Change. Don't do it!

Change

Change. Avoid it.

Change can be good. Change can be bad. Marketers should use a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard when determining what product and service changes to make. Please be very confident that these changes are needed.

When change is fixing something that’s broken or adding a new important feature, then that certainly meets the reasonable doubt standard. But too often products change even when they are working well. The decision about making changes is that the not changing should be higher than the cost of the harm that the change might do. Most industries employ glacial speed when it comes to changing a product. That’s not true in the software industry where change is fast and easy.

Software is the Culprit

With the flick of a switch software companies can deploy updates, deliver new looks and new feels, or new functionality and navigation. I think it’s clear that because it’s easy to change, software companies frequently change just because they can without understanding that for many, there is a cost of change that exceeds any perceived benefit of the change.

Even little stuff has a cost to consumers. Things as simple as adding a click, changing a color or moving a button require incremental effort to form new habits or learn the changes. No matter how much the change may add, the cost of change and the value of new features is a very personal equation. It might surprise many Marketers to learn that change is harder for some of us and we don’t need all those new features you are building.

While I understand that I’m sending off “old man” vibes, it’s important to point out that I personally don’t hate all change. When Adobe added generative AI to its Photoshop products, that was a game changer for me. But that’s not what my wife sees. She sees a new confusing box that pops up for a feature she will never use. At the same time, Slack and Fitbit updated their interfaces to change their look, yet I struggle to find any real benefits from the changes.

Think Like Your Customer?

Marketers learn the lesson early on that the secret to success is understanding their customers. In fact, it’s easy to conclude that the better a company understands its customers, the more success it enjoys. But there are a lot of bad Marketers in this world. A bad Marketer says, “I would want this feature.” Bad Marketers assume that since they are in the target market, that they are the target market. What they create is a product that one person loves.

Good Marketers understand what ALL of their customers want. In fact, I would go far as to say that the best Marketers, by definition are NOT part of their target market. Instead of selling to themselves, they have to do the hard work of asking more questions and gathering more data from real customers. They tend to rely more on the data and less on one person’s judgment.

I’m frequently amazed when I hear things like “We wanted to modernize the look” “it was time to freshen up the interface” or “We think this is a more intuitive navigation.” Change for the sake of change for many of us brings zero benefit. And for an existing customer that has invested in learning how to use a piece of software, by definition there is no such thing as a “more intuitive navigation.” The most intuitive navigation is the one we have already learned!

It's not You, It’s Me!

Look, I realize that I’m just one person and I may well be an outlier, but I don’t have a spontaneous bone in my body and hate most change. Maybe my personal success with a product needs to be sacrificed for the greater good and no one should design a product just for me, but do the Marketers know I exist? Are you sure there aren’t more people who have a higher cost of change and a lower perception of the benefit?

For me, there are clearly two factors driving my frustration. The first factor is my age. As we get older, I think, most of us get less excited about change. I wear a size 11 Reebok Club-C tennis shoe and have purchased one a year for forty years. I have no interest in changing. My choice of footwear, toothpaste, and even soda have been locked in for decades. This is exactly why most marketers target a younger demographic that isn’t locked in and more persuadable with their advertisements. While I admire that some love change, part of me wonders why they all can’t just be more brand loyal like me. My point is that as we age, we generally experience a higher cost of change and see less value in the same change.

The second factor is clearly genetic. No two customers are identical. Let me share one customer story. Mine! When a user interface changes, many people might say “Look, new fonts!” with some excitement, but that’s not what it looks like in my brain. I’m a very visual person. To remember something, I have to see it in my brain. I have what I can only describe as a visual filing system in my brain and it’s the basis for how everything is organized in my brain. When someone changes a font, it requires me to update my entire filing system. Is that a big deal? It’s probably a bigger deal for me than for others, but it really just begs the question, “Is the benefit of the change worth the cost?”

Marketers don’t understand how I perceive their products or they would understand this better. And there is no

My Message to Marketers

Think twice before making casual changes to your product. Change is an important part of acquiring new customers and differentiating from competitors. But not all change is good and both the cost and benefit of change are different for different people. Try to see the new features through the eyes of your customer. The best product and service strategies will broaden this calculation to be as inclusive as possible and thus evolve very carefully. Similar to the Hippocratic Oath, it’s critical that Marketers first, do no harm.

- Greg Harris September 22, 2023