A Picture with 10 words is worth 1000

Talk about a new start up, a new company, a new idea about which you're hearing for the first time and the first question is, so what is it? The same problem is seen evidently when users access the website of a company or product which is new, the first thing they expect to figure out when they land on the website through word-of-mouth or a blog is the central concept or model of the whole setup. While some start ups might do a good job of it, there is always a typical mistake that has scope of improvement. While you carefully draft the wordings of your marketing message on the website and put it out as one or two paragraphs there, we have observed that most users tend to skip a lot of text very conveniently to go and look for something more interesting. So, while you had done all that effort, it would be a waste until the user is absolutely desperate to find out more about your concept and would be willing to sit and read through the text. However, there is another approach which can make things much effective. If you replace the marketing text with a slightly graphical version of the same explaining the same concept but just keeping a tenth of the words you would have used otherwise, you make it absolutely sure that anyone who lands on your page would not go back without a clear understanding of what your idea is about. We are taking the example of iWeekend website here to illustrate our point.



Screenshot of a portion of the current iWeekend website home page




Screenshot of a portion of the iWeekend website homepage showing a small graphical representation of the concept in place of the text

Perfection kills New Products

A new idea for a web product or mobile application which sounds like the perfect thing to do always brings in a plethora of features to your mind. While it is always good to dream big, it is not good to get obsessed with perfection when it comes to implementing the product.

In user interface, we have something called User Testing. This is where we try to study the interaction of the interface with some sample users first hand. This kind of 'testing' does not leave much room for doubt or much need to prove a point. When the user is not able to use something or does not like something, it shows up immediately.

Launching a new product should simply be based on this concept. The product should launch almost immediately with little or no features. The focus should not be on adding new but on cutting down as far as possible to launch quickly. Whereas this approach does pose a risk on the reputation, it is still the best way to lead to a product that your users will 'actually' use rather than perfecting all features and then realizing that the user did not need them.