Nobody wants to use your website
We spend a lot of time making these things. Websites, apps, features, products, services. The hard truth is that nobody actually wants to use them.
Your website is an unwanted step that sits between your users and the thing they actually want to get done. Sure, it’s easy to use, you’ve got a great design system, the colours are tasteful and the UX team did an awesome job on the flows, but it’s still just in the way.
I don’t want to use Uber, I want to get somewhere.
I don’t want to use Airbnb, I want a nice place to stay.
I don’t want to use Deliveroo, I want to eat tasty food.
Outcome driven innovation
At Etch, we’re big fans of the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD, let’s not type this out in full everywhere) framework.
Traditionally, businesses think of websites as needing ‘features’. A button that does X, a page that shows Y, a flow to capture Z. JTBD reframes your thinking to look at the outcome the user wants, rather than the process used to get there.
By focusing on outcomes over features, we can often find more efficient pathways to get people to what they want.
Washing machines
What do washing machines have to do with websites? Bear with me.
I bet you have a washing machine. It’s got so many dials and buttons. You can set the clothing type and the spin cycle and the drying time and the temperature and there’s a slot for pre-wash and main wash and conditioner and a bunch of icons that you’re not totally sure about, but they sure look clever.
Each of these settings is like a feature on your website. There’s so much control and so many things to press, but what do users really want? Clean clothes.
Every dial, every button, and every slot for washing powder is an obstacle between the user and their clean clothes.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to put the right amount of powder and fabric conditioner in the slots and the machine just worked it out from the settings and the clothing weight? What if the machine knew what types of fabric were inside and put the machine on the right setting for us? We could reduce this interface to a single button that just said ‘clean clothes’.
Maybe we don’t even need the button, it just starts when you close the door. What if we could just throw our dirty clothes on the floor and they appeared in our drawers clean and folded again?
Okay, maybe that last idea is a stretch.
The point here is that washing machine manufacturers have focused on feature-driven development, but by re-framing our thinking we could provide a superior product that is less complicated to use. Don't use the washing machine, get clean clothes.
Creepy features
Feature creep is a common problem in software.
"The most common cause of feature creep is the desire to provide the consumer with a more useful or desirable product, in order to increase sales or distribution. However, once the product reaches the point at which it does everything that it is designed to do, the manufacturer is left with the choice of adding unneeded functions, sometimes at the cost of efficiency, or sticking with the old version, at the cost of a perceived lack of improvement.”
It’s easy to think more features = more desirable product = more sales, or that one feature is going to be the thing that beats out all your competitors and launches you to being a multi-billionaire.
Outcomes, not tools
A letter, a phone call, a website, and an app are all just tools to get us to the actual thing we want. In an ideal world, I already have the thing I want and never have to write a letter, make a call or use a piece of software. It’s easy to think that the latest technology is exciting and your users would love an AI chatbot, VR interface or a shiny new app feature. If you miss the outcome they are trying to achieve, you are just distracting yourself with sparkly toys that don't stand the test of time.
Detach yourself from features.
Think about the outcomes your users want, and you might end up with a better product.