I’ve had this rattling around in my cranium for a few days but haven’t really taken the time to write about a recent experience I had that has changed the way I look at things. On Tuesday (1/15/2008) I got to participate in a marketing panel. The folks at Savitz (Joe was our guide for the evening) were doing a study about first time buyers of new motorcycles. What I witnessed, for me, was a real eye opener.
We started off with some introductions. We worked with a partner answering some basic questions like what we did, who we lived with and what type of bike we had. Then we moved on to what was important to us about our bikes, what type of bike we would recommend to a new rider and our opinion about the type of people who rode various bikes.
On one wall he had pictures of ‘beginner’ bikes on the wall. On one end was the Kawasaki Ninja 250 and on the other end was the Honda CBR600F4i (?). In between were bikes the like Ninja 650 and Suzuki SV650. We talked about our opinions of the type of people who would ride the various bikes. It was interesting to me to hear other people talk about this. For me I know people who ride just about all of the bike he had on the wall. Hearing how people were forming their judgments of the riders based on the appearance of the bike was startling. Basically the general direction was that more mature sensible people rode the bikes that were less aggressive in appearance (Ninja 650 & SV650) and younger men would tend to ride the more aggressive bikes (like the ZZR600 and CBR600).
During our discussion we talked about our criteria for selecting our first bike (to be in the study it had to be your first NEW bike and our first bike) I was surprised about how the selection was made. In my case I got my EX500 based on recommendations that it was a good beginners bike that was strong enough to not get ‘boring’ but not so strong that it would be difficult to handle for a noob. Other people had similar criteria. In common with everybody though was the desire for a better looking bike. That was a surprise to me.
At this point Joe uncovered another wall with more bikes. These bikes were either concepts that might come to market or some that were just being introduced to the market. On one end were two 128cc bikes from Honda and Yamaha. The Yamaha bike was very popular because it looked like a Super Sport (very aggressive), in fact if you didn’t know what you were looking at you might mistake it for a 600cc or liter bike (ok – physical size might give it away). There were a few new 250s from Honda (not popular) a 250 and 650 from Hyosong and most importantly Kawasaki’s new 250 was on the wall. Nearly everybody said they would pick the Kawasaki 250 or recommend it to a beginner. Why? It looked like a Super Sport. It really looks good. Both the Kawasaki EX250 and EX500 have very dated looking designs that compared to other bikes are just flat out ugly. Actually, I have a hard time thinking they were ever good looking. However, Kawasaki manages to sell more 250s than just about thing out there b/c of it is the only choice if you want that size. The other small bike choices are the EX500 and Suzuki’s GS500. In the looks department the Suzuki wins b/c it manages to look somewhat like a GSXR600.
Both of the Hyosong bikes are pretty good looking, but nobody chose them because most of the people in the room didn’t know who the hell Mr. Hyosong was. So brand is a factor.
So the epiphany? In some ways I’m retarded for this, but I have never really given that much respect to how things look. I’m a freaking code monkey. I love technology and tools for their own sake. A car or bike’s value is determined by lap times, horsepower to weight ratio, and other features. But my customers don’t think like that.
I’ve developed what I believe is a great product that can solve important problems for my customers. Thing is: the UI sucks, the documentation sucks and my web-site sucks. Actually, the web-site isn’t that bad. The good thing is that all of this can be fixed. The core product (the batch processing of files) stands and doesn’t need much work. The UI stuff can be redone to make it more elegant and provide the user with a better experience. I can also spend some more time on my documentation and try to take more time explaining things to my customers.
Anyway, my big take way from being in a marketing study is that looks really do matter. As a geek it ticks me off a bit (can’t they just tell the product is great even though the UI is confusing?) but all I can do (or you can do) is adapt to it.
Think about it this way: how many good looking crap products have you run in to? Way too many. How many crappy looking great products have gone on to wide spread success? None.
Lesson – look good.