Crafting The First Mile Of Product

As leaders become immersed in their products, they become more focused on the users they have and less on those they don’t.

As leaders become immersed in their products, they become more focused on the users they have and less on those they don’t.

The natural tendency to gravitate towards your best customers handicaps your ability to build and sustain increasingly inclusive products.

If you want to build a product that millions (or hundreds of millions) of people can use, you must defy this tendency to prioritize the core product at the expense of the “first mile.”

The First Mile: Haphazardly Conceived & Helplessly Neglected

In a world of moving fast and pushing out a “minimum viable product,” the first mile of a product’s user experience is almost always an afterthought. The welcome/tour, the onboarding, the explanatory copy, the empty states, and the defaults of your product make up the first mile. Ironically, these crucial components of initial engagement that make up the “top of your funnel” for engaging new users are typically addressed in haste as a product is launched. In some teams, I have even seen th…