Less is More

Imagine running a vegan restaurant with steak on the menu. Not the fake kind either, but real beef from actual cows. When challenged on it you simply respond that you try to cater to everyone’s needs.

Doesn’t make sense, right? Yet, I see it all the time in the digital world!

There is almost no extra cost to running one more feature, so why not add a social feed or a weather integration to the CRM you are building (yes, these are real examples). You’re simply catering to everyone’s needs, right?

This type of ambivalent anything goes approach to product strategy often has the opposite effect. By not being clear about who you are serving, users can’t be sure if you are serving them or someone else.

“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” — Michael Porter

As Michael Porter says, strategy is about trade-offs. Choosing what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. For product strategy specifically, it’s about what features to add and not to add. Too often I see companies, such as the CRM example, add features that do nothing but confuse the user and dilute the brand.

Now, I know what you’re thinking - it’s not always as obvious as finding a weather widget in your CRM. But here’s a little secret: there’s one telltale sign that screams "this product has lost its way." It’s hiding in plain sight, right at the bottom of your screen. Yep, I’m talking about the menubar.

A menubar that doesn't know what it wants

When you see a menubar that looks like it’s trying to cram in the entire app store, you know you’re dealing with a product that’s trying to serve steak in a vegan restaurant. Let’s take a closer look at a couple of examples to see what I mean.

Spotify's focued menubar

See the difference? One tries to cater to everyone and one is laser focused. This type of clarity on product strategy and vision is rare. But when done right it’s extremely powerful. The people who love what you do will naturally gravitate towards you. Those who don’t fit the profile won’t. And that’s the point.

Yes, I know. Sounds great in theory. But how do you actually start? Let me show you a shortcut that I like to use:

Step 1: Start by defining your main use case. What action does most user primarily come to your product to perform? For an email app, that’s reading and responding to email.

Step 2: Look at your product roadmap (or backlog, if you don’t have a roadmap). Sort activities for the coming 3-6 months into two buckets. Activities supporting your main use case and Other.

Step 3: Communicate to everyone in the company that for the next three months you will only work on things making it easier for users to find and perform your main use case.

Congratulations! You now have a product strategy. This won’t be the perfect strategy and it won’t last forever. But it’s a starting point. Something to start iterating on.

So to wrap up, dare to be focused. Make the hard choices. Choose who you are going to serve and who you are not going to serve. And, above all else, whenever you find yourself in a discussion about how to attract a new type of user, ask yourself if you’re about to serve steak in a vegan restaurant.