BROADCASTS.com

Published: July 11, 2017, midnight

Are you getting ready to redesign a new version of a digital product with software? Avoid the top 5 software redesign mistakes by software companies I see made all too often.

#5 \u2013 Focusing On Current Customers

It\u2019s tempting to focus on what current customers of the product have wanted at the expense of NEW customers. If the goal of a redesign is growth, it makes sense to do market research and look at the product with an open mind. Do new customers have completely different needs than current customers do?

#4 \u2013 Trying To Include All Features Of Prior Version

Many companies spend too much budget and time trying to design a product that does everything the prior product did. A redesign is the perfect point in a product\u2019s life cycle to look at it with a fresh set of eyes before making a reinvestment. Throwing off the shackles of the existing product\u2019s feature set might be exactly what your team needs to envision a dramatically more compelling, simpler, and BETTER product for the market.

#3 \u2013 Budgeting Too Little For Marketing

As a digital software product becomes more established, many teams focus too much on the engineering side of the product. Is it possible that you might be better off budgeting a larger percentage of the investment in the redesign towards marketing?

If you\u2019re not doing Facebook advertising, Google Adwords, or Instagram posting to reach today\u2019s audience you could be missing out on an extremely effective way to reach customers that you used to via a different source.

#2 \u2013 Failing To Consider A Rebrand

Though the benefit of an existing brand name and marketing message can be an advantage, depending on the age of your product and the needs of new customers, it may make sense to rebrand. This allows a team psychologically to detach from the prior product more wholly and look at the new version through a completely different lens. Might this be a strategy your company could use to bring life back to a product that\u2019s no longer as compelling and exciting for the market as it once was?

#1 \u2013 Failure To Establish Measurable Outcomes

The biggest and most common of the software redesign mistakes I see made is unfortunately the failure to truly establish easily measurable outcomes for success. As a project gets underway, unless design decisions were made to accomplish easily measurable goals, it\u2019s easy for the team and management to lose sight of the purpose and simply look at the redesign as a \u201cproject\u201d to be completed. It\u2019s a huge opportunity to reach some exciting goals for everyone, and it provides cause for celebration to all those who were involved as they discover what the market wants!

You can also\xa0watch this episode on YouTube.\xa0

Related resources:

• How To A/B Software Development To Find What Customers Value

\xa0

Visit me at JaymeEdwards.com

Find me on Facebook at JaymeEdwardsMedia

Find me on Twitter as @jaymeedwards