Create a Winning Product

How does your product rate? What makes it stand out from competitors? Are you looking at the right factors (ones your customer care about)?

1. Performance  [ primary operations, ease of use, quality output]
2. Features [ bread and butter functions used most of the time, unique functions]
3. Aesthetics [ the look, texture and feeling ]
4. Price [ too expensive, too cheap or affordable]
5. Service [ speed, politeness, effectiveness ]
6. Reliability [ does it worked as expected and frequency of failure ]
7. Durability [ product life in years ]
8. Safety [ does no harm to people or property ]

 
Let’s face it the items 1 to 4 is what is going to strongly influence the first time buying decision. While items 5 to 8 will strongly influence whether they will be buying you product again. While safety is very important consumers will assume it is safe, unless risks are very clearly spelled out on the product packaging.
 
Customer profile characteristics you should be aware of before you even develop the product may include:

1. Age in years [ 0-3, 4-8, 9-13, 14-18, 18-23, 24-30, 30-40, 40-50, 50-60, 60-70, 70-80, 80-100+ ]
2. Income in USA $s [ 0-10k, 11k-24k, 25k-35k, 36k-50k, 51k-70k, 71k-95k, 96k-180k, 181k-500k, 501k+]
3. Family status [ single or married, with children, without children ]
4. Geographic location [ apartment, house, city, rural, suburb, continent, country ]
5. When they use it [ at work, at play or both ]
6. Need it [ government mandate, driving business costs/productivity]
   
7. Want it [ cool factor, status, convenience]

 
These are broad categories to get you started but you have to drill down to more detail to get a clear picture. Also break it down not just to ID the typical user but look at tails or clusters of your data break down to get some insight into "the why" they are using your type product. Research your customer! In the USA the US census data is good start for basic info. Ask your local librarian they are a wealth of information.