Stop building products for perfection. Try this instead.

Whether you are building a product from scratch or revamping an existing one, one advice I have is to never build for perfection. 

It took me a while to change my attitude towards building the best products & successful products. We often build to perfection. Here’s what’s wrong with that approach. 

Perfection is a never-ending process. It is not a destination for you to arrive. It is a process to follow. So when you intend to build for perfection, what you end up doing is, build forever. There’s nothing wrong with aiming high. The problem is in aiming for perfection.

The other problem with perfection is that it is different for everyone. What is perfect for you, may not be perfect for someone else. So if you build for perfection, it is only you who will be happy about it. You have got to define certain metrics before you build any product.

So what do you build? MVP? Lean startup sort of something?

Sure. You can call it an MVP or Lean or something in those lines. You can also build for success. 

Now, what on Earth does building for success mean? 

It means building to achieve certain goals. Let’s assume you are building a massive revamp of your existing product. Good for you. But why are you revamping that? If you don’t know why. It doesn’t matter what you build, does it? 

You need to find out why you are building that revamped version. Define a few key metrics and build to achieve those key metrics. It goes without saying that you should try to keep those metrics as small and as few as possible. Having metrics forces you to question every decision you take. Here’s an example. 

Metric: We want to revamp user-flow to increase signups by 20%.

Questions to ask: Do we need users to create a profile to achieve that metric? Sure we do.

Questions to ask: Do we need a progress bar? It’s good to have. It can motivate the user to continue.

Questions to ask: Do we need email as well as phone numbers? Maybe not. One of the two which is verified should be sufficient to ensure the user is authentic. Or verification can be completely waived based on your use case and can be introduced at a later more relevant stage.

And the list can go on. If at any time you come across an opinion that does not answer to getting closer to your metric, don’t break your head around it. Let your team take care of it. It goes without saying that you should be wary of hygiene issues. 

So, what are you building today?