What is a product feature? The unique qualities that set your product apart from others. Why is this important to know? Because you need to be able to show these differences in order for people to buy it. This blog post will provide you with the steps needed before presenting your products' features.
This is what you need to know before deciding what to include in your marketing. Product features describe the appearance, components, and capabilities of a particular product. They can be used for both internal and external communication purposes.
And if you’re not careful about what features you choose to highlight on your website or in an email campaign, then it could lead to low conversion rates down the road. Do you know What is a product feature? ?
According to HubSpot, there are three types of product features:
- Core features: These are the must-haves for your product and should be included in any description or demo. They’re what make your product different from the competition and what provide value to customers.
- Supporting features: These are nice-to-haves and can be removed without damaging the core of your product. They might improve the user experience or make the product more appealing, but they’re not essential.
- Optional features: These are completely optional and can be removed without consequence. They might appeal to certain customers but aren’t necessary for most users.
When you’re listing out your product features, it’s important to remember that not all of them are created equal.
You need to prioritize the most important ones and focus on those first. And while you might be tempted to include every little detail in your marketing materials, it’s better to keep things concise.
Most people won’t read a long list of features, so you need to present what’s most important in the clearest way possible.
When it comes down to what actually makes up a feature, there are three elements that should be included: what it is, how it works, and why it matters.
For example, if you’re selling a software product, your features might include things like the following:
- The ability to create custom reports
- Automatic data backup and restore
- A user-friendly interface
Each of these items should include a short description of What is a product feature? how it works, and why it matters. By including this information, you’ll make it easier for prospects to understand what your product does and why they should buy it.
Now that we know what a feature is and how to include them in the description of our products, what kind of impact will these details have on our marketing efforts?
In the case of Brafton, they saw a 1200% increase in conversions after implementing a feature-first marketing strategy.
The features that were included on their website and social media platforms served as an incentive to sign up for free trials – thus creating more leads and sales opportunities.
While you might not see quite such dramatic results, it’s clear that highlighting what your product can do is a powerful way to connect with customers and generate conversions.
It all comes down what you prioritize when writing feature-based content for your website and social media profiles.
If you want the highest amount of engagement and leads possible, then focus on what makes your products stand out from the competition.
If you want to drive sales, focus on what makes it easier for prospects to use your products and what specific value they’ll receive from them.
In order to ensure that your product features are included in your marketing content, you need to first understand what they are and how they can impact the reader. Then, prioritize the most important ones and focus on those first.
Finally, use a clear and concise description of each feature for the people who wonder What is a product feature?
Customers consider features while deciding whether or not to buy your product, but they are truly attempting to figure out what problems your product will assist them solve.
They're trying to figure out what kind of result they'll obtain if they use your goods. They want to know what kind of perks they'll get.
The outcomes or effects that users get from using your product or service are known as benefits.
Outputs are represented by features. They are services or products that your team provides to assist your customers or stakeholders in achieving a specific goal.
Begin by gaining a grasp of the benefits that your customers are looking for. Then, in order to assist your customers experience those benefits, determine which features your product need and which it does not.
When you describe benefits in language your customers understand and attach your product's characteristics to those benefits, you'll be successful.
Our clients desire to:
Productboard provides the features stated on our features page as a result of this understanding. We explain how those features help our clients experience the benefits we identified as we discuss them. Consider the following scenario:
Repository of Scientific Information
Recognize what users require.
Use the insights board to collect and organise user studies, feature requests, and feedback from a variety of sources. Identify patterns and trends that will help you prioritise what to develop next and how to do it properly.
When deciding which features to deploy and in what order, keep this relationship between benefits and features in mind.
The nature of the relationship between features and benefits aids in the representation of features.
If you already know what you need to give the intended advantages, or if you're still figuring out the best approach to provide benefits, the way you describe features will differ.
Represent characteristics as solutions.
You don't always know what to supply to give your customers the benefits they want. It's possible that your product is mature, and you're adding a feature that a large number of your customers have asked.
Alternatively, you can be adding a feature to close a gap with your competitors. You might be working on a B2B product that requires certain characteristics to be useful.
In certain circumstances, the most straightforward solution is to show your feature as it appears on your features page.
You might specifically mention PDF Export or Prioritization Matrix as features you're working on.
It's easier to establish a shared understanding of what the team is going to produce when you represent features as a solution, and you have a short title for the team to refer to items in a discussion when you represent features as a solution.
Unfortunately, describing features as a solution can bind your team to a certain approach. This could result in users being served for a need they don't truly have, or missing out on a superior solution to the underlying problem.
When you initially start out, you never know what the best method to address a problem is, thus it's ideal to portray features as needs.
Represent characteristics as requirements.
When you define features as needs, you're not describing how you'll achieve a goal; instead, you're identifying what you want to achieve.
You define the feature as "I need to be able to share data with my supervisor," rather as "PDF Export."
When you refer to a feature as a need, you're leaving yourself plenty of possibilities for how to meet that need. Because your team has a say, you enhance the possibilities of an inventive solution, and your staff is more involved in delivering that solution.
The disadvantage of presenting features as wants is that establishing a shared understanding of the features you're working on can be more challenging. As you try to come up with the best answer, your team may encounter increased uncertainty.
