Specializing to the masses: Less is more and widespread appeal.

aarongerdes@gmail.com (Aaron Gerdes) — Mon, 01 May 2006 06:23:00 -0700

You can view simplicity two ways. Either way is focused on attaining the optimal balance between effectiveness and bulk. The first is the way we’ve talked about so far: cut away unnecessary bulk by targeting a narrower market. Example: Building a product/service that better anticipates users needs by narrowing your market to a more specific group of users.

But what about using simplicity to gain a wider appeal and increase your addressable market?

The number of people in a Fortune 500 company is huge. But add up all the participants in small and medium-sized business and they’d vastly outnumber the participants in the top 500 companies. When looking at this from the perspective of targeting a market, this concept is called the long tail. If you’re totally unfamiliar with marketing to the long tail of business, check out this post by 37signals.

With many small and medium-sized businesses finding a need for simpler software that caters to their style of building an organization, software companies are able to flourish providing a lower-cost elegant solution to a much larger audience. Often times the software has less built in formality and is designed around members of smaller organizations typically wearing multiple hats.

A common comparison to illustrate this point is Microsoft Project vs Basecamp. Basecamp makes collaboration with a small group of people in different locations very easy, but it can’t print out a 10-foot long Gantt chart. Most small project teams I know don’t need a 10ft Gantt chart, though. They do need a smooth way to share files, ideas, and responsibilities. Basecamp does that very well.

Take a simpler product to a wider market or take a specialized product to a narrower market—either way, keep the ratio of features to user success in the user’s favor.

Aaron Gerdes: Specializing to the masses: Less is more and widespread appeal.

Specializing to the masses: Less is more and widespread appeal.