Introduction

What is “product feature”? And how does it help you develop better products?

Product feature means the accessories of your products to a layman. To a designer, it means looking at your product from the perspective of potential users and analyzing what features they want or need. 

Whether you’re selling a pair of shoes or a table, you want to make sure that the features of your product are things that are worth buying.

In this article, we’ll talk about why conducting product feature research is such an important part of your design process and what it means to the consumers.

What is a product feature?

A product feature is an aspect of a product that makes it unique and desirable. A good example of a product feature would be the size of the iPhone, which makes it more portable than other smartphones. 

It also has an amazing camera and battery life, which give it an edge over other devices. To be clear, there are many different types of product features. 

Some examples include: size, shape, color/pattern, materials used (such as leather or plastic), shape (for instance, round vs square), and more. Therefore, a product feature is a specific part of the product that makes it better than other products. 

For example, the feature of a laptop is its screen size. The feature of a phone is being able to make calls and text.

A product feature include:

  • A brand’s logo or name on a product
  • The color of a product’s packaging
  • The shape or size of a product
  • The weight of a product

What’s the difference between features and benefits?

A product feature is a part of a product, like an accessory or an app. It can be something that you can add to your product and make it better, like an extra battery pack or a case.

For example, if you were designing a new kind of laptop, you might come up with the idea that your laptop could be used as a tablet. This is a feature because it makes the laptop more useful than it was before.

Another way to think about features is as small changes to existing products or services. For example, you might want to add an extra USB port to your computer so that you can plug in more devices at once. 

This is a feature because it makes your computer more usable without having to buy a new one. A benefit, on the other hand, is something a consumer wants from their brand or product. The benefit might be them having more energy or getting better sleep at night. 

A product benefit is a more general statement about your product, like “These phones are durable and have good battery life.”

Types of product features

There are a lot of different types of product features, and you need to know which ones are most important for your business.

  • Style: This is the look and feel of your product, like how it looks or what kind of shape it is. For example, if you’re selling clothes, you might want to show your customers pictures of the actual clothes in order to sell them more easily.
  • Function: This is how your product serves its purpose. For example, if you’re selling a new kind of coffee machine, this would be what makes it different from all the other coffee machines out there. What makes it better than others in terms of performance is the function. 
  • Experience: This is how your product feels when you use it. You might want to offer free shipping on orders over $100 or have a money-back guarantee on all purchases. These things can help convince people that your company is trustworthy so they’ll buy from you again in the future. Another example is, if you’re using your phone and suddenly it starts buzzing on its own, that’s an experience.
  • Quality: This is how well your product works overall. For example, if you’ve got a high-end wine rack that’s made with real silver instead of gold (which would cost more), this will make people think twice before buying from someone who advertises themselves as being cheap and unprofessional.

Why conduct product feature research?

Conducting product feature research is important for a number of reasons.

  1. It helps you understand how people are interacting with your product. It’s a way to get insight into how people are using it and how they’re interacting with it. You can ask them questions like, “What do you like? What don’t you like?” And by tracking their responses, you can find out what they’re looking for in your product.
  2. It helps you determine which features are most important to users and should be prioritized during development. For example, if you have multiple products and each has different features, but all those products are used interchangeably by customers, then the features that seem most important may not be the ones that get prioritized when developing new products.
  3. It helps you test your proposed ideas. You can run an experiment to see if a certain feature will increase sales or improve user satisfaction and then measure the results.

Good Questions for product feature research 

Good questions for product feature research:

  1. What are the main benefits of the product?
  2. What are the key features that make it unique?
  3. How much does it cost to use the product?
  4. What kind of people will be most likely to buy this product?
  5. How can we make sure that this product is easy to use and understand, even by people who don’t know anything about it already?

How to develop good product features

Good product features are critical to the success of your business. They can drive sales and increase customer satisfaction, and they’re often what people buy when they’re deciding whether or not to make a purchase. 

Developing product features is a process that takes time, but it’s worth the effort. Here are some tips for how to develop good product features:

  • Be specific about what you want. Ask yourself: “What do I want from this feature?”
  • Don’t just say “I want it!”; be specific about how you want it (e.g., “I want a feature that allows me to access my work from anywhere”).
  • Know why you need it. Go beyond just saying “because I want it!” Make sure your feature is actually going to improve your business in some way (e.g., “I need a feature that allows me to manage my social media accounts more efficiently because I have 25 different accounts, and each one takes up at least an hour each week on average”).
  • Test your idea by running A/B tests with different versions of your UI or onboarding process until you find something that

There are several ways to determine whether or not a feature is good, but perhaps the most straightforward way is by observing how many people use it and whether they find it useful. If your product has too few users and they don’t find your feature useful, then that’s an indicator that it isn’t as good as other features on the market. 

If there are too many users and they all like using the same feature, then that’s another indication that it’s a great product feature. If you aren’t building or improving your product features, then you’re missing out on some of its greatest strengths.

Product features are what make products unique, which means that when someone buys one of your products, they won’t be able to buy another one anywhere else. This means that having great product features will increase both your company’s revenue and its ability to compete in the marketplace. 

Conclusion

Product feature helps you identify and analyze all of the features of your product, so that you know exactly what value your products have. It also helps designers because the more you know about your customers, the more effectively you can design a product that addresses their needs, and the better a job you’ll do of keeping them happy with your offerings.  

The most important thing about conducting product feature research is that it requires a lot of time and effort from both people within your company as well as external researchers (who are often called “consultants”). This kind of research takes time, but it’s worth it when it pays off.


  • Olayemi Jemimah Aransiola
  • on 6 min read

Formplus

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