There’s an abundance of software around us. Pick any common problem and you’ll find a dozen options. From to-do apps to customer support, from habit trackers to CRMs, there’s no shortage of tools to choose from.
So, when we build a product or a feature - one question we need to answer is; why should someone buy this? Out of the options - what makes your software the right choice? Not the better one - but the right one.
People pick their software for all kinds of reasons. Price, features, customer support, developer ecosystem and more. Setting these aside, the rest narrows down to 2 things.
- What the software does
- How it does it
What it does
This is the main problem to solve, and the easy one.
- Maintain your sales pipeline
- Tracking product roadmap
- collecting customer feedback and so on.
This is easy if you’re building in a proven market - a proven space where the problem exists. People have validated it and tools have demand.
And with this clarity - what to build becomes clear, the table stakes are straightforward.
How it does it
This is where execution gets interesting.
- How do you deliver the what?
- How do your users solve their problem inside your product?
- What does the experience feel like?
The same job can be done in very a number of ways
- A product UI where you do a bunch of clicks
- Integrations inside your existing tools
- An AI layer that runs in the background - gives you context and reports.
Why the how matters
In a competitive market, the what rarely differs. Unless you are creating a new category - users evaluating alternatives already know what they want and that barely changes for the mainstream tools.
The how is where products stand out.
We see this every week at SparrowDesk . When teams come from Zendesk or Freshdesk - the first thing they notice is how simple it feels, how easy it is to navigate, set up configurations etc.
Arc browser from The Browser Company is another example. Arc browser revolutionised browsing for a lot of people. They built something people didn’t know they needed - but they couldn’t live without that after using. Fundamentally, Arc didn’t do anything new. Apart from some features - browsing was the key function. But a simple sidebar inspired a new cult following and a bunch of copycats.
The how is the product
The UX everyone talks about is the how. It’s one of the reasons people move between products that do essentially the same thing. Pricing, compliance, and ecosystem matter too, but experience is what makes someone want to switch, and want to stay.
How it does hides all the complexity of what it does. And a well-executed how is hard to come by.