Is your product confusing consumers?

Amazing FBA Amazon and ECommerce Podcast, for Amazon Private Label Sellers, Shopify, Magento or Woocommerce business owners, and other e-commerce sellers and digital entrepreneurs.

Is your product confusing consumers? Is your product confusing consumers? Hey folks today you find me in the glamorous location of our garage and I've got a simple but really important point to make about consumer product design, particularly if you've got a complicated product. So here is our trusty tumble dryer. I wish it were a washer dryer, but for various reasons, my wife wants to keep the old washing machine, so we end up schlepping stuff from one place to another. So by the way, hint number one, if you can create a machine that solves two problems in one go, and they logically belong very, very closely together, like washing clothes, what do you always do? You dry them. If such a thing doesn't exist in your market, or it's not very functional, that's a good hint. But that's not the main thing for today. The main thing for today is this look at this panel. We've got a bunch of different options, look how many options, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 different options. Guess which one I always use? Eco. Why? Because I want it simple. I've got four options for how dry I want it. The one is hanger dry and the previous one is like, extra dry. And then the other one is iron it. I would argue that you probably need three settings maximum there. Then you've got everything else. Timing, how long it lasts for I don't even know what that does. That's the temperature obviously, that's something special. Guess what I do? I use Eco, I choose the driest one, I press on and then I'm done. if you overcomplicate the user interface of any product at all, you are probably not adding value for anyone. And you probably think you are adding value because engineers love complexity and they love solving problems. And so the product designers, as you get very, very deep into a product there, you realize there are more and more nuances. And you think you're adding value by adding complication. I very much doubt you are. I think that you're very likely to be adding stress to a consumer's life. What they want is something that works reliably, is very, very, very simple to use and gets them the outcome they want. Now, okay, there may be a few different outcomes and I'm not saying you shouldn't have a few different options. But the reality is that your consumer is going to choose one of two of them. There's a good argument in favor of creating something very simple. Years ago, Anita Broderick, I think. The creator of the incredibly successful brand, the body shop said and this was back in the nineties or the two thousands, right? When home computers were relatively new thing. " I think somebody should can invent the computer, which has four buttons on and off, and that come on with the other three where, and she makes a valid point. Most computer systems, most domestic appliances. are way more complicated than you need, right? I could take you indoors and look at the oven. But let's look at this. This is actually not too bad as interfaces go, but guess what? When my father in law turned up here, He's got an oven, an electric oven like this one. He put this on in order to put the oven on, but guess what that tiny symbol means? Grill. Well, first of all, if you're selling products to the UK, why don't you put English on them? There's a, there's this large language market for English language products, I understand. Like that might include England Australia Canada United States. Right? It's not rocket science. So first of all, this tiny symbol is supposed to mean grill. And secondly the, there are, there are just even here too many options. So here's the half grill. I kind of get it, but it could be simpler and clearer. Couldn't it? So again, there's more about clarity than too many options. And again, this whole oven timer thing, everyone in the world who's got an electric oven knows there's a timer on it. I don't know anyone who uses it.