Product Advice: How We Build, Common Challenges and Top Tips.

You’ve identified a problem and have an idea for a product. Where do you start??

In this newsletter, Pippa (one of our Senior Product Managers) and I have provided a rough step-by-step guide to building a digital product and offer some advice on what to do when building it.

Of course, this varies depending on the product built, so take it with a pinch of salt, but it gives an idea of the process and some considerations.?

A step-by-step of building a product???

First Step: Assess the Problem

Before building a product, you need to consider whether the problem is significant enough to solve.?

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is this actually a problem?
• Do enough people have this problem and is it enough to make this product viable?
• Could this generate monthly returns?
• Are you talking or testing with users?
• How difficult is the problem for them?
• How often do they run into this issue?
• Are they willing to pay for a solution?
• Who else in the market is doing this?
• How are they doing it?
• Why are they doing it that way?
• What are they offering?

If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you need to conduct user interviews.?

We all think we're the expert in the problem we're trying to solve either because we experience it ourselves or because we've spent a long time thinking about a solution.? But we need to take a step back and realise whilst we may be a customer, we're only one customer.? 98% of the time the solution we start with isn't the solution that ends up resonating with users, so we need to take a step back and listen to the people who experience the problem we're trying to solve every day. Nearly every single assumption the founders we work with have about their solution and customers is wrong in some way.?

Without a deep understanding of your user's frustrations, it's impossible to build something that they'd want to use, let alone buy.

Second Step: User Interviews

A lot of founders are intimidated by user interviews. They think they are bothering the people they are speaking to or that it might even stop them from buying the eventual product. But, it’s important to remember, these people have a problem that you are trying to solve for them, they are much more likely to want to help, than not. If your problem is truly big enough, then people will feel enough frustration to want to help you fix it.?

A key way to approach user interviews is to:

• Keep it relaxed and casual- the interview doesn’t have to be hours long and a really intense environment.?
• Be really excited to learn about them- ask them about their lives, be truly interested and listen. Most people like talking about themselves.?
• Don’t talk, listen- ask them about the last time they did X (related to your solution) and then just listen. Keep them talking for around 30mins and you will find your answer.?
• Get them to complain- people love to moan too. Get them to talk about their frustration and the problem you are hoping to solve and (again) sit back and listen.?
• Ask and discuss how they are currently solving the problem (if they are). Some users use other tools in unconventional manners to get the job done, some build their own solution, some use an offline solution.? Learning how and why they've chosen how to solve/ease the frustration of their problem is invaluable.?

Once you’ve answered all of your questions and you’ve confirmed there is a place for a solution to your problem, you can start moving on to how you will solve this problem.?

Key thing to remember is it is still very early stages, so although you’ve answered these questions your conclusions still will change and you need to be continuously interviewing users.?

Third Step: Determine How to Solve the Problem

Next step is deciding how to solve the problem– this includes the product vision, roadmap and technology it’s built on.?

Typically, founders come to us with 1000 different features that they believe are essential. They will have gone through it in their heads, with friends and family and decided on their feature list– this is great and ambitious, but for the first build needs to be stripped back.?

Instead, you need to decide what is absolutely essential– the things that absolutely must be built to start testing with users and to solve the problem. When we’re talking simple, we mean the smallest possible thing you can give users to meet their needs. Then we test and descope (removing features/requirements) as needed.

Fourth Step: Test with Users

Again, we’re talking to users, but this time with a product idea laid out (not the product itself). We will have decided on the way we are going to solve the problem, so can ask users if this initial idea resonates with them.?

You can ask users if this product would solve their problem, or if not what could be improved and what else they would like to see. We follow the same key points from step two: keeping it casual, asking them a question, stepping back and listening.?

Wireframes are really useful for this as they are a visual clue (rather than just explaining the solution) and they are super simple, so users aren’t commenting on branding, just the functionality.?

You might want to A/B test your product to determine what works best.

Fifth Step: Tackle the Toughest Part First

We always advise starting with the most challenging part to build first. This involves identifying the most challenging and risky part of the product build and prioritising it at the beginning of the development process.

To tackle the toughest part first, the product team needs to identify what the biggest unknowns are (e.g. Is your solution technically feasible) how to test them, and how to assess them. This might involve conducting user research, prototyping, and testing different solutions to see what work best.

Once the toughest part has been addressed, the product team can move on to the easier parts of the build. This might involve using tools like Retool to build things faster and more efficiently, rather than starting from scratch.

By tackling the toughest part first, the product team can reduce the risk of failure, improve the quality of the product, and ensure that they are building the right thing. By prioritising the most challenging part of the product build, the product team can adapt and make changes as needed, ensuring that the product meets the needs of customers and is successful in the market.

You can add bells and whistles later.?

Sixth Step: Add Design, Branding and Analytics and Test?

To build out more of a picture of the final product, you can then add design (UX/UI) and branding to package the initial product in order to test with users.?

You don’t need to spend hours (and spend loads of ￡) on your branding, it will change over time (if you change your name, offering, or proposition), it’s just so that there are visuals to put in front of your user.?

The much more important thing to include is analytics, from the very start. You need to have data to understand what users like and don’t like, otherwise, you’ll be going off assumptions and assumptions are the killer of startups. Then test with users, see what they think, whether they’d use it, how they’d improve it etc. and keep a close eye on the? data to ensure the changes you're making are driving up usage/conversion/whatever you're tracking.?

Seventh Step: Continuously Test

Finally, as you build, test, iterate, build, test and iterate, you need to continuously test with users. You should never be building in a black box, your product should be consistently in front of your target audience.?

After launching, you need to prioritise testing with users to see which features are the most valuable and which ones they are willing to pay for.

Then you’ll find constant tweaks need to be made, until you build a product that reaches product market fit. Key thing to remember: testing with users never ends and making tweaks based on feedback is exactly the same.?

Product Advice:?

1. Test your assumptions before building - don't assume that you know what users want without talking to them.
2. Learn about analytics - it’s extremely important to understand what you're interested in knowing, rather than just gathering all data possible. Then set up using Mix Panel, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager.
3. Launch soon/early and be okay with it not being perfect.
4. Use Retool for faster building - things don’t need to be in your branding, and you don’t need to build your chat function; you can integrate WhatsApp for business.
5. Consider no-code/low-code options for MVP - you can teach yourself, and some might not scale, but it will get you off the ground and testing your assumptions.
6. Learn to “hack” stuff together - at first, you won’t be able to find all your tools in one place, so it will be spread over a couple of tools like Stripe for payments, Webflow, Typeform, or even manual spreadsheets.

Building a digital product is not easy, but following a step-by-step guide and considering the product advice can help you overcome common challenges and build a successful product.?

Remember to test your assumptions, learn about analytics, launch early, use retool for faster building, consider no-code/low-code options, and learn to "hack" stuff together.

– Pippa and Matt?