What's Your Product Story?

If the ultimate goal of Product Development is to create and delight Customers - then successful Digital Products need to be attractive enough and desirable enough so that Customers willingly choose to use them and pay for them.

Take an inventory of the products you use in your life. 

Especially the Digital Products that you find either at your fingertips on your Smartphone, on your Tablet or on your Desktop. Hey - or on your watch, fridge, home, and I can go on. These days we can absolutely go on and on listing all the physical spaces where Digital Products can live. We’re literally surrounded and sure - at times, overwhelmed. In this great pool of Digital choices, where you can simply slide your finger on your screen or tap a little button to change a channel or look up a new app or visit a new website, Digital Products that win are the ones that capture our attention and capture it consistently and might I add - with anticipation.

Products Must Be Chosen

We look forward to using our favorite products. As I write this article, I have a lot of options available. But I somehow defer to Evernote whenever I can. I know, I know. The editor is honestly not the best. I hate it at times. It might not be the best product. But here’s the thing. The overall experience takes me back to the early days of using it and writing old stuff that I never ever published and is still - quite honestly - sitting right there in my old Evernote notebooks. I have an emotional connection to this product. It’s part of my past and as always, as humans, we tend to drag our past into our present and trickle it with atomic precision at times, right into the future.

When use Evernote I enter a world much as when I play with Lego blocks and I remember endless days and nights of playing with old broken pieces patched together from old sets. I can't think of Lego and not think of my brother and what we've been through.

Lego, like Evernote and like other products in my life, are part and parcel of personal stories full of meaning and emotion that mean the world to me.

Again, Evernote is not the best product. But it’s my note taking product. 

And I made a conscious choice of using it. 

That’s how choices work. We can debate the best product until we’re blue in the face. What matters is the one that gets chosen. Even if it’s not - on paper - the best of the best. 

This concept of Products Are Chosen is not only gutsy and real - it’s revolutionary. We don’t tend to think that way.

The Thing About Choices

We have this obsolete way of looking at choices, namely that they’re based on rational thinking. 

Well, science is more and more decisive on this point - choices are steeped in emotions. For better or worse. That’s just the reality of human nature. And that is highly relevant to our topic at hand, namely:

Successful Products Are The Ones That Are Chosen By Customers.

To get there, to that beautiful point where our products are indeed let’s say - the chosen ones (how could I resist) - let's probe further in our Product Mindset exploration this week and continue our journey by unpacking the psychology of choice.

Well, a tiny bit of unpacking at least.

The common way of looking at how customers choose a product is by iterating all its features and hopefully wow the customer and blow their mind with how many and how wonderful those features are. On paper it sounds amazing. And maybe that’s the problem. Because we take that as fact and we keep our paper (read: theoretical) fable alive - so alive, that we invest and invest and write and plan and code and replan and recode and design and test and … eventually fail. 

But what is it that people really want? 

What is it that drives human beings to decide - to ultimately take action?

How do we choose?

Bedtime Stories Repurposed

What do you remember from the last talk you’ve heard? Whether it was live, face to face or a Tedx talk on YouTube or a presentation, a training or whatever kind of talk you’ve listened to in the past week?

Do you remember the facts? The theory? The “good stuff” - the hardware of the presentation? The stuff that the presenter worked - oh so hard, and rightly so - on outlining, in an amazingly simple and yet powerful way?

Well, what you do remember, and what countless tests on human psychology demonstrate, is that a small and isolated part of our brain engages in facts and figures and speech overall.

That part, is not the part that triggers that ultimate decision of buying or using or adopting our products. 

What our brain, our entire being yarns for - every time we hear a talk, every time a friend invites us out for coffee and every time a Digital Product is vying for our attention is nothing else but good old fashion Stories.

Stories my friends, the same simple, almost childish, emotional, good-triumphs-evil-and-life-is-beautiful-again type of stories that we’ve all enjoyed as children. And we’ve all been deprived of as we grew into older grumpy, professional and story-starved adults.

What we all need and are willing to pay for - dearly - are stories that speak to us at an emotional level. So much so that we feel we belong in that world.

To choose is to choose a story. 

We do not buy what we buy for the sake of the things we buy.

Humans choose products that tell a story.

Humans need to belong to a narrative that attracts and imparts a vision of a better future. If you join our tribe - this tribe, the one of those using this product or that product - then you get a key to a world never been seen nor experienced. 

An amazing Digital Product is like a magical key that opens a world of anticipation and excitement worth paying for - month after month. Great products are keys to stories that engage our imagination and make us want to truly become better version of ourselves.

To choose such a product is to be handed a precious Golden Key to a world we’ve been starving for since childhood. A world where we literally gave up all hope of ever trailing those magical imaginary hills of fictional bliss - until - well until you get handed that key and you use it.

You choose it.

Tell The World Your Product Story - We're Starving To Hear It

Apple did it. Apple fans don’t choose iPhones because they are necessarily the best. But rather because Apple successfully narrated the idea that “you think different if you use Apple products”. Ie. you’re special. 

Nike did it. Nike doesn’t sell a gazillion of stuff because they necessarily manufacture the best shoes or whatever else they sell. Nike fans choose Nike products because they bought into the story that if own Nike apparel you’re somehow connected to the world’s best athletes. 

Your favourite team did it. Think of your favourite sports team. Teams win and teams lose. But you stick to your team. Why? Not because it’s the best. Because in some way, you belong to the story the team represents. Whether the anchor is your hometown or your country or whatever it is. There’s a story you’ve bought into and your self-image is attached to that team. 

Products that win are the ones that are chosen. 

And the key to getting your product to stand above the overwhelming noise of options is to tell a compelling story that attracts, engages and invites your tribe of Customers to belong to that amazing, fantastical world your brand new shiny Digital Products opens up - as if by a slight turn of a magical golden key.

Let’s go out and tell beautiful stories and capture the hearts and minds of human beings that are out there, lurking, waiting to enter your world and be delighted to use your Digital Product. 

Let's make history my friends. The world needs more great, beautiful, story rich products.

Check out the entire series:

Exploring The Product Mindset

Part 1: Let's Talk Product

Part 2: Focus On Creating Customers

Part 3: What's Your Product Story?

Part 4: Changing Our Minds Is A Good Thing

Part 5: You're Not Superhuman

Part 6: Make Them Feel Like Heroes

Part 7: The World Needs You?