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9 Comments

Features can wait! Added BG images 6 months later.

Another evidence that proves the thesis "features can wait".
If you still believe particular features are crucial for a launch success, let me prove you wrong.

Here is an example from my own experience: a landing page builder which doesn't have background images.
Sounds terrific, does not it? But it is so. Unicorn Platform did not have background image support until today.

However, there was a ~dozen of users who wanted background images badly. I offered them manual support by providing a tiny piece of custom code.

Was that dozen of folks satisfied? Yes, absolutely.

Was it the right idea to set such an important feature aside and launch? Well, at the end of the day - yes. But the lesson learned here is what all the things from the list "super-important-but-not-today" should be shipped eventually.

So when you plan your development roadmap allocate some resources for that list. I failed at planning and therefore shipped background images a couple of months later than it was possible.

🙌

  1. 4

    Excellent! When customers ask “why can’t I...?” that’s usually a good sign. They are finding value in the product and need it to work. They’ve taken the time to reach out for help rather than giving up and finding an alternative solution.

    1. 1

      You are right. It is a natural, absolute way to say "your product is worthy".

  2. 4

    Nice one. That manual hand holding also is a great excuse to converse and understand your customers better.

    1. 1

      You are correct. I'm actually glad to have an experience working with my users 🙌
      It helped me to understand them better and therefore understand their needs and methods.

      1. 3

        Not just that, but by solving it manually for a bit of time, you get the opportunity to figure out the "best" way to solve the issue. When you are reactionary and quickly knock out a feature, there's a good chance you're short sighted in one way or another and ultimately end up hurting yourself while attempting to help your customers.

  3. 1

    Thanks for sharing. Yes features definitely can wait. Need to remind myself constantly though we already know this in theory.

    1. 1

      Yeah. The gap between knowing it and doing it is surprisingly huge.

  4. 3

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

    1. 1

      Yup.

      Fun fact: I knew about the "Lean" approach a long time ago, but it took years to learn how to use it properly. Perhaps I'm a slowpoke 😅

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