I've been testing out all you can eat music services like Rdio, Mog, and Rhapsody this week, and I realized that very frequently I make judgements based on details that are only a tiny fraction of what I'm experiencing. In the case of Rhapsody, I experienced a few pauses in my playback and decided it wasn't for me. With Mog I coudn't figure out how to add an album to my collection from my iPhone, so I gave up. Rdio, on the other hand, has basically done what I want it to do, so I've stuck with it. My trial process with these services made me realize that users assign a very disproportionate value to very specific details of products.

The fact that users can be really turned off by specific details can be pretty scary for those of us developing products. We all search for the one thing that we can change to make our product successful, but the reality is that it's one thousand little details that are keeping our products from selling. A user can make a split-second decision not to use your product based on one tiny detail and they're gone forever. They probably won't even let you know why they left. What can we do about this?

First and foremost, we have to focus our products and make sure that the features that exist work correctly and help our users accomplish their goals. Fewer moving pieces that are precisely focused on helping our users accomplish the intent of our products are always going to drastically reduce the likelihood of of them being turned off by the details. If your product is available on the web and on the iPhone, make sure that both interfaces support all of the features. If the iPhone version is missing some features, make sure that they're missing because it makes sense, not because you're cutting corners. Can you just cut the feature from both interfaces?

Even simple, focused products will lose their share of users. We've got to ask those users why they're leaving. After a user cancels their service or returns a product, or after they stop using it for a while, email or call them and ask them why they decided that your product wasn't for them. It seems like it might be annoying to users, but I've actually been surprised to see that very often when users leave a product behind they have some passionate feelings about the decision and are glad you asked. I try to keep the question as broad and simple as possible: "We're trying to make product X the best service it can possibly be. Why did you decide to cancel your subscription?" If you don't ask, though, you'll never know.

One last technique I've used to find spots where users are being turned away is, if possible, to mine data about what features are used immediately before users leave. Do users tend to try out a particular feature and then disappear? Do they go to a particular page in my website and then never come back? There can be some magic involved here, but there are times where making sure you're collecting plenty of usage data and then reviewing that data can yield some great results.

It's not absurd to look for big reasons that users are fleeing a product, but be sure to focus a lens on the finer details as well. It's hard work, but with a lot of listening and attention to detail you can really make sure that your product fits your users.