Something that I’ve had the pleasure of learning while trying to market myDomains is that people want features. However, features are not a selling point – people don’t use software because of the number of features you jam in, they use software because of the problems that software solves.
However, it’s still very common to see software marketed on feature set. Take the below Trillian banner:
It starts off well with “lets you chat anywhere” but then it quickly changes direction with “Learn about our 450+ features”
When I saw this banner some questions came to mind:
- What constitutes a feature?
- How many of those features will I use?
- How would you educate a user base about 450+ features?
- And did someone actually take the time to count those features!?
Obviously it’s easier to criticize than create. So if I were involved in Trillian, I would create a short description of the most useful features instead of a list of all the features. And I’d modify the banner to look something like this:
I’d then square off the two ideas in an A/B test and see what came out as the winner. Because who knows, I could be completely wrong and the more features a chat program has the more sign ups it gets.