A product that's intuitive to use and extremely simple to understand is a market winner. Is there a greater validation for a product than its users? That’s why, to build a winning product you require much more than engineering excellence.

Areas of Excellence

There are 4 key 'areas of excellence' that contribute to the success of your product.

1. Market sense
2. User experience
3. Technology sophistication
4. Customer success

Each of these areas of excellence comprises of certain characteristics that help you identify a product as a market winning product.

Characteristics Under Areas of Excellence

Competitor Conversion/Faster Sales

• Market Sense: High conversion rates indicate that your product offers a good value proposition and has found its product-market fit.
• User Experience: Products that tempt users to experience the product are easy to sell as they make a great impression in demos, etc.
• Customer Success: Existing customers who recognize the value, offer more genuine recommendations and referrals

Customer Loyalty and Locking

• User Experience: Delighted users, take customer loyalty to the next level with increased usage and frequency
• Market Sense: Smart locking of customers can be achieved through regulatory requirements, partnerships, integrations, etc.
• Technology Excellence: Robustness, accessibility, performance etc. improves customer loyalty significantly
• Customer Success: Business success brought through the product assures management buy-in and loyalty

Fast Return-on-investment

• Market Sense: Smart market positioning (market segment and value proposition) returns a high price point for the product
• Technology Excellence: Right technology can lower the development/maintenance costs to reduce the break-even time and to maximize profit
• Customer Success: An increase in up-sales and referrals speed up financial growth

Future Fit of the Product

• Market sense: Business model and value proposition selection must be valid for the future and be flexible enough to stay trendy in an ever-changing market
• Technology Excellence: Technology architecture/platform selection must be agile for future needs and scalable for potential growth

Engineering Continuity

• User Experience: User journeys that are validated and flexible, require minimal changes, reducing the rework expenses
• Technology Excellence: Stable technology selection, pragmatic/not-so-complex architecture that’s upgradable in a modular form