Marketability – The correlation between the design and the achievable business position in the digital commodity market
… continue of The correlation between product design and the achievable business position in the digital commodity market
Under Marketability
There are two distinguishable level under below the first milestone, the marketability. These products are not recognised by the visitors because there is no or too little overlap with their model. The main reasons for that is usually neglecting the industry standards and traditional associations or heuristics users come with.
- Pro beta. What makes a product perceived as a beta version is the presence of ‘dealbreaker’ issues in the interface. The most common feedback is ‘clumsy’ or ‘not quite there yet’. When a product is several years old and the marketing efforts are still fruitless, the value still doesn’t go through, that’s usually the result of out-of-standards solutions in the design. These ‘dealbreaker’ issues includes unfinished or broken click flows, bugs in the main functionality, errors that result in data loss, invalid or incorrect page redirects, unrecognisable or misplaced navigation, lack of system messages …
- Homemade. When a product doesn’t allow the users to register and discover the platform by themselves, the general perception is that it wasn’t made for them. The features that categorise a product as a homemade one in the visitors’ mind includes being asked to contact the developers/creators to get onboard, perform a task, exit a page, change account details … ‘Dealbreaker’ issues, data loss inducing bugs and inability to achieve the goals as per advertised are also common features of this level.
Above Marketability
- Free. On this level the product is already recognised as a valid solution because it’s aligned with the visitors mental model and for the most part it does the job (or at least doesn’t cause data or value loss for the users when errors occur). Even though, overall, it is still a bit clumsy and unable to establish enough credibility to become a product for purchase.
… continues with the Merchantability – The correlation between the design and the achievable business position in the digital commodity market