Understanding Who the Product Is Really For

This is the second step of the “Path to my own product” series. The full plan is in “How I Want to Go from an Idea to an IT Project That Makes Money”.

Let’s say I’ve already settled on a product idea, understood its core functionality and clearly figured out what problem it solves for real users. The next step in developing this idea is to understand which group of people feels this problem most acutely — and to narrow that group down as much as possible.

A broad audience is almost always misleading

Some time ago I had an idea for an app that would combine touch-typing practice with learning a foreign language. At first glance it seems that everyone wants to learn some foreign language — most often English — so they can speak, read and write it fluently. It would seem that the audience for such a product is almost the whole world. But in reality it’s not that simple.

Different people have different reasons for learning a foreign language. For some it’s a way to feel more confident abroad: order food, ask a question, handle basic everyday situations. For others it’s a professional necessity, where specific vocabulary, slang and communication style matter. And some learn a language just for themselves — to keep their mind sharp or simply because they enjoy the process.

Why you can’t build a product for everyone right away

If you try to cover the needs of all these groups at once, the initial feature set very quickly grows to enormous proportions, and the launch gets pushed back indefinitely. That leads to another important problem: the later the product goes out into the world and the later real people start using it, the later you learn which decisions were right and which were not — which features actually have value and get used, and what was built for nothing.

On top of that, each of these groups has a different level of motivation and values the product differently. That means their willingness to pay can differ a lot too. Spending time building features for people who will use the service just out of curiosity and are unlikely to pay for it isn’t a very smart decision. It makes much more sense to focus first on the users for whom the product addresses a genuinely pressing need — people who will feel its value right away and could potentially be willing to pay for it.

Why a narrow audience is more valuable at the start

That’s why, early on in building a product, it’s important to clearly define who your most valuable audience is and focus on them first. Their needs come first; only after that should you think about scaling, expanding the feature set and finding new ways to attract other groups of users.

Another important point is that such an audience is usually much easier to attract. Going back to the touch-typing and English app: it’s much easier to win over a developer who wants to type faster to work more efficiently, while also improving their English to read documentation and talk to colleagues abroad. For a person like that, the value of the product is clear almost immediately.

Attracting someone who isn’t very confident with a computer and just heard somewhere that learning a foreign language is good for your memory would be much harder. At the start, it’s not worth spending resources on such a broad and vague audience. It’s far better to focus on those who will understand the product’s value right away and will be motivated enough to start using it.

Conclusion

To sum up, at the start it’s important not to try to build a product for everyone at once. It’s much more valuable to clearly understand who it will be most useful to right now and focus on that audience. If a product is for everyone, at the start it’s most likely not for anyone in particular.

The next step of the plan is researching the pains, needs and behavior of the target audience. That post is in the works — meanwhile, you can go back to the overall plan.