Launching a new product is an exciting milestone, but it also comes with a lot of feedback, bugs, and requests from users, stakeholders, and competitors. How do you decide what to improve first and what to postpone or ignore? In this article, you will learn some effective ways to prioritize product improvements after launch based on your goals, resources, and data.
Before you dive into the details of each improvement, you should first revisit your product vision and strategy. What is the core value proposition of your product? Who are your target customers and what are their needs and pain points? How does your product differentiate from the alternatives and what are your competitive advantages? These questions will help you filter out the improvements that are not aligned with your vision or that might dilute your focus.
In our effort to enhance our private label H&B product range, revisiting our product vision and strategy is essential. We're currently focused on improving our health and beauty product line, committed to delivering high-quality, health-conscious products that enhance well-being and beauty. Our target customers seek natural, wellness-focused products. What sets us apart is our dedication to premium, health-conscious ingredients and a diverse range of wellness and beauty offerings. This ensures every enhancement aligns with our values, serves our customer base, and reinforces our competitive edge, all while keeping our focus on health and beauty products.
Post-launch product improvements can be effectively gathered by using online feedback forms for end-user input. A dedicated committee should review and consolidate the user feedback, using it to guide backlog prioritization. This ensures that improvements focus on real user needs and make the most impact while mitigating ad-hoc reactive build roadmap changes
A prioritization framework is a tool that helps you rank the improvements based on some criteria, such as impact, effort, urgency, and risk. There are many frameworks to choose from, such as the RICE score, the MoSCoW method, the Kano model, or the Eisenhower matrix. You can also create your own framework based on your specific context and goals. The key is to use a consistent and transparent approach that allows you to compare the improvements objectively and communicate your decisions clearly.
Sometimes we have to use 2 methods of prioritisation together in scenarios where a set of requirements fall under same priority and team doesn’t have bandwidth to execute them in same sprint. E.g. Further prioritising backlog items using Kano method which are already prioritised using MoSCoW having priority “Should Have”.
Another way to prioritize product improvements is to use data and feedback from various sources, such as analytics, surveys, interviews, reviews, or tests. Data and feedback can help you measure the performance of your product, identify the problems and opportunities, and understand the preferences and expectations of your users. However, you should also be careful not to rely solely on data and feedback, as they might not reflect the whole picture or the future trends. You should also use your intuition and judgment to balance the quantitative and qualitative inputs.
I've found Rahul Vohra's product market fit engine to be a good way of improving products. It's based on the Sean Ellis test but expands with the questions - What type of people do you think would most benefit from [product]? - What is the main benefit you receive from [product]? - How can we improve [product] for you? Use the replies from the Sean Ellis test to segment responses. This will give you an idea of what's important to users who'd be "very disappointed" as well as those who'd be "somewhat disappointed". Focusing on the "somewhat disappointed" cohort will help create more fans/power users over time. Focusing on the "very disappointed" cohort will make your fans/power users more invested in the product and build defensibility.
Sometimes, the improvements are not independent from each other, but rather depend on or affect other features, systems, or processes. For example, an improvement might require a technical upgrade, a design change, or a legal compliance. In these cases, you should consider the dependencies and trade-offs involved in implementing the improvement. How will it impact the timeline, budget, quality, or scope of your product? How will it affect the other improvements or the existing functionality? How will it influence the user experience or the stakeholder satisfaction?
Prioritizing product improvements is not a one-time activity, but a continuous process that requires regular review and adjustment. As your product evolves, you will receive new feedback, data, and requests that might change your priorities. You will also learn from your experiments, tests, and launches that might validate or invalidate your assumptions. Therefore, you should review and adjust your priorities frequently, based on the latest information and insights. You should also communicate your priorities and progress to your team, users, and stakeholders, and collect their feedback and input.
Listen to cross-functional team members to ensure diverse perspectives! Always be ready to pivot or re-prioritize based on new insights. Balance is key: constant changes can derail progress, yet being rigid leads to missed opportunities or wasted efforts. Set frequent, structured check-ins to assess your progress against the goals. In these reviews, analyze user feedback you acquired, market trends and product performance.