Everyone enjoys a good feature, but great product managers understand that taking it meticulously throughout its lifespan is crucial to ensuring the feature set rocks.
Learn how to enhance current products by strategically introducing new functions and features.
Focusing on High-Interest, High-Value Features
As a product manager, you receive a request for features from various sources. There are likely to be suggestions from your customers, your engineering team, your customer support department, sales, and other stakeholders frequently on a daily basis.
It is tempting to share a few ideas immediately, but you should consider each suggestion or risk ignoring a good idea. On the other hand, the number of suggestions could become an overwhelming amount of noise.
It’s your responsibility to sort out the noise and look for the signals — which are the most pertinent suggestions for features.
Be aware of your product that was developed to fulfil a gap or the needs of. What is the main goal or purpose of the item? What new features assist your product in reaching this goal better? The product you offer doesn’t have to be able to do everything; however, it has to perform at minimum one thing extremely effectively.
Don’t use the catch-all Swiss-Army-Knife method, and keep your product’s attributes aligned with your primary goal.
“No,” or saying “No” to feature requests.
While you might have a lot of great ideas coming from your colleagues and customers, you aren’t able to just say “Yes” to each feature.
The budget you have for feature development won’t be endless, and if your product is loaded with numerous features, your customers will be overwhelmed by “feature overkill.” Learn to tell people “No,” since you might have to say it often.
If you’re saying “no” to your customers, be sure to acknowledge and thank the customer for their request and explain that it is because you will not follow through with a proposed feature.
When you do not accept internal stakeholders’ requests, you must provide an in-depth, concise and thorough explanation. Return to the initial vision and goal for the feature to support your choice. With your internal team, You should take a more detailed approach and give evidence to support your decision.
The development and launch of new product Features
When a feature has made its way onto your plan and your team is able to begin development, make sure you’re sharing all the important data.
Your team needs to know what customers want and (more importantly) require the feature and what they’d like to do with it.
They must also be aware of how the feature is integrated with the overall goals of the product in order to keep on track during the process of the development phase.
You should collect feedback throughout the process of the building, if possible, and get real live users to test usability during the early stages of development to receive their feedback first-hand.
After the feature is created, you need to spend some time enhancing it. You should conduct tests and then check and verify its capabilities. Let the marketing department provide input and suggestions for small modifications that can improve the appeal of the feature to potential customers.
While you’ll likely be eager to launch the feature, a rushed launch may cause much more damage than good.
Before launching this new function, ensure you provide training to your support personnel and sales reps, as well as your marketing personnel and everyone else in your business.
No matter if they’re working with customers on a regular basis, all your employees need to be aware of what the feature is and know how they can utilize it.
All employees must be able to experiment with the new feature on their own at all times and in a way that they are at ease with it and eager to share it with customers.
Also Read – Guide To Plan New Feature
Saving the Failing Feature
Despite all your efforts, you might come up with features that fail. With the right connections to your customers, it is possible to save the failing feature.
Suppose the market you want to target requested a particular feature, but they did not seem to be interested in it when you first introduced it. Make contact with them to remind them that they are keen on this kind of feature.
Request that they check the feature out and tell you their thoughts on what they like or what they would like to change.
This way, you’ll be able to make them aware of the feature even if they were not aware of the launch date. In addition, you’ll receive honest feedback that can aid in making changes to the feature as required.
Make tutorials and instructional videos to show your users how the product will help them live their lives more comfortably.
If you’re charging additional for the latest feature, give a free trial or trial so that customers can try it out for themselves without risk and be able to pay for it if they enjoy it and decide to continue using it.
Occasionally you might have a feature that’s actually causing your product to fall. You’ve tried to fix it, but nothing seems to be working. Customers don’t seem to like it.
Don’t be afraid of cutting out an element that makes your product less effective and destroys your connection with your customers. Remove the dead weight, and your product will float up again.
