Great Products Consulting

Tag: growth

  • The Story of the GPC Logo (and what it means to you)

    The Story of the GPC Logo (and what it means to you)

    For today’s blog post, I thought I’d share a story with you. This one, like most stories, comes with a lesson for you about building and growing your web platform or mobile app.

    The story begins about ten month ago, when a young (ahem) lady decided to go out on her own and start a new business. Even though a lot of people are shunning business cards these days, this lady decided that they were still worthwhile for handing out at networking events (and to give to family and friends!) So, to start, a logo and branding needed to be created.

    As most marketers will tell you, to create your brand, you need to understand a bit about who you are, what you want to do, what you stand for, who you plan to sell to, etc. All of these go to influence some important visual elements of your brand – the name of your business or product, the colours you use and the fonts that you pick.

    A logo – basically consists of some colours, and maybe an image and some text. Some might even have a picture. Seemingly a simple thing – but it says so much about your business, which is why it’s so important. You want people to say nice things about you!    

    There are lots of graphic designers out there who can help you come up with a brand and logo. However, if you’re even slightly creative or have a limited budget (like I did), then head to Canva where they have a category called “Logo” to get you started.  Canva basically allows to design and create visual things – think business cards, posters, presentations, social media images, product labels, etc.  

    People can spend ages coming up with a brand and logo. Lucky for me, it was fairly straight-forward. A flick through the available logo templates in Canva, some tweaking of colours, a change of font and voila, I had the start of a logo. I showed it to some trusted advisors (a.k.a. my artistic friends), updated a couple of things and I was done!

    What made it easy for me was that I knew I wanted a circle of some sort in my logo.

    “So why did you I want a circle in my logo?”, you might ask!

    Well, I wanted to reflect the circular nature of the software and product development processes. Most people think that you start with an idea for a web platform or mobile app, build it, launch it and then you’re done. In reality, the development never stops – which is why we call both software and product development – “lifecycles” (For more info on these processes, check out this article).

    Once you’ve launched your app, you find yourself in a constant cycle of updates. Some you have to do (e.g. operating system upgrades for mobile phones, new legislation, etc.) and some will be driven from your customers, and your business strategy and processes. If you’ve already spent a ton of money building your app and the thought of spending even more money on development makes you cringe, I’m sorry to tell you that you might have to revisit your numbers to fit this in. However, for the most part, these changes are actually a good thing – and it’s what makes software and product development pretty exciting.

    There’s a good bet that when you launched your product, the product that you ended up with is at least a little bit different from your original idea. You’ve learned a lot along the way and now it’s time to take your product to the next level! The cyclical approach to development ensures that you can continue to improve and grow your product. Pick the right changes to make, and your product will help you to achieve your goals.

    The circle in the GPC logo is not a solid one.

    Did you know that there are a lot of different ways that you can draw a circle? Canva certainly has a few! So, how did I end up with this one?

    Did you know that research suggests that only 16.2% of software development projects finish on-time, on-budget and with the features and functionality requested? (Chaos Report, The Standish Group, 2014) What an appalling stat!

    Despite the number of apps and web platforms that get created every year, software development is not a perfect science. There are so many places where things can go wrong – not defining your product well enough, picking the wrong things to build, hiring the wrong developers, testing the wrong things, not testing enough, testing too much… the list is endless. With so many potential points of failure, it’s definitely a tricky road to navigate.

    So, based on all of this, I wanted the GPC circle to reflect the imperfect nature of this process. It’s also why one of my main goals is to help my clients successfully complete their development projects.

    And that’s my story…

    The GPC logo was built to be simple, but meaningful.  I hope that my little story gives you some insight into building and growing your platform or app.

    The next time you see the GPC logo, think about how you’re going to prepare for the cyclical nature of developing your product, and how you can address some of the potential pitfalls along the way so that you can have successful development projects.

    If you want to discuss how you’re going to navigate the road to building and growing your app, sign up for a free 30-minute discovery session* to make sure you’re on the right track.

