Build an idea as a feature of an existing product, or ship it separately?
Often when evaluating how to improve my product I come up with features that, although relevant for the user, would "shift" the primary value/proposition of the product itself.
For example, my side project Substratum (https://substratum.app) is an app for designers to save and collect inspiration. Recently I was thinking about whether to allow the user to save any kind of file, rather than only images/videos.
Aside from the reasons why and whether it makes sense to do so, working on such a feature would change the main value proposition of the product: from something like Pinterest for designers to something closer to a cloud storage platform like Dropbox or GDrive.
Technically the change is possible without too much effort. (Though the main pain for me would be eventually going back from this idea.)
My question is therefore when it makes sense to add a feature like this to an existing product, or when it's better to spin it off with a completely new one.
- What would you consider in taking this decision?
- Have you ever had a similar situation and how did you approach it?
These are my thoughts so far:
Advantages of keeping the new feature in the same product:
- bigger / pre-existing user base to test the idea
- lower effort / faster approach (though it might create dependencies in the future in case it's needed to revert the feature).
- less effort is required than to maintain 2 products.
Advantages of spinning it as a separate product instead:
- more precise value proposition and communication around it (e.g. website & marketing)
- the pre-existing product is not affected in case this one fails.
- easier to experiment, learn (and eventually fail).
- the users from product 1 are not affected. They can continue to use the product as before.
thanks in advance!
When I face problems like this, I never make any decisions without Customer Development. Indepth interview with your clients is indeedd the way to find out what they would prefer, so I totalle garee with some comments below.
Another way to test and not make blind choise is to make test target ad campaidn and see if it attracts leads. If not, probably, the product separately is not needed in the market and you'd better make it a feature of your existing app.
Moreover, if you deceide to run it separately, remember that it'll double your cost on reputation-building: you simply will have to buid it twice! If the product is demanded, it might be worth it, but if not it will decrease your revenue.
So, don't try to guess -- use any data to calculate your potential profits and losses in each case.
I would talk to users to see if they value it.
Don't ask them 'Would you use this?' ask them 'When was the last time you uploaded a file somewhere. How was it? Why did you do it? What cloud storage do you pay for?'
I would make 4-5 actual users interview and dig deep into their behavior and needs ! After that it will be more clear for you to even look at this feature or fix another thing totally ( messaging, marketing..etc)
I was/am in a similar situation and decided to add the new feature as a seperate add-on to our existing product. That means that you need a regular subscription first, and then you can book the additional add-on.
This made a lot of sense to us since the add-on is very similiar to what we are already offering (web-based 2FA for teams is our main SaaS, 2FA via SMS is the add-on).
With Substratum, mabye the best way is not allowing all kinds of files, but simply providing much better (-> more niche) support for specific file types, e..g icons, favicons, very designer-specific files that get no love from the usual file storage services?
We realised that we do much better if we are able to further niche down (increase focus) instead of loosing our differentiator, because that makes us look not interesting enough.
thanks for the comment and your example! Indeed narrowing down on the niche rather than creating a more generic product for more user types is something many indie hackers often repeat.