New vs. existing features

This is one of the most difficult questions in product development. Here’s how we think about it at Capacities, plus one super important lesson at the end. 👇

Generally speaking, it’s a decision between attracting new users vs. respecting existing users. In other words: short-term attractiveness vs. long-term usage. The longer users have been using your product the more they will appreciate the improvement of existing features. If they are still using it, it means that these features are valuable to them and improvements will be very welcome.

New users, however, will first look at the feature set in the big picture. They are not sold on your product yet and will go from big to small: They look at the high-level functionality and features first before paying too much attention to the smaller details. Of course, the overall impression of the quality and snappiness will play a role as well, but in a subtler way.

We try to strike a 50/50-balance between the two

We think about what features to add very carefully. We only add things that solve real problems and bring value to our users. Nevertheless, we have a long list of new features that will make our app much better and more powerful.

These new features create excitement and can make your product part of the conversation. It will attract new users who are curious to try out this new feature. Attracting new users and growth is important to running a profitable business and getting more resources to build an even better product.

But we also want to respect all our existing users and want our tool to be a long-term companion. We have a very strong commitment to continuous product improvements and always include them on our product roadmap. This will make our users satisfied in the long run and in turn, make the business and the growth more sustainable.

At the end, you should always keep this in mind: Whenever you are adding new features, it is extremely important to integrate them with all existing features deeply. That’s what will make your app stand out and bring additional value to the users – a unique combination of features that work together seamlessly. Because for just the feature itself, they could find another app. I will talk about this in more detail in another post.