Some people think that solving the problem is the only thing that matters. Wrong. While solving the problem is key to building a successful product, a successful product is more than simply a solution to a problem. A great product makes you feel happy and actually want to use it. A really great product makes you search for the problem it is solving, just so you can make use of it.

Identifying the problem and building the solution to that problem within your particular domain is of course the first step.  However, once you have your kick-ass solution built, there’s much more you need to do in order to have a great product.

When I use your new pet grooming scheduler, it should make me feel happy and fully in-control, leaving me with the opinion that I had a great experience using it. Usability and visual appearance can completely kill a great product if done poorly. A great product is not just about solving a problem, it’s about how it makes its users feel.

Using your application should make me feel smart by making it easy to do the right thing and making it hard to do the wrong thing. When I enter a new schedule for the brushing of my pet gopher’s teeth, the application should make me feel smart; I found out how to create a teeth brushing schedule in like 10 seconds and I even figured out how to set up SMS alerts so that I never forget.

Your application should be surprisingly easy to use. Surprisingly is the keyword here. Too many applications force you to think, leaving lots of room for a great competitive advantage if you can make your application so easy to use that it actually surprises your users by exceeding their expectations.

When inputting the preferred height of my gopher’s ear hair, my experience should be shiny and polished. We are all magpies at heart and we seek shiny and polished things. More importantly though, user interfaces are just like book covers; we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we almost certainly do. When your users first see your application, if it looks like something from the movie Hackers, you can forget any potential revenue predictions you had because people will think it sucks – even if it’s the best application ever made in terms of functionality. Make your product look expensive and elegant and people will perceive it to be worth more.

When designing your awesome new application, keep in mind just why you are doing it. You’re trying to help old Mrs. Frederick from number 27 better schedule when she should take her crap-happy dog for walks, right? However, unless you have attended one of Mrs. Frederick’s tea parties and had a chance to talk to her at great length, you have absolutely no idea how she would prefer her problem gets solved. Same goes for the other 499,999 customers that your first month business plan prediction has estimated.

Design your system so that it solves the basic problem, of course, but don’t aim to complete it before a customer has seen it. You want your system to be as simple to use as possible and if you only release once you have implemented your annual target of 365 features, it certainly won’t be simple. Release iteratively, listening to your customers’ requests in each cycle and ultimately delivering what they want. In doing this, your customers see the product evolving and feel much more involved. Put simply, the more opportunities you make for your customers to drive the development of your product, the more chance you’ll have of delivering a product they want and hence are more willing to pay for.

In summary: If you don’t make your product surprisingly easy to use, your customers will simply move to a competitor’s product that is surprisingly easy to use. If you don’t integrate your customers into your product development, you will deliver something they don’t want and they won’t pay for it. If you don’t make your product look and feel shiny and new, your customers will think it’s rough and old. Design your new product with these these things in mind. You should wow your customers, not simply satisfy them.