Creating a New IT Product? - The Top 5 Desires for a Developer

So, you are building a new product aimed at the IT world. Or you have at least a conceptual idea of what an awesome product would look like and you want to get started, but don't know where to go. In either case, you are building a product for developer, which means that your product should give developers exactly what they want.

Now, suppose that you have the resources of either time or man-power to devote to helping developers get started with your new product. However, you don't know how to effectively support your users with the resources that you do own. This article will help you figure out how to maximize your resources for supporting IT customers using a new product.

Here are the top five features that a developer needs in order to feel comfortable with your new product:

1. High Level Overviews and Short Introductions

To begin, developers need to see the big picture. You have to help the developers see their big picture with your product inserted into their vision. How you accomplish this is based on your unique customers. 

However, if you answer the question - how can I showcase the most information in the quickest way? - then you will be off to a good start. For instance, carefully crafted overview statements work well. Debuting a short video that overviews the message you are trying to get across (and why it matters to your users) is even better. Creating an interactive guide with images/videos for the user is best. Doing is learning. 

2. Sample Projects - What Is Possible?

The next aspect that developers like to see is what others (or you) have created by using your product. They want to get a feel for what kind of creative projects are possible with your product. 

A requirement for showcasing a sample project is that it must be 'cool'. Said differently, what projects are exciting enough that other people will want to bring them up in casual conversations? When you show new users cool projects that have been built with your product, a short video is almost a requirement. Too much wordy text (especially without images) can get boring quick.

3. Code Snippets

Examples go a long way for developers. In this regard, code snippets are like a thousand words to a developer. Code snippets are necessary for developers and probably easier than posting "how to guides". Find common problems that users are experiencing, solve them yourself with a code snippet, then share it with the world.

4. Community Question/Answer Support 

Why create your own email question/answer support system when you can let customers address their own problems? A community that allows one customer to ask a question followed by an answer from another customer or employee is the next best thing. If you are having trouble building your own community, leverage Stack Overflow, so that customers can ask questions there. It is your job to enable customers to help themselves.

5. Step-by-Step Tutorials

Lastly, some users need more help than others. This is often true for new products that are not mature yet. Therefore, the solution is to create some tutorials that involve step by step instructions to help users get started on a new project. 

This is like a combination of #2 and #3, but it is critical to include if customers are still having trouble despite having access to previous projects and code snippets. You would be surprised how much usage of your product will go up just by showing users how to put the key into the ignition.

Please let me know if you think developers rank another support feature ahead of one of the ones that I have enumerated above. I'm looking forward to reading comments.