

Popular Web Strategies That Don’t Work - jtron1
http://uxmag.com/strategy/five-popular-web-strategies-that-dont-work

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mirkules
From #1: "you can never lead your market by following the pack."

You don't have to "lead your market" to be profitable.

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SoftwareMaven
But you will eventually become irrelevant, which makes new customer
acquisition extremely difficult.

Most companies that profitably lead by following the pack do so by leveraging
other products they produce as their way to the customer.

If you have a handful of "leading" products and a handful of "following"
products, this can be a very good strategy as it allows you to produce
"solutions" that leverage the sales of the leaders. On the other hand, it
rarely works for a single product and doesn't work for long when all your
products follow.

In general, following is usually a result of poor product management (doesn't
understand the customer) or poor executive management (doesn't invest in
product development). Rarely is it part of a well-considered strategy.

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forgotAgain
_#5 Epiphany Don’t bank on epiphanies. Processes that are repeatable and
controllable are the most reliable sources of innovation._

I disagree. Brilliant people make for innovation. Repeatable processes make
refinement possible but not true breakthroughs.

Overall I think the statements made work very well for a consultancy selling
services to management. I don't see them working so well for a startup.

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gnaritas
Repeatable process: Hire brilliant people!

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jamesteow
I'm not going to equate my experience with everyone else but when I looked at
why I switched from one service to another, it actually does relate to the
strategies that 'don't work.'

Why I switched from Yahoo Mail to GMail: #1, #3

Why I switched from Digg to Reddit: #1, #3, #4

Why I switched from Facebook to G+: #1, #3, #4

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wccrawford
I think they are trying to say that following those strategies to their
ultimate is what doesn't work.

Because if taken in moderation, those strategies not only work, but are
essential to your success.

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karl_nerd
I interpreted that it meant, especially concerning usability, that those
strategies are not things you can easily differentiate with, they're rather
commodities.

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da5e
"Be Remarkable."? He could have picked any positive adjective out of the
thesaurus and it would been as useful as that. Weak article.

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jff
I like how in #1 he says, "Don't just do what others are doing!", then goes on
in #2 to say, "You don't have to be original! Google wasn't the first search
engine!"

Google is a good example, in fact, because they followed #1, #3, #4, and quite
possibly #2 (a search engine that doesn't suck? How novel!). There also might
be doses of #5 sprinkled throughout Google's work.

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Wilduck
The difference is that in the #1 point he was talking about not simply
implementing the features of a competitor. If you notice company B has feature
X and therefore decide you must have it as well, you may be in trouble if it
turns out feature X isn't useful and is hard to implement.

So, it's obvious that while Google wasn't the first search engine, they also
weren't simply copying Altavista's feature list.

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staunch
Tell Zynga that copying competitors doesn't work. Please wait until after
their IPO though, to soften the blow.

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Robin_Message
Anyone else see the contradiction between _5\. Don’t bank on epiphanies._ and
_Conclusion: Be remarkable._?

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SoftwareMaven
I think you can build remarkable products by really understanding your
customers _and the people who would never buy from you_. If you build
relationships, you learn about their pains, and solving customer pains makes
you remarkable, no epiphanies required _.

_ Well, now that I've written this, I realized what you might have been
thinking (eg "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" type of thing). To the extent an
epiphany is an insight about your customers gained by understanding your
customers, I completely agree with you. To the extent it is a "brain wave" out
of nowhere that is going to magically save the product (which is what I think
the article meant), then I agree with the article.

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Ulankgz
this guy really opened my eyes. I think he knows very well what says.Shortly
and to the point

