[patio11]

Teej has an excellent memory for offhand remarks on my blog, and that incident was a great example of what not to do.

Issue: Many customers email me to ask "Can I access the cards I create at home from school?", "Can I print the cards I create at home from school?", etc etc. The cards exist as files on their hard disk but a significant portion of my customers cannot reliably locate files they have saved, as evidenced by email.

Solution: I'll let them save files to the clooooooooooooud (technically, just my server, via a simple web service) and then all they have to do is open up their copy of BCC at school and, boom, there are the cards they were working on.

Why This Belly Flopped: I launched the online version of my software prior to launching this feature and my customers who had previously had problems with distributed file management took to it like ducks to something ducks like a whole lot. Additionally, the feature was an abstraction customers were not used to -- it doesn't work by hitting the Save button like every other piece of Windows/Mac software they have ever used. (By comparison, saving in the online version is so easy customers don't even realize it is happening.)

What It Cost Me: Probably 12 hours of development time to marginally increase satisfaction of 20 paying customers and add 0 sales. By way of comparison, the next major pair of features added to the software took 4.5 hours and have been used by thousands of people, and an A/B test I wrote Monday night in 15 minutes has already done more for my business.