Greetings from Ireland – Handmade Brands

I came all the way to Ireland this week to see a college football game that I’d usually see in a freezing football stadium in November. It also provides an excuse to spend a week seeing this lovely country in the lead up to the game.

To be honest, the game is really just an excuse to make a trip I’ve always wanted to make.

So all that to say there won’t be an article as usual this week. I’ll be back next week with more internal product goodness.

It’s both the stuff and the stories

In the meantime, here’s an observation I made a couple years back on another trip – this one when we in Napa for my wife’s birthday.

As you might expect, we’re visiting wineries while we’re out here, and we’re trying to visit small, family run wineries. The experience is unique; the wine is pretty damn good, and stories of the owners are fascinating.

One winery had extremely well-crafted tasting notes that were memorable and entertaining instead of the pretentious sounding tasting notes you sometimes get with wine.

I asked our host – the owner – what she thought was most responsible for selling her wine: the story (behind the wine) or the stuff (the wine itself).

Her response – I’m paraphrasing because, you know, wine tasting – the “stuff” has to be to a certain level, but the story really sells the wine.

When you visit a winery, you want the wine to be drinkable, but the thing that makes a visit to a winery special is the experience you have. For small family wineries, a big part of that experience is the stories of the people who own and run the winery.

You’re going to enjoy your visit to wineries where you can form a connection with the people you interact with.

The same thing goes for most products – the “stuff” (your product) needs to be at a certain level of quality, but it’s often the “stories” (the experience around the product) that differentiate your product from others.

So when you’re working on your product, think about more things than just the features you put into your product. Also consider all the interactions around your internal product:

How do people learn about your internal product?
How do they get started using it?
Can they change it (through configuration) for their particular situation?
How do they get help when they have problems?

There’s plenty of other considerations – the main thing is to think about those things as you develop your product.

The more enjoyable your user’s experience, the more likely they are to use the product the way you intended it.

It turns out the same holds true if you’re seeing historic sites in another country.

If you’re visiting Napa soon, let me know and I’ll pass along some recommendations. After this week, I’ll also have some suggestions for Killarney, Galway, and Dublin.