What start-ups can learn from bottled water
A little more than 10 years ago the bottle water craze took South Africa by
storm and I remember my dad laughing at the notion of buying bottled water
considering it was coming out of the tap for free. Today my parents consume
more bottled water than anyone else I know, and it's still coming out of the tap
for free. What happened? How did we go from using the free product to the paid
product? I think this is an interesting question and one that should be especially
interesting to those in the web industry.
On the internet more so than anywhere else things are readily available for
free to consumers.So how do we build applications and create an atmosphere
where users would rather use them than the free applications that are ubiquitous
throughout the internet?
When I ask my father today why he uses bottled water the answer might differ
depending on what day for the week it is, but the main point is that he thinks he
receives more value from bottled water. Some days he claims the water tastes
better, some times he claims he uses it because it's more convenient, sometimes
- even though he wouldn't acknowledge it - it's about the packaging and the
marketing.
In my opinion the bottled water companies did two things right to convince people
to switch to their product over the free one that was coming out of the tap.
Ease of use
Bottled water is available in every store anywhere you go, it's already packaged
and ready to drink - no need to find a tap in the middle of nowhere or a cup out of
the blue.Bottled water thus is a simpler solution, and one that is much easier to
use because it makes life easier. This can also be said about web applications.
Two applications might to the same thing but it is the one that makes life
simpler that wins.
Paid for applications must always strive to make life for the user simpler -
everything from the payment process to the general use of the application. This
is generally something people producing free applications struggle with, simply
because making something simple to use takes a little bit of hard work. It involves
research and crafting the perfect user interface. It involves a constant feedback
loop between customers and developers to refine aspects of the system users
are not happy with. It involves giving users support 24 hours a day.
Trustworthy and reliable
Even since the 16th century when bottled water first emerged it was always
used because the water was trusted to be cleaner and healthier than the water
found elsewhere, and we knew that the bottled water will be there whenever
we needed it, unlike the river.
Similarly applications must instil the same sense of security in their users.
Businesses for example prefer paying for services because when things go
wrong it is easier to get hold of who ever is delivering that service and request
that they solve a problem they might have. With free software this is always a
problem, the developers creating the software are often too busy or no longer
interested in the project to support or fix problems in their system.
Here now you have an edge over the free software, you have a product that
will work regardless of the conditions because your developers will always
be available to fix any problem.
