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Why should users pick your product?
Tens of apps to send messages to people you know, at least 5 apps that let you call someone, 4–5 apps that let you find your way in a city, and 3–4 apps that let you hail a ride: we live in a world of increasing choice, and if you’re building products or services — it’s hard to make your product stand out as something users will gravitate to and love. Trade-off, by Kevin Maney (author of several books and columnist for USA Today) offers a very useful lens to differentiate successful products from lackluster ones through what he calls “the fidelity swap”
At the heart of Trade-off is a very simple idea — people tend to pick products that either offer them unparalleled fidelity — i.e. an end-to-end experience that’s unmatched by competitors (the iPhone is a classic example that comes to mind) or unparalleled convenience — i.e. the ability to solve their problems in the quickest possible way. Maney argues that while making product decisions, optimizing for either the best possible experience or the highest convenience (i.e lowest cost) will be a much better strategy to grow users than attempting to chase after both these axes.
Maney expands on these ideas really well, offering many examples of how popular products, brands, and services (like Tesla, Starbucks, Second…
