CONCEPT REFINEMENT: The pursuit of approximate perfection

I’ve got good news and bad news for you.

FIRST, THE BAD NEWS:  Your product isn’t perfect. 

After 100 prototypes, it might be really good.  It might even be great.  But there is room for improvement.  And that improvement matters.

While I have no data to support this statement, I believe improving from 95% perfect to 99% perfect (a four percent difference, if this could actually be measured) can translate to a 10x or more difference in sales.

I also believe that plenty of 95% perfect products completely fail because a fatal flaw exists in that remaining five percent.

It is important to view approximate perfection as the ultimate goal for your product.  Accepting known flaws will combine with unnoticed flaws to critically compromise your in-market potential.

NOW, THE GOOD NEWS:  Tools exist to quickly identify and fix imperfection.

There is a proven process of refinement that helps good products become great products.  This process utilizes quantitative insight to identify remaining improvements:

It can discover or validate the buyer profiles most likely to purchase your product and whether that purchase will bring incremental dollars into the category.

It identifies noticeable negatives, points of confusion and dislikes that can be removed or made less obvious.

It also determines what product factors are most noticed or appreciated and are actually driving purchase intent and therefore should be further emphasized in marketing messages.

It can even help guide a pricing strategy by modeling how that buyer profile, volume potential and profitability is likely to change at different price points.

And it produces compelling data points to sell your story to retailers as you seek to win distribution.

With past clients, concept refinement has revealed the fact that yellow should not be a dominant color on oral care packaging (yes, the association with yellowed teeth seems obvious now). 

It has revealed how iconography can be used to organize and communicate complex variants without cluttered and confusing words (freeing up space and time for shoppers to consider more meaningful points of differentiation).

And it enlightened us to the fact that certain home décor styles have broad appeal, but dramatically different purchase intent based on age (because different groups have accepted the need to match their existing décor while others are still in pursuit of a changing and aspirational design style).

If you’re willing to acknowledge that your product isn’t perfect, and if you believe huge payoffs can come from each incremental step taken to get your product closer to perfection, contact us to help.