At the beginning of the product release

"Dude, we're going to log on to Android, IOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone platforms." We must finish the work right now. ”

"We should do a good job of third-party integration before the product is released." ”

"Why are there no sharing buttons in our apps for design networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Reddit, Tumblr, and Pinterest?"

As a CEO of a development and design company, I have helped many enterprises with application development work. And a lot of times I would hear my clients ask questions like that.

I don't have a tendency to be violent, but whenever a client raises this question to me, I want to split them in half. Then go back to do my work and help them succeed in the right way.

In the early stages of product development, these issues do not need to be considered.

I'm not saying that developers shouldn't be thinking about these issues, I mean in the early stages of product development, these aren't the first things we should consider. At present, our first task is to develop a user-like application first.

As for the other functions of the application, the platform to log in and Third-party integration, and other factors. These additional factors cannot save you if the core functionality of your product is not well done.

Whether you are a start-up or a large enterprise, you should use your budget when developing new applications. Spending these budgets on other issues that build the core functionality of the product is a waste.

Don't be ambitious.

"Dropbox is great, they support almost every platform, and so do we." ”

In fact, you don't have to.

The success of companies such as Dropbox and Evernote is not because they support all platforms. Of course, being able to provide a multi-platform experience will help you get more users, but the main thing is whether you can provide users with an application they like to use.

When developing a product, you should first consider the core function of the application, then the platform is inclusive.

When should I consider API issues?

Has your core product been released?

Do your users like your application and are willing to share this application with other users?

Does your product have a successful business case?

Successful business case: Our number of users is decreasing due to the lack of support for other services. With the addition of APIs for other services, our number of users will pick up, and through these APIs we can provide users with a better experience.

Failed business case: Salesforce has more than 110,000 users, and if we use their appexchange API and get 1% of the total number of users, we can achieve great success. Companies that think like this often fail to achieve success.

After you have launched an excellent application and solved the actual problem for a large number of users, you should begin to consider the issue of adding APIs.

(via TNW)