How true is it that early adopters prefer things to be unpolished?
One of the ideas in "The 4 Hour Workweek" is that early adopters prefer things to be unpolished, and that if you polish it too much, you'll lose early adopters and start to attract normal people.
Is that true? My login/registration pages are all functional and look terrible. Would it be better to keep them looking terrible until my site has legs?
I disagree, it's not that early adopters prefer unpolished products, it's that the product solves a need well enough for them to use it despite it's flaws.
Yes to all this. Can't put it any better.
Crossing the Chasm might shed some light here. The author divides people/businesses into segments based on when they tend to sign up for products: innovators --> early adopters --> early majority --> late majority --> laggards.
I read it a couple years ago, but here are my notes on what the two earliest groups really care about:
Probably the closest point to what you're talking about is how early adopters "want to lead." It could actually be a turnoff for them to use a product everyone else is already using, because they're not longer pushing the envelope and getting ahead. I highly doubt that any early adopters will see good design and come away thinking, "It's too late for me to get in early," so I wouldn't worry about that.
One thing good design does do is build trust in your product. It's a signal people use to tell whether or not they can trust you to do a good job. If your aesthetic design is crappy, either (1) you're very early and have bigger fish to fry, (2) your product is good enough to speak for itself and doesn't need design as a signal, or (3) you're not very competent. Innovators and some early adopters might forgive you for #1. Other people might say, "Look how crappy this is. I can't trust these people with my data."
It depends. You should be the best judge of it honestly.
How important is your tool/website for your users/customers? Can they get their tasks done without using your website? Can they use another tool which looks better ( read as 'trustable' )?
Do a rigorous self evaluation of this.
Also, don't be lazy. Good and clean design helps. Don't necessarily aim for a Slack website design. Aim for something clean and usable. That's it!
My 2c.