I had a short discussion with one of my friends about Google Analytics. He was new user of Analytics and I still don’t consider myself as a power user of the service. We were talking about features, especially about features that weren’t there. We agreed that drill down of data is something we miss in the software. Then my friend added a disclaimer: “Oh, I least I haven’t seen it there, but you know, I’m a beginner. Maybe there’s something like that.”
Oh, even if there is but it’s hidden, it’s no different than it wasn’t there. If you hide your features it’s like not adding them at all. And these days, when more and more applications are going on-line and more and more systems want to be webish enough (or even webish 2.0 enough) the level of knowledge about the application expected from users goes systematically down.
That’s why old-fashioned help becomes more and more obsolete and now your cool new features have to beg the user to be exploited. There’re some software areas when it’s not as painful – consider ERP systems or generally carrier grade solutions. We still can’t imagine those solutions going on-line and working in ASP model. But hey, who thought about on-line e-mail client, on-line word processor or on-line spreadsheets few years ago?
With all those applications available on the web, the user doesn’t have to care about upgrades, bug-fixes, new features etc. The user doesn’t even know that there’s a new feature or there isn’t a bug any more. It’s your role to tell about all of that. Accessibility to features becomes more and more crucial. I’m simplifying a bit, but generally advanced users brings you more money – they pay for features, new version etc or just spend more time within application (seeing more ads). However it’s harder to advance the common user to advanced status.
I think Microsoft knew that long time ago. Remember that annoying Mr Clippy in Microsoft Office 97? That was exactly the idea which Google follows today with links to PicasaWeb or Docs&Spreadsheets in GMail or with Google Reader blog posts (e.g. today this one) in the main page of Google Reader. It was just Microsoft, who made that wrong way, so effects was opposite to planned.
Remember about accessibility. If your features aren’t easily (easily enough of course) accessible it’s like you hadn’t those features.
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