Maybe You Have Missed This Knowledge: Feature Discoverability

I'm sure you've probably been through a conversation like this:

Me: Mama, I can't find my joggers. I've looked everywhere.

Mama: They're under your bed.

Me: They're not there, Mama. I looked.

Mama: (walks in annoyed and instantly spots them) What do you think these are, Aatir?

Me: No...But...I could have sworn...OMG.

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Has this happened to you?

Well, let me tell you that it's probably happened to your customers.

Here's a true story.

When I was working at Talentera (applicant tracking system), we used to have a major client from the Middle East. It was a large conglomerate that had signed up for a $30K annual with us.

They decided to cancel one day saying their needs had expanded beyond our solution. Leadership scheduled an exit interview call to understand what we could have done better.

In the call, their point of contact mentioned about how we didn't have a requisitions workflow, certain search features, templates etc.

Our manager was shocked.

Because we had every single feature they were looking for. For years.

Leadership requested them to sit on a 30-minute call with our top product specialist and if they didn't find what they were looking for, we wouldn't pursue them further.

A day later, our product specialist blew their mind. We saved the account.

Of course, the person managing the relationship could have done a better job to see these red flags coming & proactively scheduling training.

However, the product should have done a better job of this too.

We realized our feature discoverability was poor. This prompted us to completely redo our navigation & also update the nomenclature.

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Product Managers sometimes obsess about maximizing value by building more.

However, sometimes the answers lies by maximizing value by EXPOSING more.

Feature Discoverability is less talked about.

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See more: Feature Discoverability Map

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Each feature has 2 parameters:

1- Expected frequency of usage (e.g. search function on ATS is highly frequent, creating a new rejection letter template is less so)

2- Certainty of usage (e.g. a basic setting like connecting Hootsuite with a social account is certain, while an advanced feature like using a certain report view is probable based on the user's caliber).

Develop a map plot to map each feature to the appropriate discovery element.

High frequency, Highly Certain?

Ex: Searching resumes on an applicant tracking system.

=> Expose the feature on your main navigation, open up a search bar etc.

Low frequency, Highly Certainty?

Ex: Connecting Zoom with Google Calendar

=> Make it part of the onboarding process & top of settings menu

...and so on.

Moreover, the naming of your features/entities play a crucial part too.

Know if your user base will understand "Copy" vs. "Duplicate" vs. "Clone". Should you use "Projects" or "Campaigns"?

Invest in a card sorting exercise, especially when introducing new mental models.

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Summary: Building them isn't enough. Placing them is equally important.