Make the Product Easy to Understand
When we launched in 2004, text-messaging was nowhere nearly as ubiquitous as it is today so we found ourselves in a position where not only did we have to educate potential users about our product, but also about the technology it was built upon.
Finding the balance between building a site that's easy for new users to get started with while still satsfying your power users is one of the great product design challenges.
After unsuccessfully trying to explain everything dodgeball did we found that our users got a bit overwhelmed so we boiled down the offering to the three basic pieces of functionality and found that we got a lot more traction with the majority of our users.
We accomplished this with a flash movie on the homepage that quickly walked potential users through the three main actions that you can perfrom with the product. We also provided easy access to a power users' cheat sheet page from all the relevant points within the site.
Finding the balance between building a site that's easy for new users to get started with while still satsfying your power users is one of the great product design challenges.
After unsuccessfully trying to explain everything dodgeball did we found that our users got a bit overwhelmed so we boiled down the offering to the three basic pieces of functionality and found that we got a lot more traction with the majority of our users.
We accomplished this with a flash movie on the homepage that quickly walked potential users through the three main actions that you can perfrom with the product. We also provided easy access to a power users' cheat sheet page from all the relevant points within the site.