*Websites are digital products, too.
So you’ve got a great idea for a new digital product. Maybe it’s a new platform, a website redesign, or an app. Give yourself the best shot at success by asking the four questions below.
Are you listening to users?
From initial concept to design execution, your product’s users are its most important stakeholders. To start, confirm that you’re building something they truly need, and then invite them into the design process—you’ll have a better product for it.
But how exactly do you do that?
In the concept phase, you should talk to members of your target audiences, observing them as they use existing products or tackle the problems your product will solve. The more familiar you are with their needs, the better your solution will be.
As you move to design, get feedback on your progress, and do it early and often. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are two methods we like to use to validate our designs with users:
- Site tour tests—ask users to give you a tour of your prototype (or even a sketch on paper). Yes, it can be painful. Resist the urge to help.
- Single-click tests—show someone a sketch or prototype screen and ask where they would click first to complete a specific task.
This is just the tip of the user-research iceberg. For much, much more, check out this fantastic new book from Tomer Sharon.
What’s your product roadmap?
Now you have a hypothesis of what features your users need. But what features didn’t make the cut, due to time or budget? How will your site evolve after launch? And who owns the roadmap—with the power to decide which features to prioritize and which to kill?
Whenever possible, we recommend launching with a minimum viable product (MVP), so you don’t invest all of your resources into features before you know whether they’ll be used and how they’ll be used. Queued up immediately behind that MVP should be a plan to steadily evaluate, update, and launch features based on what you’re learning and how your business is evolving.
And you should empower a single person—not a committee—to synthesize learnings from user behavior as well as feature requests from different internal teams into a prioritized roadmap. (For the NGO folks out there, Sam Dorman and Chris Zezza have some excellent guidance on building out product-focused teams).
Are you building for iteration?
One thing is certain: your product must change and evolve, beginning almost immediately after launch (or after that post-launch recovery beach vacation). Technology changes, your business changes, and user needs and contexts change. Several new devices have launched since you started reading this post.
Embrace the chaos and plan for it. Accept that your product won’t live in a vacuum and, while it may be (almost) perfect on launch day, it won’t be perfect in a year. This means your technology stack should be supported by a broad community of developers; don’t build on a custom content management system that only one person—or only one company—can adapt. Your design system should be flexible for new formats, new navigation, and new types of content. It should be easy to train new employees to write, design, and code for your product.
One great way to ensure that you’re building for the future is to include designers, developers, and executives in product roadmap conversations. Give them a rundown of user research. Ask them what they think will be happening in two years. None of us know for sure, but everyone’s best guess will be different. Then your product manager makes a call on which future to plan for.
How will you know if it’s working?
One way or another, your users are going to tell you where you’ve screwed up. The question is how. To make sure you hear them, plan to measure things that matter and design pathways for users to give you a steady stream of feedback. If you don’t monitor and respond, your users will tell you what they think by leaving and not coming back.
Start on the right foot by aligning KPIs (key performance indicators) with your goals and your roadmap. Agree with internal teams on what data and feedback you need to understand what’s working (or not) for your users and your business—and why it’s working. These are actionable metrics, which actually guide you toward a decision.
You should also build regular feedback into your roadmap and workflow. Conduct intercept surveys, those annoying pop-ups you see on sites and apps. They’re actually an excellent way to learn about users while they’re in the mindset of actually getting something done. And, finally, you should conduct usability testing. There’s no substitute for watching a real human use your product, and it doesn’t need to be hard or expensive; just ask Steve Krug.
Of course, these aren’t the only four questions you’ll ask as you plan and build your digital product. But the people who make the great products you use every day are asking some version of these four questions over and over again. Some of your prototypes and experiments might fail (sorry!), but at least you’ll know why, and you’ll have a solid plan for where to grow.