Simplicity And Laser Focus Will Win Every Time
In response to Mike's very thoughtful comment: I don't agree that the fewer the features, the less your differentation. Differentiation is not established on the basis of broad feature sets, it is established on the basis of one or two really great features. Great software products need something they can hang their hat on. Whenever I hear a pitch or a presentation that tells me about 50 really cool features, I always ask, what's the one killer feature that people will remember you for?
There are a zillion tools that compete with blogger, but blogger's differentiation was that they got one basic feature right (creating and publishing a blog), rather than a thousand little features right. There are lots of tools that are more feature-rich than blogger, but blogger still wins because of its sheer simplicity. I argue that simplicity and laser focus will always win out over diversity and breadth of features. That is why a startup can still take on and beat a big company in a race where the startup seems unlikley to win.
There are a zillion tools that compete with blogger, but blogger's differentiation was that they got one basic feature right (creating and publishing a blog), rather than a thousand little features right. There are lots of tools that are more feature-rich than blogger, but blogger still wins because of its sheer simplicity. I argue that simplicity and laser focus will always win out over diversity and breadth of features. That is why a startup can still take on and beat a big company in a race where the startup seems unlikley to win.
2 Comments:
It all comes down to a simple question: "Does this product make my life better?"
We make decisions in a flash, not via RFP. A product that does one thing extremely well, and is easy to adopt, will almost always succeed.
I agree with Dave. Differentiation should not be a result of the ammount of features, but the quality with which they are exposed.
I have found that products with great quality (simplicity and elegance) leave me with a better user experience feeling than those that are filled with features.
Blogger, like you said, is a perfect example. There are myriad blog engines on the web, but probably none of those have matched blogger's ease of use. And, at the end of the day, the standard user will tell you that blogger "is great." Most of them are not sure why, but they have the feeling that it is great. Why? Because on a few easy steps they could build their own blogs, while other engines, that do offer far more features, require you to learn their own navigation paths.
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