This document provides tips for avoiding common mistakes when building digital products. It outlines 6 key areas to focus on: 1) Solve real problems, not hypothetical ones, 2) Sell the product concept before building it to validate market need, 3) Rely on user research like surveys and interviews rather than guessing, 4) Measure everything to understand user behavior and determine what works, 5) Get buy-in from enterprise users early on through focus groups and observations, 6) Think beyond just product and look at the larger business landscape. Following these tips can help mitigate risks and avoid wasting time and resources on products that do not solve real user needs.

1. How to avoid 6 deadly mistakes when
building a digital product in 2018
by Kacper Sulisz

2. Building digital products is hard
84% of companies fail at digital transformation.
79.4% of startups never get past
the seed round.

3. There are 6 easy ways
to mitigate the risk:

4. 1. Solve REAL problems
The first reason digital products fail is lack of a market need.
Make sure you’re not solving a problem you created.
A solution can’t be worse than a problem.
Use the Problem-Solution Fit canvas.

5. 2. Sell it before you build it
Property developers do it all the time.
Actual process of designing and coding up a product
is the easiest of all.
Realising you’ve wasted weeks/months is devastating.
Set ground for iterations.
Changes to a finished product are x100 more expensive
than changes to concepts.

6. 2. Sell it before you build it

7. 3. Guess less
Humans have a bias towards action (especially if the
idea is amazing) and seek completion, so we tend to
guess/assume what works and what doesn’t.
Guessing is expensive and means you don’t
really know your customer.

8. 3. Guess less - surveys
Answers will be only as good as questions.
Google Ventures released an amazing set of tips for building effective surveys.
Ask direct open ended questions.

9. 3. Guess less - interviews
Provide the ‘Why’s?’ behind the survey data -
you will get to see things you were not aware of.
Record your sessions.
Aim for f2f first, then video calls.
Watch for energy/emotional changes in users.
You are really after 1 insight per interview.

10. 4. Measure everything
‘We know’ vs ‘We think’ is empowering.
LinkedIN has released a whitepaper on developing North Star Metrics (The
North Star Metric is the metric that best captures the core value that your
product delivers to customers).
Discard features not used by your customers.
Useful tools for better understanding your customers are: Fullstory, AppSee,
Intercom.

11. 4. Measure everything
Build Measure Learn Loop

12. 5. Get enterprise user buy-in
Your competition are the habits/fears of your users.
Engage and educate as early as possible.
Perform shadow sessions and focus groups.
Useful tools for better understanding your customers
are: Fullstory, AppSee, Intercom.

13. 6. Think outside of PL

14. Thank you!
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15. Thank you!
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