I think another thing is a lot of modern stuff is under thought, either in trying to be overly broad or just misunderstanding the user.
Google Shopping is an example. It has enforced opinions about what a product looks like, so you have to force a square peg through a round hole.
They’ve got a lot of stuff about pricing and loyalty and quantities, but if you dig into tons of categories they have almost nothing that represents the real categories sellers and buyers care about.
Look at the collectibles category. If you sell Pokémon cards and collectibles there is zero merchandising info that actually matches your products or how they’re sold.
That means your analytics, automatic listings, ads, etc. are too generic for your customers. All your automated stuff is going to come through wrong.
Meanwhile niche and deep sellers who avoid that forced genericisation, like McMaster-Carr[1] can have these incredibly valuable, useful, and compelling catalogs.
I’d say that deep user knowledge is why Aperture had such a strong fan base too.
I struggle with this buying from Lee Valley. Their caralogs are fantastic, but I have trouble finding things on their website.
This turned into a rant, but maybe a TL;DR is a lot of modern software has no skin in the game of specialization, and so they inadvertently limit these experiences.
Google Shopping is an example. It has enforced opinions about what a product looks like, so you have to force a square peg through a round hole.
They’ve got a lot of stuff about pricing and loyalty and quantities, but if you dig into tons of categories they have almost nothing that represents the real categories sellers and buyers care about.
Look at the collectibles category. If you sell Pokémon cards and collectibles there is zero merchandising info that actually matches your products or how they’re sold.
That means your analytics, automatic listings, ads, etc. are too generic for your customers. All your automated stuff is going to come through wrong.
Meanwhile niche and deep sellers who avoid that forced genericisation, like McMaster-Carr[1] can have these incredibly valuable, useful, and compelling catalogs.
I’d say that deep user knowledge is why Aperture had such a strong fan base too.
I struggle with this buying from Lee Valley. Their caralogs are fantastic, but I have trouble finding things on their website.
This turned into a rant, but maybe a TL;DR is a lot of modern software has no skin in the game of specialization, and so they inadvertently limit these experiences.
[1] mcmaster.com