When you are set on to step into the digital technology space, consider it as a product of your organization. Your users, indifferent to the chosen platform, have sought you out and paid for your product that will help them to carry out a task. No matter what type of business you have, your website/app is the first product they will interact with. But while developing one, most of the entrepreneurs tend to hurry up the process and settle for less. How do I know?
Because we have companies approach us for either a complete revamp or to develop a website from scratch usually with somewhat identical purpose:
- 1. Capture more customer
2. Sometimes (mostly, all the time) because their competitors are doing it
All look for the better result but with the same ragged approach. As amazing as this digital world is, it has clearly misled entrepreneurs into believing that their digital counterparts are a mere sale tactic. Your website is not just an add-on.
You need to reconsider your attitude towards the technical facet of your company. During my journey as a tech partner, I have met with many entrepreneurs. So believe me when I say, you are not alone. Marty Resnick and Adrien Leow from Gartner released a research on mobile app & web development a few years back, wherein they had urged entrepreneurs and developers to treat apps and websites as a product.
So far there are around 1.6 billion websites present on the internet, but only 10-15% are active
And out of that, only 2% is visited by the majority of 3.6 billion internet users.
Route to success
With a project-centric development model, You are building a development team whose sole goal is to finish the task at hand. Leading them to lose sight of long-term goals. Sure, who wouldn’t like a handful of new visitors every now and then? But using your website as a side-kick is mishandling the given opportunity.
Why should you treat your website like a product?
When you think of your website as a product, you are nurturing an agile website development team. Your whole team’s approach changes altogether, interactions take over tools and processes. Your team will be more inclined to respond to changes than following a rigid plan. But let’s discuss it in details
Purpose of the team
When you design a product, what are the aspects you think about? With a product mentality, you will put together a team who’d be able to create loyal customer followers. The outcome you’d expect will be beyond the website. Rather focused on users. You will practice MVP in the online realm as well.
Team Recruitment
When you do a website just for the sake of it, you may hire the best of designers, developers and maybe even copywriters. Just this many people may seem enough for a website. But when you think about it as a product you prioritize your customers and should include someone with more of a customer-centric approach.
Requirements
Needs change as your purpose changes. When designing a website you think of your stakeholder’s goals, focussing on documentation and presentations. But for a product, your sole interest lies in your customers. Similarly, a website’s sole purpose is to attract users, your job should be to look into what intrigues your users, how you can gather more views from them- making it more flexible and easy to retrieve information.
Delivery
Your website will demand full-blown research on all aspects of website design. From site architecture to competitive analysis, everything needs to be decided after thoughtful observations. At this stage, having a design governance methodology in place will assist you to achieve your goal. Maybe include a new technique in your process that will help your team to be focussed on customer experience. One of which we have been following so far is Lean innovation. This process is anchored more towards experimentation to bridge the gap between what users expect and what they get. When you adjust your planning as per this methodology you have signed up for an effective customer-centric product.
Tools
You win a war not only by the mindful games but killer apparatus as well
For your website, you need to have both working hand-in-hand.
Your website development team won’t be just developers, it will be an enclosed team consisting of all the core members like your content specialist, SEO specialist, accountant, and business developer. They all need to be well connected with each other in order to make your goal viable; using a good collaboration tool where your team and the developers can effectively communicate will bring in more transparency and friction-less process.
Implementation
You weigh the next step in advance to anticipate the possible outcomes. More inclined to release it in small batches, absorbing in collective responses to work upon your website. You line up your actions as per minimum viable product which gives you better customer insights. Using MVP to test your app idea in real market conditions will prepare you to respond to changes more efficiently.
Conclusion
When you walk your company around with a customer-centric product you do not gamble your chips for short term value rather a long lasting one. You have signed up for an everlasting undecided competition. With a product-centric approach, you can certain your position in this never-ending race. If you are looking for a technical partner, go for a web app development team who shows all these skills in their conduct.
