Atomic features: small details that make a BIG difference (Part 2)
How to turn your customers' fears into a competitive advantage
When the online invitation site Evite launched in 1998, it acquired more than 1 million users within its first year.1
They were far from the only invitation site, but they ended up gaining the first-scale advantage largely thanks to a single feature most of their competitors overlooked:
The “Who’s Coming?” list.
Most competitors believed that beautiful invitations were what users cared most about. But Evite discovered that the guest list was the #1 feature users really valued.
The guest list was crucial because it relieved a deeply negative emotion:
The fear of not knowing who was coming to the event – and the risk of feeling alienated among strangers. That fear was much stronger than the fear of not having beautiful invitation cards.2
This is the second article in the series about “atomic features” – small details of your product or distribution that have an outsized impact to customers.
In my first post, I wrote about taste atomic features, and how features such as product demos and free samples that help customers taste your product can 2-3X sales.
In this second article, we’ll cover another kind of atomic feature: the “fear-relief” feature.
The fear-relief feature – Find and eliminate sources of fear
Fear-relief features are those details that proactively resolve fears customers experience when using your product.
Why would these features have an atomic impact? Because a single point of fear can be enough to stop customers from buying.
You can do everything else right. But if just one detail creates fear, it may be enough to turn your startup from a mighty rocket ship to a toy firework.
Fear comes in many shapes and sizes, but it can be categorized into two main types:
Fear of the unknown
Fear of judgment
1. Fear of the unknown
As Evite’s story show, anything that is unknown can spark uncertainty and fear. Let’s look at three companies that successfully turned unknowns into knowns – and reaped the benefits.
Genentech – Relieving a single unknown multiplied sales by 20X
In 2003, Genentech had launched a drug called Xolair. It was considered a "miracle drug" for asthma – far better than existing alternatives.
But 6 months later, sales of Xolair were far below expectations.
When Genentech investigated the problem, they found two saleswomen who were selling not 2X, not 5X, but 20X as much Xolair as their peers.
How was this possible?
Instead of selling the health benefits of Xolair – which doctors clearly understood – they were teaching doctors how to administer the drug.
Xolair was not a pill or an inhaler. It required infusion via an intravenous drip. This technique was unfamiliar to most doctors, and that uncertainty was holding sales back by a factor of 20X.3
River Pools & Spas – Answering one question created $3M in revenue
The swimming pool company River Pools & Spas nearly went bankrupt when the financial crisis of 2008 struck.
Up until then, the entire pool industry was very secretive. It was almost impossible for customers to find information on pricing, different pools types, and the pros and cons of each.
River Pools & Spas was no different. But things were now desperate. So after years of avoiding the subject of price, the store manager Marcus Sheridan shifted tactics and wrote an article titled: “How much does a fiberglass pool cost?” on the company website.
Among thousands of competitors, River Pools & Spas was the only company answering the question of price.
Within 48 hours, the article became the #1 result on Google for anything regarding how much a fiberglass pool costs. And River Pools & Spas soon noticed a sharp increase in the number and quality of customers who contacted them.
By tracking the web traffic and leads who turned into paying customers, they found that this one article had generated sales of $3 million – simply by removing one unknown: the price.4
Airbnb – From ”fear minefield” to safe experience
When Airbnb launched in 2008, few people in their right minds would have rented a room on their site because the customer experience was a minefield of unknowns:
Who am I renting from?
Will the property be in good condition?
What itineraries (bed sheets, etc) are included in my stay?
What if things turn out bad?
All these unknowns were a drag on Airbnb’s entire business.
When we don’t know what to expect, we often imagine the worst.
It didn’t take much imagination for Airbnb users to see themselves being robbed, having their apartment trashed, or just getting a really unpleasant guest/host.
No single feature solved all of Airbnb’s points of fear. Instead, it was several fear-relief features that together transformed the experience:
Who am I renting from?
Solution: Verify the identities of all hosts 🪪👱🏽♂️Will the property be in good condition?
Solution: Add ratings and reviews of the property ⭐️🏠What itineraries (bed sheets, etc) are included in my stay?
Solution: Add an itinerary list 🛌What if things turn out bad?
Solution: Add guest-host messaging and refund policy 💬
Airbnb shaved off every unknown in the customer experience – and created a platform that millions of people today feel safe using.
2. Fear of judgment
Another thing we humans fear is being judged. Let’s look at a few products that achieved breakout success thanks to reliving this fear:
Instagram – How filters built a photo empire
Instagram might never have happened – if not for one fateful conversation the founder Kevin Systrom had with his wife, Nicole. It went something like this:
Nicole: “I don’t think I’m going to ever use this app.”
