This weekend I was on a retreat with six other product people. We rented a house together, went out to eat, did some sightseeing and took a lot of taxis, Ubers and Bolts. We kept track of everything in an app called Splitwise. In case you’re not familiar with it, this is a tool designed exactly for the scenario we experienced this weekend. A group of people going on a trip or activity together, sharing expenses and having to settle up at the end. At the end of the weekend, the seven of us sat down to settle up. The app even has a “simplify” feature that minimizes the number of transactions to make everyone whole. I wish I could describe to you the confusion and frustration we experienced. We were seven seasoned product people working our phones to try to make sure everybody got what they were owed. In the end, we did a but of in-app calculation and a whole lot of out-of-app calculations. 

The value proposition is the hook

I’ve used Splitwise before. It always almost works. The value proposition is compelling. Settle up once, at the end of the activity in the fewest number of transactions. This is why I suggested we use it for this retreat. I wish some product and user experience folks from Splitwise had been in the room with us. 

After three days of meticulously capturing every expense in the app, noting who paid and who owed which parts, we’d finally gotten to the most important part. And yet, it took us thirty minutes to finally get everyone squared away. Text prompts didn’t make sense. Buttons didn’t do what we expected. Calculations didn’t add up. One person had joined the group twice but getting the unwanted instance deleted was nearly impossible. 

People come to your product because of the value you promise. In this case it was, “help us focus on our time together rather than money.” We bought in and were disappointed in the end. Your users buy in to your marketing pitches, the description in the App Store or a friend’s recommendation. That’s when your work takes over. If, at any point, your app fails to live up to that promise, users begin to churn. 

If the value doesn’t materialize, users leave

I’m still a fan of bespoke apps like Splitwise. This assumes it works as designed. I can just as easily upload all of our receipts into ChatGPT with a name associated with each one and have it do the math for us. This is the risk and reward of ensuring your app’s performance lives up to its promise. 

Without the payoff — even if the process up until that point was positive — the user is left with a bad taste in the their mouth. And when the next opportunity comes up to use the product, the user starts to wonder if it’s even worth it. 

Focus on value — everything else follows

There are a lot of distractions when building a digital product or service. These days the siren song of AI beckons us all whether we like it or not. Nevertheless, the only thing that matters to your users, ultimately, is that the service delivers on its promise. If you focus on delivering that value, users, success and revenue will follow.