A short talk by Jason Fried reflecting on retail experience (selling shoes and tennis rackets) to argue that customers care about simple, practical attributes—fit, comfort, appearance, and price—rather than technical features or proprietary technologies. He generalizes this pattern to websites and software and advises companies to observe real customer behavior and 'nail the basics.'
Chapters
When I used to sell shoes at this place called Shelby's Pro Shop, where I grew up in Illinois, the brands would send the reps in, and the reps would come in and tell us about all the fancy new technology that were in their shoes. The Nike rep would come in and tell us the difference between normal Nike Air and Zoom Air. And then shocks. The Wilson rep would come in and talk about their Goodyear rubber outsole and the midsole and the EVA and all these different technologies they would come in and tell me about so they could arm me as a salesperson to sell their products. That's what the company thought was important, those things, because they sent reps to tell me so that I could transfer that to the customers. And it turns out if you watch people buy shoes, here's how they do it. Basically what they do is they put the shoe on and then they walk around. Then they do this bouncing thing to see if it's cushioned enough because some simulation of what they're going to do in real life, I don't know what people are doing. Then there's usually this mirror, this low mirror, and they go like this, and then they kind of go like that to see what it looks like. And they walk around a little bit more, and then they ask how much it costs, and then they either buy it or they don't. They want to know, does it look like, is it comfortable and can I afford it? That's what people want to know. They don't want to know about all the technology. They don't want to know about the EVA ethyl vinyl acetate. They don't want to know about the Nike Air. They don't want to know about the gel from Brooks. They don't care about that stuff. They care about the basics to them, which is, does the shoe fit? Does the. Do I like the way it looks and can I afford it? And I saw the same thing with tennis rackets. I would talk about the wide body versus the thin body, graphite versus fiberglass, natural gut string versus synthetic, all this stuff. Here's how they would buy tennis rackets. They would look at the tennis racket and they'd pick it up, and if it was green, they'd say, do you have this in purple? That's what they would first say. Or, does this come in other colors? They ask all the questions that the companies don't tell you about, because the companies are obsessed with the features and the technologies, because that's what they do all day. They don't actually watch people buy stuff. When you watch people buy stuff, they just want the simple shit. They just want the stuff that works for them, that solves their own problems and that just works. They like the way it looks, they like the way it feels. It's comfortable, it's affordable. That's what people want. I've seen the same thing in websites, I've seen the same thing in software. I keep seeing this pattern repeat itself. Yet companies keep talking about the stuff on the top, the specs, the technology and the features. They're missing the boat. They're not speaking the same language. Customers are not listening to what they're saying because it doesn't make any sense to them. So when you are trying to sell something, listen to what people are trying to say, listen to what they're buying, watch what they're buying, watch how they're buying it, and you'll find out that they just need a few things done really, really well. And that is really, I think, the secret to all this stuff is figuring out the basics, nailing the basics, not worrying about all the other stuff that's possible. Nail the basics.
