How Simplifying A Product Led to Massive Growth

Entrepreneurs often make the mistake of assuming that their product isn’t successful because it lacks the magical feature that will make the difference, and that adding more options will solve their customer's problems. However, my experience with a successful product taught me that sometimes the best thing you can do for your customers is to simply make your product easier to use.

We created a comprehensive solution for real estate agents to create flyers for direct marketing. We included as many useful features as possible, hoping to give our customers everything they needed to create customizable flyers for every use case.

We had a great positioning, messaging, and SEO strategy. We were getting traffic from the first page of Google, and dozens of people were signing up every day to try our product. But we noticed something odd: users were trying out our product, and they weren't actually buying.

Upon analyzing the customer journey, we discovered that several features were overwhelming to users. They were either too complex for non-computer-savvy users or too time-consuming to set up. We had created a product that was powerful, but it was driving people away.

We realized that we needed to simplify the product. We aimed to help users create and print a flyer within 15-30 minutes of signing up, and we started eliminating or hiding complex features until people actually needed them. We focused on making the first-time user experience easy, rather than comprehensive. And the results were astonishing.

Our revenue doubled every month for over a year! New users loved our product because it was simple, straightforward, and easy to use. They could get their flyers created and printed in just a few minutes, and they didn't need much technical knowledge to do it. We had hit on something that people really wanted, and our business was growing rapidly.

However, our growth eventually slowed down after a year, although we were still growing at a healthy rate of 10% per month. So, what did we do differently, and how did it change our fortunes? Here are some of the things we did:

1. We analyzed every step of the customer journey, from the moment they landed on our site to the point at which they either purchased or stopped using the product. This helped us identify where customers were getting stuck, lost, or frustrated.

2. We simplified the product to meet customers' needs. When we realized that the product was too complex, we eliminated unnecessary features and hid the more complex ones until customers were familiar with the basics. We made sure that most customers could achieve their initial goal within 15-30 minutes.

3. We reached out to customers who were stuck. Offering assistance and support to these users helped build trust and understanding of how to make the experience better for everyone else. This often resulted in these users becoming loyal customers.

This experience taught me the value of simplifying products and making them easier for customers to use. By removing unnecessary complexity, we were able to help our customers achieve their goals quickly and easily, which translated into significant sales growth.