Your app needs customers. To get customers, you need to convince non-customers to change—from a competitor’s product or from using nothing.
Electrons racing through a conductive material will change to the path of least resistance—the most efficient path. There are no decisions to be made. There are no emotional bonds to be broken. There is no effort required. This is instant, logical, perfect optimisation.
Humans are not rational nor perfect. Humans hate change. Change is risky. Change is scary. And it’s hard work.
On a daily basis I use apps like Gmail, Basecamp, Highrise, Campfire, Xero, Tumblr, Wordpress… I see room for improvement everywhere. And it’s just too tempting to think, for example: “I could build the Gmail killer… I know what I’d fix.” And you might build that app that actually is better. “Better” as is in, you can prove it’s better: faster, easier to use, more enjoyable to use, facilitating more productivity. But it’ll still flop if it’s not ten times better than Gmail.
Gmail was ten times better than Hotmail, Yahoo, and webmail and POP / SMTP solutions. It had a fast web app, much more storage, threaded mails, amazing search, support for your own domain, the “archive” paradigm, and so on. It really was ten times better! Anything less wouldn’t have convinced people to take the pain in the ass that moving mail providers / clients entails. Because marginal improvements just won’t cut it.
Humans do not lead—nor do they want to lead—optimal lives. All of us are stumbling through our days happily making compromises at every decision: paying that little bit extra for our lunch that’s a little less healthier than if we got it in that sushi place, that when we do visit takes a little longer to get to, and so on. Humans are trade-off machines, and that’s what makes them beautiful and different and interesting. And so even if they know that your app is better, they’ll happily use a lesser product if it means they can avoid the hassle, risk and fear of changing—and get on with their fantastically imperfect lives.
I first heard this “ten times” idea from Seth Godin and I can’t recommend strongly enough that you take it seriously when embarking on a new business venture.
9 Comments
Super article, so very accurate!
Posted by Chris M at 12:47 am on 20 April, 2010.
This seems to be the opposite of 37 signals philosophy “Underdo your competition” http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Build_Less.php
Posted by John Turner at 1:32 am on 20 April, 2010.
10 times better maybe for something big like email. Through to get people to switch to a different video site they’d think nothing of it.
Think depends on what you are serving
Posted by steve at 1:39 am on 20 April, 2010.
@John: Don’t think that 10 times better does necessarily mean more features, bells & whistles and thus is not contradictory with the 37 signals philosophy. It’s a matter of correctly defining “better”.
Posted by Joe Buhler at 2:06 am on 20 April, 2010.
I agree with Joe on this. There are apps that do a lot of things badly and some that do one thing really well. I think the 37signals philosophy is about doing something really really well and not worrying about the other stuff. As technologists it’s sometimes easier to say “Oh heck, just add the feature.” without actually considering the impact that can have on usability. I’m a big believer in focusing on what you do best and partnering/integrating with other products that do what they do best.
Posted by Stephen Joyce at 3:21 am on 20 April, 2010.
Absolutely loved this and a lot of the other content on your blog. Very true. Thanks and keep up the good work, you’ve got a new dedicated reader.
Posted by Ross Hudgens at 6:46 am on 20 April, 2010.
Totally agreed.
95% of users ‘Satisficing’ their way through the internet.
Posted by Michael FitzGerald at 2:44 pm on 20 April, 2010.
“10 times better” is not “more features.” The search in GMail is what made me switch. It is more than 10 times better than Outlook/Hotmail/Yahoo! et al. It didn’t need threading or… actually I can’t tell you of any other GMail killer features. Search did it. One blindingly better feature and everything else worked fine.
You’ll probably have a harder time competing with 10 features that are a bit better than the competition than if you had one feature that was 10 times better than the competition.
Posted by Paul M. Watson at 2:46 pm on 20 April, 2010.
This is the reason why I have no interest in an HDTV, or a Blu-Ray player. Sure, they’re better than a TV and DVD player, but it’s such a marginal difference I can’t be bothered. DVD was 100 times better than VHS, it was a no brainer to switch.
And I agree; defining ‘better’ is the critical part in this. Better almost never just means more features, to me it’s the user experience that’s much more important; will I go from hating using this thing to loving using the thing? The iPhone had fewer features on launch than a Blackberry, but it did each of the features 10 times better. We all know how that turned out.
Posted by Dave at 6:54 am on 21 April, 2010.