Y’all. A 75% open rate?! I’m incredibly glad you’re enjoying the issues! As promised, freebies are coming but I’ve had a bit of a setback… (see below).
Your Users Don't See Themselves in Your Product (And Here's How to Fix That)
I got T-boned by a car last week.
Fractured skull. Brain bleed. The works. (Don't worry, I'm recovering well, just taking things a bit slower than usual.)
But even with my banged-up brain, I had a crystal-clear product insight during a client call yesterday that I need to share with you.
Here's the thing: your users aren't connecting with your product because they don't see themselves in it.
Let me explain.
I was working with a client who's creating a platform to help people discover and apply for social services and benefits programs. Their initial interface was... fine. Serviceable. Perfectly logical.
But it wasn't working.
Then my client said something that sparked an "aha" moment: "People don't know that Medicaid pays for ramps in some places."
And there it was. The problem wasn't the interface itself - it was that users couldn't see how these programs connected to their actual needs.
People don't wake up thinking, "I need to apply for Medicaid today." They wake up thinking, "I need a bloody ramp so my mum can get into her house."
The Real Problem
I've found that most founders build products based on how they organise information, not how their users actually think. It's a classic case of "the curse of knowledge" - once you understand your solution, you forget what it's like to not understand it.
Your users aren't looking for your product category. They're looking for a solution to their specific, immediate problem.
Learning from the Greats
I immediately thought about Amazon's approach. When you visit Amazon, you don't see a list of categories and manufacturers. You see products displayed in multiple contexts, through multiple entry points, all designed to connect with different user needs.
Different ways to discover the same stuff. Amazon shows you identical products through different categories or ways you might think about them. (PS - can you spot the arnica cream I so desperately needed? 🥹)
This is precisely what non-technical founders miss when building products: you need to create multiple entry points to the same solution based on how users actually think about their problems.
In my client's case, instead of organising everything by program name (Medicare, SNAP, etc.), we're redesigning the experience to include: