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A short guide on how to make a product better

Feb 07, 2023

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The digital world never stops growing and evolving. The market competition never stops also. These are two reasons why the journey of your product does not end at the release point. It is great that your solution is now on the market, available for users, and, if you’ve everything right, is successful. Does this mean that you will not have to work on the product anymore? Absolutely not, or it will risk drowning in the sea of products that are changing, getting better, and offering more to users. There is a fine line between impressing your customers with new features and alienating them by making the existing thing too complex or too unfamiliar. An average user does love getting more and enjoys new useful features but they will not appreciate it if you force them out of their comfort zone. The experts of Arounda agency are quite skillful and know for sure how to make https://arounda.agency/blog/how-to-make-product-improvements-and-new-features-for-an-existing-product to implement a smooth and well-accepted product update. Stay with us till the end of this article, and if you will want to learn more and study particular cases, just visit our website.

The meaning and value of product improvements


There are two ways how to make a product better. You can refine the features that are already there or you can introduce new ones. Either way, perfecting it will bring you some very significant benefits:

  • Attrarcting new customers;

  • Increase the loyalty of existing users;

  • Bring back those clients who stopped using your product.


Add something new


Novelties in your product can affect the variety of its parameters, and be very different:

  • You can add a new option that has been often requested by customers;

  • Introducing a feature that your competitor has will increase marketability;

  • Presenting a new method to solve a common customer’s issue will grant you a reputation of the brand on a technological cutting edge;

  • Expanding localization will open new markets for you;

  • Additional scenarios of use for your product will make it more useful for customers;

  • You can integrate third-party services (e.g. make a marketplace of your online store).


Also, for expanding your feature list, you will have to choose your approach. You can vertically: focus on what you already do and just do it better. It usually requires less expenses than growing horizontally but can be a bit challenging in terms of creativity. Surveying your users and paying attention to what they value and what they lack can certainly help you. A horizontal point of view means that you add new operational vectors that may be relevant to your customers or hit a different market. The prime example of such an approach would be Amazon which was founded as a book-selling company, but soon was adding new goods, so nowadays you can buy there almost everything.

Improve what you have


You can choose three different routes to strengthen existing functionality:

  1. Make loved and popular functions more useful.

  2. Boost frequency. If your product has a feature that you want to be used more often, you can make them more easily accessible or connected to the popular ones.

  3. Revive underrated features. Can be used when your product has a function that, you believe, can be beneficial to users, but they pay it very little attention.


How to make a product better step by step


In this chapter, we’ve prepared for you a simple guide so you do not feel overwhelmed when thinking about product updates and will know where to start.

Define the value of your add-on


If your update does not make the life of the user better, help them to solve an issue, or open for them new opportunities, do you need to implement it at all? Focus on one aspect that your audience finds unsatisfying and think of how can you make it better. Paying attention to customers’ feedback and encouraging your audience to fill in some surveys makes it easier. Then, describe your potential solution in detail.

Set clear objectives


What you want to achieve, should be specific, measurable, and realistic. If you think, “I want to have more sales”, that is too vague. But a goal of, say, a thousand clients per month, when you are creating cosplay costumes, is unachievable due to both your and market limitations.

Get solid data


Study key metrics, clients' feedback, compare the investment you’ll need to make with potential profits, etc.

Analyze your options


You may have several variants, and this is good. Test your options and select the most preferable in terms of the efforts-result ratio. You can also research existing solutions to get some insights or elaborate on your idea.

Make a precise description of your solution


Time to define all the specificities of your new feature. What exactly it does and how its implementation will go? Write it all down and work closely with your development team to decide how to bring it to life. Then, your designers may start to work on the visual concepts, creating drafts, mockups, and sketches for a future update.

Testing


When everything is ready, you want to check if it works as intended. Your QA specialists will take of that. The tests may be carried out inside your team or you may present a new feature to a group of real users to hear an unbiased opinion.

Implementation


Ensure that your new feature is consistent with the rest of your product and adaptive to the variety of platforms it is intended for. Then you begin integrating it.

Get to know more


Arounda has vast expertise in updating and evolving digital products. If you would like to see product improvements examples, talk about that idea you have but are not sure about, contact us and we will happily help you with everything we can!

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