One simple trick to differentiate your product
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While building products, a lot of effort goes in collecting information from users at various stages in their journey. For example, in an online marketplace, a user is asked for his Email and/or Phone number at the time of sign up. Then follow the details of his offerings or requirements. Finally, he is asked for feedback after he avails a particular service.
Naturally, users follow the path of least resistance and provide the minimum possible information to be able to proceed. Hence, it is important to think about the fields to be kept as mandatory vs optional and some advantages that could be derived with mandatory information.
Advantage #1 Achieve Differentiation
Let’s take the example of “posting a job” on AngelList vs other job portals.
AngelList makes salary range as a mandatory field on its platform — you CANNOT post a job without mentioning this field.
This creates a differentiation in terms of what AngelList has to offer to prospective candidates. Job seekers now know what to expect in terms of salary and are able to navigate through companies more swiftly. This gives AngelList a unique edge and differentiation over other platforms.
Advantage #2 Better Quality
Mandatory fields also act as a barrier of entry to uphold the quality of your marketplace.
Think about a job seeker applying for a job. Do you allow him to apply through a single click (EASY) or with a mandatory cover letter only (SOME WORK TO DO). On AngelList, this power is given to the employer.
Employers can choose to have the cover letter as mandatory or optional. Empowering your users to make this decision helps them get their desired value out of your platform. A company which prefers a larger candidate pool to select from would make this note optional as opposed to a company looking for serious candidates only.
Mandatory fields, therefore can be your levers of quality control which determine the health of your platform . (Also you can choose to give these levers to your users instead of keeping it with yourself)
Advantage #3 Trust
Tinder has a mandatory Facebook login which helps it’s users gain considerable confidence about the real identity of others on the platform.
In a dating app like Tinder, this one decision alone gives a lot of leverage in terms of the users it is on boarding. Also, it is able to harness other fruits like displaying mutual friends between potential matches, etc.
Finally!
The above thought process can be extended to most of the online marketplaces. For example, should photos be mandatory in a house listing (in AirBnB, it is), or what specifications about a car are not optional before someone puts it up for sale on my platform.
Hence, it would be a good exercise to think deeply into which all the pieces of information that you gather from your users. “Which of them are optional” vs “Which of them are mandatory” can be a good discussion to provide additional value to your platform - it can help your product achieve differentiation, create barriers of entry thus improving the quality and generate trust among the consumers of the information.
