Jason Roe / Blog, Jason Roe - Web design, Development, SEO Advice

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Many web sites are built around the concepts of features, benefits are often overlooked. Site owners/developers some times confuse features with benefits and this results in an array of complications for the end user.

Knowing what your customers/users want out of your product is essential. It is critical to do your homework before implementing any new feature on your website.

Features must be tested in a controlled way to understand the benefits for end users. Exploring features with qualified users can often bring new insights into how your features are perceived.

In the same way that multivariate testing helps to optimise conversions and improve sales, controlled testing can optimise the benefit to your users. Rapid prototyping methods help enhance the effectiveness of your testing as controlled sample groups can be exposed to a number of variations of the same feature.

Vodafone Example

Here is an interesting example of a feature from vodafone. The Current Vodafone Pay Monthly customers option on the Vodafone store.

This “feature” forces requires users to pass some tests before they upgrade their phone as seen below.

Needless to say .. a method to do this was quite lacking (for some time) .. see below.

However if this did work .. I would be informed that I was not eligible to give vodafone moeny buy a new phone. Some times features like this provide little benefit to the user (other than confusing them). In this example you need to ask yourself .. will this feature benefit you the customer?

Conclusion

Features are an easier sell to customers when the benefit has been clearly defined, tested and proven. Invest time into creating features with a measurable benefit before inflicting them upon your customer/end users.

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