Where Due Diligence is Needed

I was once guiding a product team to build & launch a candidate evaluation feature on a SaaS-based recruitment product.

We spent 100s of hours developing it and planning GTM strategies.

I felt I had ticked all the boxes.

Customer validation via prototype. Check.

Easy to use interface & intuitive UX. Check.

Explainer video. Check.

Social, blogs, content. Check.

In-app promos. Check.

The result?

It bombed hard. The uptake was miserable.

No, it wasn't because it didn't solve a problem. Recruiters who used it confirmed that it addressed a long-standing frustration.

The issue was organic discoverability.

First, this was an enhancement of an existing feature. However, I (tragically) chose to give it a different name which wasn't familiar to clients.

Second, we completely ignored discovery path optimization.

The unique number of paths to get to the feature was 1 and the minimum clicks required on that path were 2.

It wasn't on the main nav.

It wasn't contextually shown on any other related features (there were many).

The user was never prompted about it after any of the other aha moments.

So, building an ace feature isn't enough.

You need to think about how to bake it into the fabric of your existing solution to ensure organic adoption.