TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

4 Product Strategies for Success

I’m working on putting together one or more entrepreneurial ventures to keep me entertained in 2008. To both evaluate & generate ideas, I’ve put together a rough framework - below - of what I consider to be successful strategies. Any idea I’ve had needs to fit into one of these; if it doesn’t, there’s no business case to it. If I’m short on ideas on any given day, I can pick a strategy and apply it to any given product or market to kick start some thinking.

It certainly hasn’t made me wealthy yet (hooray for dayjobs!), but I’m still at it, and in the meantime you’re welcome to join me. YMMV!

1. Better Mousetrap: Modified product or proposition, same market (i.e.: price or feature competition)
   Ex: Google: simpler search, better results in an already crowded market
2. Re-purpose: Existing product, sold to new market segment
   Ex: Camelback hydration packs sold to the military for solidiers
3. Niche: New product aimed at a previously untargeted market segment
   Ex: Pugspot identifies pug owners as a monetizeable segment
4. Need: Identify an un-addressed, or unrecognized consumer need
   Ex: The banana guard (transporting a common, fragile food), or Overstock.com (liquidating old inventory)

EDIT: Note that I’m not including a definition of success here. Booth Google and the Banana Guard can be considered “successful” products - though the scales are obviously different.

business, design, marketing success

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Carol’s Web: See the net through the eyes of an aging boomer

Immersion Active is a marketing agency that targets the boomer demographic. Sometime recently they released an excellent “Interactive Aging Simulator” - its a Jakon Neilsen-esque (sp?) dissection of a hypothetical website from the perspective of aging users and covers everything from designing with high-contrast colors, to information density on pages, to choosing good imagery.

If you’re a designer, its worth your 10 minutes to go through. Even if you’re not designing a boomer-targeted website, most of the lessons are applicable to any project.

Hell, I’m only 30, and I’ve had enough 6pt fonts already.

boomers, carolsweb, design immersion+active

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