You Never Really Know Until You Ship

There is no better way to find out how users will react to your new product, your new features, until you ship.

Now, of course you can get their insights from them prior to shipping, and you should.

100%. No excuses. You can do focus groups, one on one interviews, usability testing, surveys, A/B testing, beta-testing, look through support tickets etc. until you’re blue in the face. However, until you actually make your release out into the wild, you will never understand how people are going to truly react.

Perhaps you shipped, and you find that there was indifference when you were expecting a lot of enthused customers. There may have been crickets to the release, or even hostility, or people leave your product for another.

What happened?

This could have been caused by many factors.

• Perhaps you focused too much talking to your power users, or the vocal minority who make their voices heard, and they may have views that greatly clash with what others are using your product to solve. Ken Norton has a great post on listening to users that you should check out.
• You were not able to distinguish the difference between what people say vs. what they actually mean. These tend to be two very different things.
• You asked the wrong questions. Perhaps you didn’t understand the problems that your customers were having. You got the answers, but the questions that you were asking lead you to different conclusions.

These are just a few of the possible factors of why what you expected vs. shipping were two very different things.

For a more personal experience, I don’t know what kind of reception I will get on my blog posts until I ship them.

Some posts I write I end up surprised with how much of a response they get, whether from views, shares, or feedback, in comparison to others. Some posts that I feel very proud of, and feel that they’ll get a lot of traction, received more muted responses. Unless I send them out, until I ship these posts, I don’t have an idea of what kind of response I will get from them. I don’t know what kind of response this will get until I release it for others to read.

So, at the end of the day, the best way that you can get feedback is by shipping your product into the wild.

Yes, have an idea beforehand of where things will go. What you will ship will be shaped by what problems your customers have, and what they are looking to have solved. Find those pain points and the meaning of what they are asking for, and build for that. Don’t keep holding off until it’s perfect, because perfect will never come.

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Originally published at www.pmpaul.com on June 14, 2017.