What are the most important features that customers look for in your product?

Common features that are often valued across various products: Customers seek products that are well-made,durable The product should be user-friendly, with intuitive design The product should function as advertised consistently over time The cost of the product should align with its value proposition The product should have the features that meet customers’ needs Post-purchase support is crucial The product should have an appealing design and aesthetics The ability to customize the product to fit individual needs/preferences The product should easily integrate with other products or systems Eco-friendly products that are sustainably sourced,produced are increasingly Customers often look for products that offer innovative solutions

In my experience the best way to start empathizing with a customer was to become one yourself. Market leaders spend a significant amount of effort nudging their employees to use their own products, such as organizing field trips or distributing discount vouchers for friends and family. Another highly effective tactic is introducing a customer support rotation for all employees, from CEO to an engineer. Spending a day in the shoes of your frontline agents means not only an opportunity to hear about the most problematic aspects of your products, but also an opportunity to establish a better connection with this team and help them improve their processes and better prepare for some particularly difficult cases.

Building a feature and launching it to the market is very expensive, so idea validation is best done without writing any code at all. One should also beware of the pitfalls of the most intuitive validation method - a painter door test. Painted door - a mock of a feature is added to the live version of the product, however any attempt to interact with it redirects the user to a wait list. This method gives a good approximation only for the initial interest in the feature, reflecting more on it's entry point placement and the visual appeal, rather than on usability and value. This method also erodes the trust of your user base, since it does not deliver on the user expectations.

Step zero in using any of the prioritization frameworks is picking the metric, which will be represented by the "Impact"/"Value"/"Return" axis. A feature that is good for Revenue might score weak on Session Length. A feature that targets Conversion Rate might be detrimental to your Second Week Retention. Picking the right metric for the right team and making sure all of them fit together into your company's revenue generating formula cannot be overlooked.

Before launching a single real experiment - build a sanity check experiment. Separate all your users into two or more randomly picked, but equal groups and compare the data that you collect from them. A well built tracking and experimenting solution should not report any significant difference in any of your product metrics for those. After you have complete trust in your tracking solution you can start experimenting. Whatever practice you pick, remember to log your assumption, hypothesis and outcomes carefully. Often user reception will depend on the smallest things possible such as the color of a button or font weight. Repeat your experiment a number of times with small changes to account for that and adjust your assumptions accordingly.

Customer feedback metrics need to be placed in the context of product feature telemetry - which screens were viewed, which buttons were pressed, session duration and the amount of sessions by a user. Users further need to be segmented into groups with differing usage patterns. Highly engaged users will have needs distinctive from mildly engaged users. Power users will have a different level of tolerance for your product shortcomings than causal users. Long time users will be using features that new users do not need and vice versa.

Quality that will differentiate the product among all other products. - Experience - Design - Added value - Functionality