One thing I’ve learned as a buyer and seller of technology is that showing really clear value to the user right away will trump better long-term performance or more complex considerations like total cost of ownership. Every time.
Users will go with the ticket price and the easy install again and again, without addressing the problems of total cost or eventual scale. Eventually, they regret that.
If they are buying a database, they end up with a Mongo hangover (easy install, scaling headache).
If they’re choosing insurance, they end up paying a low premium to a notorious insurance company, and getting crappy healthcare.
In healthcare staffing, they compare the lower hourly wages of in-house employees to agency nurses, without looking at the costs of recruiting, training, onboarding and payroll taxes that come with full-time employees.
But that low ticket price, that easy install, gets them again and again.
And there are profound reasons for that.
Humans discount the future. We have learned to distrust long-term predictions, and rightly so. We overindex on short-term benefits because at least those are real. Those are the bird in the hand.
It’s like they say in politics: “If you have to explain, you already lost.”
Don’t think of the totality of your product going up against the totality of a rival product. Think of them jousting in a tournament, round after round, at each step of the workflow. If you lose the first bout, you don’t get to compete in the second. You have to win early if you want a chance to compete later (and take the prize). If the top-of-funnel workflow is bad, no one gets to the fireworks at the bottom of the funnel. Anything else is wishful thinking.
I’m not here to give you a pep talk about high-pressure marketing or scammy funnels with hidden fees. I’m just saying that making something people want means speaking their language now. Addressing their needs right out of the gate. Getting them to an aha moment in seconds. Not waving your hands and showing them a complex spreadsheet.
For founders and product designers, that requires an extreme focus on the first-touch UX. Sweating until you get to simplicity. Knocking down the extra steps and hiding complexity from the user until they feel that rush that comes when something is easier and faster and better than they thought was possible.
I’ve summarized this approach to value propositions in a handy table:
If you think by optimizing for benefits deeper in the user journey, you will beat the people building for the first touch, you’ve already lost.