Reducing features: how should I handle this?
I have an unsuccessful product. It's been live for over a year and just does not have traction, but it costs me very little, and it does have some MRR, so I'm not about to shut it down.
I think one of the major issues is that it is buggy (yeah I know) because it has so many features. I'm inclined to reduce the set of features and therefore reduce the complexity massively. I can then focus the little time I have on maintaining and improving the simplest form of the app, making sure that the core value is rock solid.
The problem I see is that there are some existing customers that use some of the other features and would potentially be unhappy about me removing them.
I don't want to leave the code in but prevent new users seeing them, because that defeats the purpose.
Has anyone else faced this kind of situation?
I'm building the MCU of SaaS 💎
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Fork the project and move old customers to a new domain.
Or use feature flags and move the old code to an archive
This would be best option for what you’ve described, IMO.
Move existing users who rely on the legacy features to a separate legacy subdomain, similar to old.reddit.c0m. [1]. Then add a banner or some similar notification explaining to those users the features are being deprecated but will remain available at that subdomain.
[1] Sorry for butchered links. Not able to post links yet.
Ask your users/customer what they value the more!
I was actually going to say this. If your userbase is small, you might just send out a survey and get user's to just say what are the must-have features and go from there.
Grandfather existing users in. They would still have access to the removed features, but new users would not.
Well, start keeping only the cows and stars (BCG). Once that is done, I would make a difference via marketing and copy in order to lower as possible the disgust. Try showing another product feature as the key solution and mantain it living as long as possible.
Here are a couple of suggestions from me 👇
• Revamp UX/UI completely.
• If possible cut the features in half or more. But here's a catch, think around if you can make two products by cutting features.
Previously we had a product which became complicated with features. So, I made two apps from one, divided the features - rebranded one app completely, and launched.
The old one kept simple with the previous UX/UI.
Slowly stabilize your all-in-one product - accept that it is buggy, focus on fixing the core feature, and potentially branch out some of the features and remove less popular features (you really don't need those).
In one of my recent posts, How I made $27k in 2 months from 2nd Startup, I wrote about how I started Howuku and Mida.
I am also facing similar problems that you're facing but after we have branched out the A/B testing feature into Mida.so it has been growing fast and almost overtaking Howuku MRR now.
All the best!
At least 2 ways. The first one, reduce all but the core feature. The second one, start reducing by simplicity until a considerable amount of customers claim for it.
Navigating the reduction of features in your product involves transparent communication with existing customers about the decision to streamline and focusing on core values. Gather feedback, offer alternatives, and consider a phased approach to ease the transition. Provide notice, consider 'grandfathering' existing users, and emphasize your commitment to enhancing the core features. Monitor user reactions, offer customer support, and regularly evaluate the impact to make informed decisions and ensure a successful transition.
You could use feature flags to "grandfather" existing users and disable functionality for new users.
After you debug a feature and it's ready to be re-introduced, then turn the feature back on.
Use Google Analytics to track which features your users actually use. Then, as a first step, hide some of the less-used ones. You will find out if users need them.
It sounds like you know the features are being used. So that's a good first step, you definitely need analytics before you deprecate.
The fact you have users paying for those features, means there is some market you are tapping into. Maybe one of those features is better as a standalone application that can focus specifically on that market.
However, to begin with, what you're really looking for is something called Feature Flagging. There are lots of services that you can pay to use, or you can just add a table in your database to manage it yourself for WAY cheaper.
But basically, before you load the UI you check the customer entry to see if they have a certain feature available. You make sure that these deprecated features are enabled for certain customers, but by default it's off for new users. That way they don't even see it as an option in the UI.
Could u see the user-using data? Maybe you can analysis what is the most important features for your user.
luckily, from more to less is easy.
You provide no info about your project, that we could use to help you or give advice :)
You said it is running, do you have a link to it?
Do you need someone to have a meeting with and then just tell you drop these 3 features?
Why is it better for you to drop features instead of fixing the bugs?
I am willing to help but we need more information.
HI, I didn't want to link to my app through a combination of embarrassment and not wanting to leave up links where I'm essentially admitting I cannot fix it. I can't fix the bugs without a significant amount of time, which I don't have.
My question was not really about the specifics of the product, more on the customer service side; how to approach the fact that my paying customers will be getting a smaller product. I was looking for any insight on how best to handle that. I can't be the only person to have loaded too many features in to then have to pare it back to a more basic offering. I guess it's how best to communicate this?
Sorry for the confusion, appreciate your response.
Just put a toast message into the app informing the users that due to lacking quality you will (temporarily?) remove some features.
I don't understand why remove them if people use them?
What I did in a similar, but maybe not as dire situation, I let everything run as is. Fixed bugs that were communicated by users to me as quickly as possible and let them know that I'm working on it but it's not easy to find or reproduce it.
Aside from that I identified which issues were either the easiest to fix or had the biggest impact and started clearing them one by one.
Not much more to do there I feel.