Using both tactics may be the best option for you. Define the feature as a solution when you have a clear understanding of the answer and it doesn't make sense to continue exploring. Describe your characteristics in terms of discovery as necessary.
You understand what features are and why they're vital to have on your website. Let's take a look at seven ways e-commerce stores and SaaS tools might use them to their advantage.
Incorporate social proof
It's fine to brag about your features, but every other company does the same thing. Customers may not believe you even if your product has superior characteristics.
After all, only one-third of customers have confidence in the brands they purchase.
You'll need social proof to persuade them that your product works. To relevant pages, include quotes and testimonials from your customers or reliable third parties that discuss your product's features. Include photographs and videos of them using your product, if possible.
Using actual individuals to demonstrate your product's features quickly gives them more credibility and increases the likelihood that customers will trust your brand.
Isabella Oliver, a British maternity business, does an excellent job of this, including a Vogue quote in the product description of a pregnancy tank dress.
Include Social Proof in Your Product Highlighting Strategies
Speak to Your Prospective Clients
To properly write about your product features, you must first identify your target audience. If you have buyer personas, use them to guide your content. This will assist you in determining which features are most important to your clients.
Start by looking at reviews for your product and those of your competitors—for software firms, G2 is a wonderful place to start, and for e-commerce organisations, Amazon is a great place to start. Prioritize the aspects that clients rave about the most.
Avoid attempting to target everyone. This is especially crucial for SaaS solutions, which might have a wide range of applications.
Each target consumer should have their own landing page where you just talk about the aspects that are relevant to them. You'll end up not targeting any audience well if you try to communicate to everyone on one landing page.
Everlane is an example of a company that understands its target market and what they value. Each product description provides a link to the factory where it was created as well as other sustainability-related information.
Consumers are solely interested in what makes your product unique. What matters to them is how it benefits them.
Benefits writing needs a little more effort and imagination. The benefits of your product are self-evident, especially to you. What isn't so clear is how they benefit the user.
Spend some time thinking about your consumer personas and reading product reviews. These will assist you in getting into your clients' heads and focusing on the benefits that are important to them.
Interview your clients to find out exactly how they benefit from your product if you really want to perform a good job. It takes a little more work, but this is by far the most effective approach of eliciting the benefits of your product.
The ability to track social media mentions on Hootsuite's dashboard is one of the company's most popular tools, but that's not how the company offers it to its customers.
Instead, they concentrate on the advantage: learning what customers really believe. They even go on to say that the function has additional user-generated benefit.
You'll want buyers to pay attention to some characteristics more than others. That's why it's critical to establish a feature hierarchy and look for ways to highlight the features that matter most to customers.
To accomplish this, divide your page into pieces and assign each portion to a different feature. To attract your reader's attention, use a bold headline and follow it up with short, snappy language and eye-catching pictures.
Google takes this to the next level by allowing each feature to take up the entire screen. It's impossible to miss them:
Another option is to delete your landing page's navigation menu. Users are compelled to focus on your sales text and learn about your product's features because there is no way to leave the page.
However, don't get too carried away with this strategy. Most clients will be upset if you remove the navigation bar from your website, especially if it's an e-commerce site.
Customers are busy, and the majority of them will not read every word on your page. Instead, they'll sift over it and look for crucial information. It's your job to make your product's features as scannable as possible while keeping the main message in mind.
Because large swaths of text are a significant turn-off for readers—especially if you want to offer a lot of information—bullet points are a wonderful tool.
Target's listing page contains a bullet list of each product's features, so you don't have to click each one individually to acquire the information you need.
Strategies for Highlighting Product Features - Use Video and Images to Make Information Scannable
Words aren't the only technique to communicate the benefits of your product. Images and videos are frequently far more effective at conveying exactly what your product can achieve.
Images are a simple method to demonstrate how crucial features look and function to customers.
They're especially useful for design-oriented features and the majority of e-commerce products in general. If you incorporate user-generated photographs in your captions, you'll get bonus points.
Made, a British furniture business, did an excellent job of incorporating user-generated photographs into their product listings. Customers may see how each sofa will look in a variety of different situations.
Videos need a bit more effort, but they have the potential to be considerably more effective. You may, for example, make an explainer video that emphasises your product's key characteristics, or a video for each feature separately.
Your feature-driven movies can also be used by your sales staff during client conversations and as part of your onboarding process. They can also help you rank higher in search results, particularly if you put them on YouTube.
If you have a SaaS product, blog posts, emails, and other types of content marketing are some of the finest ways to emphasise its capabilities, especially if those features are new software releases.
Make sure your blog entries discuss the benefits that users can get from the new features rather than just the features themselves. A video, if you can make one, is also an excellent idea, as are a lot of screenshots.
There's no requirement to post these pieces on a regular basis, unlike other forms of content marketing. It's sufficient to write them whenever you have a new feature to describe.
Email updates should be provided seldom as well. Only send an email when you have a new feature to announce, and keep it brief. In the email, only include the most important data and, if necessary, a link to a more in-depth blog article.
Existing users will learn about new features as they use the product, so sending an email about features that may re-engage lost clients is a good idea.
Asana's blog is chock-full of feature-focused entries. It's worth noting that many people don't pay attention to certain characteristics. Rather, they organise feature releases around a single theme and write about it.
