What feature did users completely ignore that you thought would be a hit?
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While building products, I've noticed something surprising.
The features I spent the most time building were often the ones users barely touched.
Meanwhile, a few "small" features I almost skipped ended up becoming the reason people kept using the product.
It reminded me that founders are often poor judges of what users actually value until real people start using the product.
Have you experienced something similar?
What feature did you expect everyone to love, and what unexpectedly became the most valuable instead?
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NINA
I think this is why founders should be careful about measuring features by the effort they took to build.
Users don't care how difficult something was to implement. They care whether it solves a problem they have right now.
I've started thinking of every feature as a hypothesis rather than an achievement. Until real users prove it's valuable, it's just an educated guess.
@varun1jan I like the idea of treating every feature as a hypothesis.
I've found it's often better to ship a simple version, measure whether people actually use it, and then decide whether it's worth investing more time. It's much easier to improve something users already value than to convince them to use something they never asked for.
In my latest launch, I added a YouTube Player to set the background of the Dashboard. I really thought this was a cool addition because when crocheting I usually watch something on YouTube or somewhere else and I noticed the same thing with other crafters so I thought it be a good idea to have it inside the dashboard. A user wouldn't have to move between the two applications. So far I haven't had any good feedback or anyone using it. I also think I'm at fault for not marketing the new feature well. I'm currently working on that.
@klytne That's an interesting example. I also wonder if it's less about the feature itself and more about discoverability.
Sometimes users don't ignore a feature because they don't want it—they simply don't realize it exists or don't understand when it helps. It might be worth highlighting it during onboarding or showing it at the exact moment it becomes useful instead of waiting for people to find it on their own.
@prashant_patil14 That's really good suggests. Thank you.