Making something simple is anything but easy.
And yet the majority of customers – both consumer and enterprise – prefer simple experiences.
Why is it so difficult to create a product that delivers a profound result with a relatively simple experience?
We dig more into this below, in a post that blends behavioural psychology with economics and product design.
Consumers Want Simple Experiences
According to Simplicity Theory, consumers want ‘simple’ experiences as the de-facto standard.
Why do people prefer simple experiences?
- Simplicity drives love: 64% of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand because of simple experience.
- Simplicity drives growth: Since 2009, a stock portfolio made up of the simplest publicly-traded brands (as defined by Siegel+Gale) has outperformed the market by 686%.
- Simplicity drives sales: 55% of consumers are willing to pay more for uncomplicated experiences.
The above post cites the Simplicity Index from 2018-19 that showed how many brands who had ‘simple’ product experiences were able to rise to the top of their respective categories.
Think of companies like Netflix, Aldi (supermarket) and Google as examples.
That’s because ‘willingness to pay a premium’ and ‘loyalty’ ultimately translate to greater margins, more repeat purchases, and better unit economics.
How Complexity Leads Us Away from Simplicity
In a search for answers as to why the product design process can lead us unwittingly down the road of overcomplexity, we have to start with a fairly logical starting point.
“Overengineering happens because we try to anticipate the future”
Often, we will try to anticipate every possible problem that would-be customers will have without ever even speaking to them.
A conceptual example of this can be seen in the following diagram based on the evolution of a code base for a given product vs. years of experience.
A lot of complexity comes from hypothetical future scenarios where assumptions are made that customers will flock towards the core features and immediately begin needing new features to deal with edge cases.
Ultimately, we often don’t learn of the power of simplicity – for multiple reasons – until we have gone through several iterations (and typically failures) due to overcomplicated solutions.
Whether for technology-based products or physical, everyday products, the rationale is typically the same, with a bit of nuance for different categories and customer groups.
You have probably heard the term KISS (“Keep It Simple Stupid”), without any additional context – the question is ‘how to keep it simple, stupid?’
The 80-20 Rule of Product Engagement
A very simple rule that tends to hold true across multiple different instances, is that 20% of inputs tend to bring 80% of results.
Thus, we want to try and determine what the 20% is that will generate the 80% of results for the end user.
In practice, for virtually any product, this means that as soon as you start to drift away from one or two core features, utility starts to drop exponentially.
By default, based on the way our brains our wired, less is more. That’s because each additional feature requires brain power and some level of attention to be able to learn, no matter how ‘easy’ we may perceive it to be.
Add too many features and people feel either overwhelmed or inattentive, both of which leads to drop-off or churn.
- A small number of features may be more valuable or helpful to users than the majority of features
- A small number of features may be more intuitive or easier to use than the majority of features
- A small number of features may be more frequently used or more visible to users than the majority of features
Simple in Practice – the Google Homepage
One of the best possible examples in history is how Google simplified search, as they were certainly not the first player in history to launch a search engine.
Yahoo was the first search engine to enter the market in 1994. Following their foray into the market, others like AltaVista and Excite entered the market. From there, competition to be the world’s first major search engine intensified.
AskJeeves debuted in 1996 as a more conversational way to engage in search.
It wasn’t until years later that Google was officially founded and launched, well after early competitors had already entered the market.
Alta Vista – Search Engine
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Ask Jeeves – Search Engine
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Excite – Search Engine
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Yahoo – Search Engine
There is a lot to the story of exactly how Google came from being years behind to becoming the dominant search engine of a generation, but a quick look shows several things differ from Google compared to the competitors:
- emphasis only on search, not news and other elements
- clean design with a lot of white space to reduce decision making complexity
- a less-is-more approach with getting people to search
How to ‘Tip the Scales’ back to Simplicity
We know that no matter what, it is not going to be easy to find that one killer feature on a product, so we need some kind of conceptual model to set us in motion.
Simply put, we want to identify the 20% and drop the 80%.
It takes trial and error and a sense of ruthless prioritization about to what to focus on along the path.
The fractal nature of the rule is that even getting 1% along the path leads to outsized results, so taking that first step in the direction towards simplicity is crucial.
There are always caveats to concepts like this, as the difference between B2C (Business to Consumer) and B2B (Business to Business) will shape how the specific cadence of steps occurs.
Enterprise solutions tend to be more of a gradual, mid-term process centered around the following, as enterprises tend to be more risk averse than consumers by default:
- understanding business requirements
- getting detailed customer feedback from the end business users
- extensive beta testing and review of any procedural or compliance-related requirements
Consumer solutions tend to be more parabolic and can explode in the short-term, and typically require extensive capital to scale:
- user-centric optimizations around one or two key features that can have a dramatic effect on the initial customer group’s respective lives
- experimentation around those key features using incentives, gamification, and social elements to make it viral
- building growth flywheels, adding layers of scalability so that word-of-mouth dynamics drive ‘viral loops’
Overall, the axiom ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’ a good one to keep in mind for any product design. The product design playbook is always evolving, and consumer’s preferences continue to rapidly shift as media evolves. Working with established, timeless principles can help minimize some of the risks associated with new product design and product launches.
