which products and take that into account.
While each of these data points can give you key information, you have to take raw data with a grain of salt; if only a handful of people are using a certain , but those handful of people happen to be your highest paying customers, you’re probably not likely to remove or change that . An analytics tool can give you that basic data, but it’s up to you and your to take a deeper dive into the numbers and gather more information.
2. Understand and identify the important areas of
Once you’ve identified your weaker features, you need to understand why they’re weak; why they aren’t providing as much value as they could. Is this causing friction for your users? Is it missing that would make it more useful? Are there just general usability issues? Engaging with your users to find out how they’re currently using this and what they would like to see will help you identify the important areas of and can help to point you in the right direction. You can even use this time to bounce potential ideas off of them and see what they think about your solutions.
Once you go about identifying your weak features and finding the appropriate solution, you can then go about executing the .
3. Cut the features that don’t resonate and won’t even if you made an
Sometimes, you’ll come across and features in your that just don’t hit right with your customers. No matter how much time, money, or resources you pour into it, it just doesn’t resonate with your customers – they don’t find value in it, they don’t care about it, they just don’t use it. At this point, it’s way more effective to cut the or loose.
We get it; it can be painful to let go of an aspect of your that you put so much effort into and can feel counterintuitive to think about improving your by taking away . But sometimes the amount of value you gain from removing the facet altogether can outweigh the effort of maintaining it.
4. Analyze and measure the response to your
Once you’ve actually launched the , you need to check how it’s doing! Use a mixture of analytics for how the has performed and feedback from the users who have interacted with it to get a good grasp on the success of the . By using a good balance between analytics and feedback, you can make sure you’re getting actionable results that will help you in future developments.
5. Show customers how to use the improved
Make sure you’re engaging your users by giving them everything they need to fully understand how any new or improved works. Utilize all kinds of media (photos, videos, e-books, etc.) in order to teach users how to take full advantage of all improvements and give them a step-by-step guide so that they never feel discouraged or confused.
3 P I Examples You Can Learn From
You may not have everything figured out, but neither did these companies (us included). Here are a few examples you can learn from as you build out your product.
Slack
In November 2019, Slack rolled out a that was met with … mixed reviews. Slack added a WYSIWYG text input and people were not happy with it, to say the least. While this is a great of a well-intentioned falling flat, Slack responded in the best way possible. As soon as they heard the feedback from their users, they began working hard to fix the issues their users were having. They quickly created an option to hide the WYSIWYG bar if a wanted to and that seemed to satisfy most people, showing that you can improve a not just by adding new but by responding to pushback.
Snapchat
If you regularly use Snapchat, then you’ll remember the major drama surrounding the redesign of the app back in 2018. Snapchat completely reorganized the design, look, and orientation of their app, and was met with a petition with 1.2 million signatures to change it back. This is another of a gone wrong, however the difference between this and the Slack is the response to the dissatisfaction. Snapchat doubled down on their redesign, and didn’t offer an option to revert to the old format, and so users had to just get used to the new layout. While the complaints eventually died down, and Snapchat continues to be one of the most popular social apps, Snapchat could have done a better job of listening to their users and incorporating their feedback.
Parlor
We here at Parlor are not immune to this type of issue. Our used to have a where you could have different versions of a preview and you could send out to users and test them out against each other. However, it was just way too complex, and at the end of the day, no one used it enough; no one was working on multiple versions of the same preview at the same time anyway. So we decided to remove the entirely. By removing an aspect of our , we dramatically simplified and streamlined the preview section of our
Conclusion
Keep striving for continuous product improvement. By focusing on collaborating with your users to collect feedback on what to improve, you know you’re going to be making the most impactful changes possible because you’re working with the people who will be impacted the most.
At the end of the day, you should always be continually adding or improving features and removing underperforming . The outcome of this balance is a constant of your , however you decide to define “ ”.
