Consumer Internet Services

Marty Cagan argues that consumer internet services differ sharply from traditional enterprise software: there is no sales force or distribution channel between the product and its users, so ideas can be tested and judged almost instantly. That closeness makes the work rewarding but hard, especially when a product succeeds and must survive its own growth. He lays out ten techniques that matter most for large-scale consumer services, spanning usability, user segmentation, scalability, availability, support costs, privacy, viral growth, globalization, gentle deployment, and community management. The piece matters because these concerns are often ignored until a service is already breaking under its own popularity.

01Key takeaways

• Treat usability and performance as core features, since slow or confusing pages drive users away.
• Segment users into distinct profiles and evaluate each new feature against how every profile will respond.
• Budget a steady share of engineering and operations time for scaling work instead of waiting for systems to break.
• Design for low support costs and strong privacy protection from day one, not as afterthoughts.
• Make sharing easy for users and consider redirecting acquisition spending toward rewarding referrals.
• Deploy changes gradually, side by side with the old version, and avoid gratuitous changes users didn't ask for.

02Key sections

Surviving success

Cagan notes that the hardest problems often arrive when a product finally catches on and word spreads. He cites eBay nearly collapsing in 1999 and Friendster stumbling after a strong start.

Usability, profiling and scale

User experience and performance are central, and a single 'user' is really several segments to design for. Scaling problems surface only at millions of users, so teams should continuously allocate roughly 20-30% of engineering and operations effort to scaling.

Availability, support and privacy

Services must run around the clock, so high availability belongs in the design from the start. Support costs can bankrupt a service unless the product is built to minimize them, and customer data must be protected even from insiders.

Growth, globalization and deployment

Products should make sharing easy and may redirect acquisition spend toward referrals. Localization should be designed in early, and changes should be rolled out gradually and sparingly, often running old and new versions side by side.

Community management

Users can make or break a consumer service, so the company should listen to them, recognize their contributions, and treat community awareness as a priority from the CEO down.

03From the post

“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.