It’s nothing new. These discussions have been had before.
It’s true that potential new customers probably look at a feature list before evaluating. If your app doesn’t have the feature they need you won’t get the customer. You could also argue that anything that has a horrible experience probably isn’t going to pass the evaluation. Juggling these two priorities is always a difficult thing in software.
As a designer, I’m usually advocating on behalf of the user’s experience, which usually means I’m wanting to fix that thing we only half finished in the last release, rather than working on a brand new feature. Truth is, it really depends on the market…
If you’ve got a fairly new product and don’t have much competition, your users will probably forgive an average user experience because it’s not easy to go elsewhere. If you’re entering an existing market with tough competition you’re going to want your user experience to be the point of difference because it’s going to be very difficult for you to compete on features alone. That said, you need to make sure you’re providing something useful from the start.
Many product teams feel the need to continually add new features. Their mentality is that this is the thing that sells upgrades and wins new customers. Customers put in requests for these features and we feel the need to make them happy. Giving customers what they think they want is not always the best use of time and resources.
If you’re working on a product that’s been around for a while and has an extensive list of features, you’re probably struggling with an ever more complex UI. Your app probably does 90% of what 90% of your customers want it to. On the flipside, you’ll probably also find that 80% of your users only use 20% of your features. If you value those 80% of your customers you will concentrate on making those core features the best they can be before someone beats you to it!
When it’s all said and done, we need to consider:
- Are we providing maximum value to the customer?
- Is this value greater than the pain they experience using it?
- Can they go somewhere else for a better value to pain ratio?
Once you know these things you’ll be better equipped to make a decision on new feature vs UX improvements.