Kevin: “Why not?”
Nicole: “Well, my photos aren’t good. They are not as good as your friend Greg’s.”
Kevin: “Greg filters all his photos.”
Nicole: “Well, you should add filters then.”
Kevin: “Ah, you’re right. I should add filters!”
What was stopping Nicole from using Instagram?
The fear of being judged.
Filters was the atomic feature that relieved this fear. Suddenly, taking beautiful photos was accessible to the average user.5
Instagram wasn’t the first app to offer photo filters, but they were the first to combine filters with social sharing. It was these two levers – filters and social sharing – that together led Instagram to 10 million users in a year.6
Incidentally, filters was also an atomic feature for Zoom. When we were all stuck at home during covid-19, the virtual background was arguably the most popular feature. At last, we could Zoom in without feeling judged for how messy our home was!
Nickelodeon – How a fear-relieving video increased signups by 10X
When Nickelodeon was launching a cool new app for kids aged 7-12 years, they hit on a problem.
Lots of kids were downloading the app. Unfortunately, you had to go through a one-time signup that required you to log into the home’s cable TV.
At that point, nearly every kid dropped out.
There was no way to get around the TV signup. So Nickelodeon set up hundreds of A/B tests to make the signup easier.
But nothing they did worked.
Nickelodeon then switched tactics and started inviting kids into the studio. And what they found surprised them!
The problem wasn’t about usability at all.
The problem was that kids were scared to ask their parents for the cable password.
With this insight, the Nickelodeon team made a short video telling kids that it was absolutely ok to ask their parents for the password.
The result?
The signup rate for the app exploded by 10X.7
Facebook – How a single word change made Japan's growth viral
In the earlier days of Facebook, Japan was the slowest-growing country on the platform. New Japanese users just wouldn’t invite their friends to Facebook.
The root problem?
The Japanese users felt it was intrusive to send “invites”. They were scared to ask their friends to join Facebook because it felt like a request.
The Facebook team then changed the wording from “Invite” to “Announce” to let your friends know that you were on Facebook.
The result?
Japan went from the least viral to the most viral country on Facebook.8
A single word can change the social implication of an action – and thereby our fear of being judged for it.
Words like “add” or “announce” are less intrusive than “invite” or “request”.
List of every question and external opinion in your customer journey 📝
As the above stories show, unknowns and judgments are the death knells to a safe customer experience. So how do you design for feelings of safety?
Go through your entire customer journey and make a list of all the:
Questions a “newbie” customer may ask ❓
External opinion a customer may get 🤔
1. List every question – then answer them
After seeing the success of their first article, River Pools & Spas made a list of every single question they had heard from customers over the years. They then started mass-producing videos and articles to answer each one of them. Today, they have more than 380 videos on fiberglass pools – many with views in the hundreds of thousands!9
Some questions to get you started are:
What can this product do for me?
How do I use the product?
What are the problems and limitations of the product?
What price can I expect?
What if the product breaks?
How can I trust you?
The more unfamiliar and high-stakes your product is, the more questions you need to answer.
2. List the external opinions – then calm them
As the Zoom, Nickelodeon, and Facebook stories show, customers are often held back by the fear of what other people will think. Whenever your product is used in a social setting, always consider the social fears of your users.
In this case, you can either:
Hide it: Zoom’s virtual background eliminated external opinions entirely by hiding your messy living room from view.
Improve it: Instagram’s filters transformed so-so photos into professional works users felt proud to share.
Reframe it: Facebook resolved users’ fear by framing the “invite” as an “announcement”.
Offer reassurance: Nickelodeon couldn’t get around the TV password signup, but they could reassure kids that asking for the password was ok.
Summary
A single point of fear can ruin all the other efforts you have put into building your business.
But vice versa, relieving fear can be the magic switch that transforms your startup from a toy firework to a rocket ship – and let you escape the competition still stuck on earth.
Just as fear can hinder your success, it can also create a competitive moat that stops your competition – if you can figure out to overcome it yourself.
Go through your entire customer journey and make a list of all the:
Questions, and
External opinions
…Your customers may experience.
Then, like Airbnb and River Pools, create features and content to relieve every point of fear your customers may experience – one step at a time.
When all the fears are removed, the only emotion left is trust.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard – by Chip and Dan Heath, pages 41-42
They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer – by Marcus Sheridan, pages 51-55
What's Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve - by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, chapter 10
https://videolibrary.riverpoolsandspas.com/