Why Founders Waste Time on Features Users Don’t Need And How to Fix It

If you are a founder, you would agree that the first product you envisioned and built is extra special. It is the product that you built with the most passion, and it is the product that gifted you valuable lessons on what to do and what not to do. And yet, regardless of your experience, building a product is hard and making it profitable is harder still. You can have the passion and determination to create a flawless product and still go wrong somewhere along the way. Ultimately, you will end up with a product with unwanted features that does not satisfy your target audience.

Through this blog, we attempt to break down the mistakes that most founders make when building their product. Our objective is to help you avoid them. Alternatively, if you have already unwittingly made any of these mistakes, we will help you fix them. 

Where Founders Go Wrong

Most founders start out with a rough plan of how their final product should look. However, somewhere along the way, this plan goes awry. This can happen in a few different ways. Let’s see where exactly founders go wrong on their journey to their final product.

1. Too Many Features

Each digital product starts with a dream, a vision. However, dreams don’t have limits, do they? The product of your dreams might have too many features, too many capabilities, and too many pain points to solve. This makes the app too vast, too feature-overloaded. This is called the feature trap. Many founders fall into this trap where they are tempted to cram more and more features into the product. Eventually, the product loses its focus and purpose and takes on a form that is much different from what was initially envisioned.  

But here is the truth – you cannot solve all your customers’ problems. What you need to do is focus on a single pain point and then attempt to solve it with your product. Too many features can lead to clutter and bloat. In other words, your product will end up doing a lot of things poorly instead of doing one thing perfectly. 

Consequences – 

• High development time and cost
• Users get overwhelmed
• Diluted value proposition
• Slower time to market

2. Too Few Features

Sometimes, the opposite of the feature trap happens. Founders take the ‘lean startup methodology’ too far and end up cutting down too much. This leaves the product with too few features. A product with too few features may not even be usable. After all, you are building a Minimum Viable Product. The keyword here is ‘viable’. Your product has to work without a hitch. Moreover, it has to be complete and not a broken piece of a whole.

Consequences – 

• Lack of product-market fit
• Negative first impressions
• Users don’t see enough value
• High churn rate

3. Wrong Features

Sometimes it’s not about too many or too few features. Sometimes the features are just wrong. You might assume that the features you have envisioned are useful for your target audience. However, without customer validation, there is a high chance that this assumption is wrong. You might end up adding an obsolete feature to your product. Your users might not find this appealing and would eventually shun it. 

Consequences – 

• Burned budget 
• Misaligned product direction
• Unsatisfied users
• Lost opportunities

Have You Already Made Any of These Mistakes?

If you have already built your product, here are a few ways to identify if you have added the wrong set of features:

1. Low User Engagement

If users are not consistently engaging with your product, something is wrong with your feature prioritization.

2. Long Onboarding Time

It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to understand your product. So, if you have noticed longer onboarding times, it means that your product is too complex.

3. Unexpected Feedback 

Your users might keep asking for features that you considered secondary. This unexpected feedback is another sign that you might have prioritized wrong. 

4. Feature Abandonment

If your users are abandoning many of your features, it means that you have built too many features, or you might have built the wrong features. This issue mainly stems from poor startup resource management.

5. Development Team Burnout

If your development team is facing burnout, there is a high chance that you might be cramming features. This means that your team spends too much time maintaining unnecessary features. This will affect their turnaround time, and new updates will take forever to release.

How to Fix It?

If you have identified any of the above signs that your feature prioritization has gone awry, you can still fix it. Let’s see how:

1. Go back to the pain point you sought to solve with your product. Have you managed to solve it? If the answer is no, then find out where you went astray. 
2. Conduct usability testing and observe how your users interact with your product. Note things like what they skip, what keeps them hooked, and where they get stuck. Once you have identified these, take steps to modify your product accordingly.
3. Make maximum use of analytics tools like Mixpanel, Hotjar, and GA. Use them to see how your users interact with the features of your product. Also, note what they ignore/skip. Then, enhance and trim your product accordingly.
4. Cut any unused features from your product. Unravel complex steps and features in favor of a simplified flow. 
5. If none of your main features are clicking with the users, there is a chance that your product needs a pivot. For instance, your users might be more hooked by a secondary feature than the main features. In this case, reanalyse your value proposition and pivot. Many successful products today are the result of bold and daring pivots.

Step-By-Step Guide to Feature Prioritization

If you are just starting to build your product, you have the chance to get everything right from the very beginning. For this, you need to have a clear startup product strategy in place. Here’s a step-by-step guide to light your path:

• Start with the Problem/Pain Point

Your product is the solution to a problem your target audience is facing. Therefore, the very first thing you need to do is outline that problem clearly. Start with user research for startups and validate the existence of this problem. You should also determine that a sizable number of people are facing the problem you outlined.

• Market Research

The next thing to do is market research. Analyze how well your proposed product will solve the problem. Calculate the market size and identify your target audience. Competitor research must also be carried out to determine that the solution you are offering is not already available in the market. You can also create rough buyer personas through this research.

• List the Core Functionalities

Now, you need to zero in on the core functionalities. This is one of the most important founder product decisions that can make or break your product. Create a checklist of all the features you would like your MVP to have. Now classify them into ‘must-have’, ‘should-have’, and ‘nice-to-have’ categories depending upon their priority. Your MVP should incorporate only the first category of functionalities. The second category can be applied in a later iteration if there is a need for it based on customer feedback.

• Use Prioritization Models

Use prioritization frameworks to choose what features should go in your MVP. Here are a few prioritization models:

• User Story Mapping
• Feature Priority Matrix
• Eisenhower Matrix
• Impact-Effort Matrix
• MoSCoW Method
• Kano Model

• Iterate & Learn

The work is not over when you launch your product. Take feedback from the users and iterate accordingly. Your product will not be perfect from the get-go. That perfection is gradually attained from multiple iterations. This step is the cornerstone of the lean startup methodology. 

Conclusion

Building the perfect product is no trivial feat. It is a result of focus and smart decision-making. From feature prioritization to avoiding common mistakes, multiple aspects will shape the destiny of your product. So, no matter if you are just starting out or fixing an existing product, it is always advisable to exercise caution and, when in doubt, come back to the user and the problem that you initially set out to solve. This will help you avoid costly mistakes, negative first impressions, high churn rates, long development cycles, and delayed launches. Ultimately, this will let you craft a product that actually works for your users.

Because in the end, it’s not about building more, it’s about building what matters.