Let’s take a look at a typical product strategy mistake and how to avoid them:
Have you ever thought of an idea for a product and then procrastinated to an extent that the idea never saw the light of day? Once you get an idea of the product that you are going to roll out, don’t take too long to ponder. Sometimes waiting for too long a product is never realized and new competitors can gain an upper hand and release a product better than yours.
How do you avoid this issue?
Create a rapid prototype and release a MVP. You can then keep upgrading it to higher versions with the feedback you receive.
Although, one must remember that starting the development of a product without a clear plan could lead to a strategic pitfall.
Understanding Product Requirements
In order to map a project, it is imperative for the team to understand the product requirement rather than the customer requirement. The customer has an idea of the product that he/she wants to make but doesn’t necessarily understand what the product requires. The product requirement is of key importance because it’s the hero of the entire project. If you get that wrong, your product will not survive in this market for very long.
Also, have you ever come across a customer who talks about a product in the abstract and doesn’t really have any idea what goes in technically? You would be surprised but this does happen a lot! Most times customers do not know the latest developments and technical possibilities that can be used for the product.
How do you avoid this issue?
The marketing people try to understand the customer’s requirement and they pass it on to the Product Manager. While understanding the product requirement, the entire team should be present. The entire team with their different levels of expertise can contribute during the planning stage to ensure that the product is well-defined.
Product developers can also visualize what the product needs and the opportunities of the future. They are the ones that understand the target market and create products that solve a user’s problem.
It is necessary that the product that you introduce to the market solves a problem. Innovating a product for the sake of it or when there are other dozen products offering the same, doesn’t really add any value from the user’s perspective. It’s like offering a pack of chips in a different packet with no extra zing or flavour. Do you want your product to be competing with several other mediocre products? Of course not!
How do you avoid this issue?
Offering real value in your product is necessary. Also, engineers enjoy creating a product when there is a different technology involved so that they can learn and use it. If the engineers actually understand the kind of product that the customer wants to build, they can come up with breakthrough solutions and offer real value to a product.
You could come up with a great product but at the end it’s just doesn’t match up to the user’s expectation or worse, doesn’t solve any problem. For an organisation, the product can be like their baby, but for the target customer, it may be just another app in the market that doesn’t solve any real problem. So before you even begin drawing an outline for your product, the question that you must ask is that, “What is my user base?”
How do you avoid this issue?
It is most often recommended that there is a usability testing done with a few target customers. Their feedback will determine how the product will be perceived when it is rolled out in the market.
This activity is ideally postponed by most companies because the costing gets higher. Also, building a product only for usability testing disrupts the schedule/timelines set for the product to be completed. Instead, the use of prototypes could be a good idea to solve this problem. The users can get an idea of the product and also give the company feedback which can be added as improvements in the product.
Sometimes you might get so attached to the product that you would want to make it the “to go” product by adding every feature that you can imagine. Have you ever wondered the user’s reaction to several thousand features? Or have you ever imagined a complex UI? At times the product creators want to provide so many features in their products that it doesn’t solve the core problem of the user.
How do you avoid this issue?
Product creators need to focus on the benefit of the product that they are going to offer instead. By increasing the benefits of the product the end user can understand the problem that your product is solving. Sometimes the product message is so complex that the target customers leave disinterested. A good product that offers benefits is the one where the target customer understands the product in less than a minute.
Building a good product is not enough in today’s times that has every new product coming up solving the same problem. Thinking about how this business model needs to thrive in the competitive world is of utmost importance. You can’t make a product that is independent of a good business model.
How do you avoid this issue?
The key is to focus on a good business model that aligns with the company’s business model. The company needs to be able to sell the product in the market and get the response that they are hoping for.
After launching the product, you may see that the end users are giving good reviews; there are a couple of user estimates download met; the product installs correctly and there are big checks that are coming along but this doesn’t mean that you have a hit product on your hand.
How do you avoid this issue?
Once the product is launched, the success of the product depends on how it copes-up with the competition in the market and keeps reinventing itself. The user shouldn’t get bored or distracted and uninstall it. There should be a team that continuously strives to reinvent the product as per the current trends in the market.
Conclusion
While carrying out all the above steps might be the best recipe for the market success but it does give the product a greater chance to be successful. The team is yet another factor that can make or break the product. Now, that you know the strategy, isn’t it time to introduce your product in the market?
