How to create Products that Sell

Step 1. Maintain simplicity

A phone needs to be able to make clear calls, a toaster should toast bread, an iPod plays songs.

Its OK not to satisfy everyone on the planet. The biggest reason why many products (mostly consumer software products) die is that they get into this cycle of adding more and more features to the product while the core feature stays the same. It becomes bulky, feels complicated and slowly becomes unusable to everyone.

Does that mean you should just throw away your million dollar add-on? Absolutely not! You can make a new product out of it for the specific target audience. You would not only be able to focus better, but also allow the users feel at home. You can of-course design your related products to snugly fit together if that makes sense.

Step 2. Generate the Craving

The Eye Candy

We all have an innate sense of beauty. You might not be able to put it in words but you just know when something is beautiful.
The product should be likable down to the very fine details.

Take the case of Apple. Their products are an eye candy from the body design down to every pixel on the software that runs on it. Everything looks just perfect. Its sexy and you know it.

Advertising

Watch Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
"When you place a value on things like health, love, sex and other things, and learn to place a material value on what you’ve previously discounted for being merely intangible … you realize you’re much, much wealthier than you ever imagined." (Rory Sutherland)

Step 3. Provide Reassurance

We all know that people buy impulsively but what few understand is that most people often do seek re-assurance before making a purchase.

While the warranty / timely service is all very important and influences the decision, the fan-boys play a subtle part. Blogs harping about the success of apple, how Apple is selling the most iPhones in the US, how 90% of internet traffic comes from iPads (based on an unreliable source of statistics and assuming that iOS implies iPad). Since, so many people are happy with it (so you have read), it must be good right?

Later when you come home after buying a new iPad for 500$, you wouldn't want to be reading a blog saying "iPad sucks because it can't multi-task" on your iPad would you?

Make it or fake it, get the ball rolling. Once people see many people writing about the same topic, many others would jump in.