INSPIRED, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 51Testing Value

Customers don't have to buy our products, and users don't have to choose to use a feature. They will only do so if they perceive real value. Another way to think about this is that just because someone can use our product doesn't mean they will choose to use our product. This is especially true when you are trying to get your customers or users to switch from whatever product or system they were using before to your new product. And, most of the time, our users and customers are switching from something—even if that something is a homegrown solution.

So many companies and product teams think all they need to do is match the features (referred to as feature parity), and then they don't understand why their product doesn't sell, even at a lower price.

The customer must perceive your product to be substantially better to motivate them to buy your product and then wade through the pain and obstacles of migrating from their old solution.

All of this is a long way of saying that good product teams spend most of their time on creating value. If the value is there, we can fix everything else. If it's not, how good our usability, reliability, or performance is doesn't matter.

Just because someone can use our product doesn't mean they will choose to use our product.

There are several elements of value, and there are techniques for testing all of them.

Testing Demand

Sometimes it's unclear if there's demand for what we want to build. In other words, if we ...