    * When you sign up for a discovery session, we’ll also add you to our mailing list so you can receive emails from us (with your consent). These emails will include news and updates, occasional offers and promotions, and exclusive content and resources to help you on your development journey. You may also receive follow-up emails in relation to the discovery session. We will not spam you. If you don’t wish to hear from us anymore, simply select the unsubscribe option at the bottom of any email that we send to you. To view our privacy policy, click here.

  • Intro to Product and Software Development and Product Management (part 4 – launch and beyond)

    Intro to Product and Software Development and Product Management (part 4 – launch and beyond)

    You’ve finally made it! You’re ready to launch your product – but what does that mean? In the last article of this series on product development, software development and product management, I’ll talk about the “Implementation” and “Launch” phases. If you missed the other parts in this series, you can find part one (intro) – here, part two (beginning) – here, and part three (building) – here.

    Product Development

    In the “Launch” phase of product development, you introduce your product to the world. You execute the launch activities that you prepared during the “Develop” phase and your product is now ready for people to use.

     A few weeks after your launch, you should perform a review of your project to see what learnings can be gained. This will allow you to improve your product development processes as you continue to grow and enhance your product. From a product development point of view, you’re done for now and the product management part kicks in.

    Software Development

    “Implementation” is about installing your app wherever it needs to go (e.g. making it available on the App store or Google Play store, installing the code on the host, etc). Your developers will also tidy up their work so that they’re ready for the next project.

    There are situations where you may choose to not make your app available to people right away.  This might happen when you break down a technical project into multiple parts and spread out the delivery over several phases.  Alternatively, you might complete the implementation but delays to your marketing or other launch activities may prevent you from making your app available.

    Once the app has been launched (a.k.a “gone live” or “in production”), your technical team should be around to support it in case something goes wrong. You’ll need to spend some time defining some processes around this so that everyone’s expectations are clear on what needs to be done.

    Product Management

    Finally, the product management component comes into play!  Now that your product has been launched, you start to manage it through its lifecycle. Initially, you focus on the “Introduction” phase.

    Notice that things start slowly – don’t expect a big rush of sales on Day 1! This is where you wear your marketing and sales hats to make people aware of your product and to build their trust in your business. Ideally, you’ll do some prelaunch activities to start the awareness process.  You might leverage your email lists and social media platforms to get your first customers. When you’re a team of one, creating awareness takes time, and often some money, as you don’t have a team of people to help with all of the work.

    After your initial sales, you’ll be monitoring the progress of your marketing and sales activities, getting feedback from customers and looking to get yourself to the “Growth” stage. This (most likely) will include adding more features and functionality to your app. This is where the product development and software development processes kick in again. First, you talk to your customers, watch competitors and research the market to see where changes need to be made (ideation). You then decide which ideas to pursue (analyse). Next, you document what you want build (define and requirements) and you build the changes (develop, design, build and test).  Finally, you make the changes available to your customers (launch and implement). This development cycle is ongoing – so be prepared to continually invest in your product. 

    In the “Growth” phase, you’ll often see a lot of sales without having to invest a lot of money in marketing, sales and new app changes. Eventually though, this high-growth stage ends and you hit the “Maturity” phase where your sales will level out. You can choose to extend the Growth stage by looking for different ways to enhance your product. Alternatively, you can also look at targeting new customer segments or add features and functions that generate revenue from an entirely different source. You may also decide that you don’t want to continue to invest in the product and look to sell it.

    Eventually though, all products make it to Maturity and into “Decline”. Decline is where sales start falling off and your product starts becoming less profitable. During Decline, you look at how to manage your exit from the product and even remove it from the market.

    Wrap Up…

    So there you have it – this is the end of my 4-part series on product development, software development and product management. I hope it’s given you a good overview of what is involved in building a web platform or mobile app.

    Don’t worry if it all sounds a little overwhelming – you’re just getting started! You didn’t just wake up one morning and start walking – it took some time to get there. Think of building your web platform or mobile app in the same way – take it one step and at a time and you’ll find yourself learning as you go.  

    If you have questions about this series, then please leave them in the comments below.

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