Basecamp founder Jason Fried: Customers don’t care about your features and technology

Jason recounts how when he was selling shoes growing up in Illinois, representatives of the major shoe brands would arm salespeople with facts about all of the fancy new technology (e.g. the difference between the Nike Air versus the Zoom Air, the Goodyear rubber outsole and the midsole, etc.).

However, when Jason told customers about these technologies, they didn’t care.

When you actually watched customers buy shoes, they really only cared about a few key things: What does it look like? Is it comfortable? Can I afford it?

Jason saw the same thing selling tennis rackets.

He’d tell customers about all the latest technology and the difference between graphite versus fiberglass or natural gut string versus synthetic.  Nobody cared. They’d look at a tennis racket and ask him if it came in other colors.

Jason has observed the same pattern across website and software:

“Companies are obsessed with features and the technologies because that’s what they do all day. But they don’t actually watch people buy stuff. When you watch people buy stuff, they just want the simple stuff. They want the stuff that solves their problems and 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…. Yet companies keep talking about the specs, the technology, and the features.”

Jason advises founders to really listen to what your customers are saying and watch how they buy your product:

“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. It’s figuring out the basics. Nailing the basics.”