Post by David Pierce. Find me on Twitter.

I have used a TON of different Web apps in the last ten months. Whether I hear about an app, read about it, or am pitched by a PR company, I have a lot of different applications coming across my various inboxes on a daily basis.

For the most part, I love trying these applications – they’re usually fun and useful, and I just enjoy getting to play around and test out a given site. But as I test drive more and more applications, I’ve noticed that there are a few features and issues that make the difference between me trying it, ceasing to care and moving on, and actually integrating a given app into my daily life.

For an application to matter to me, longer than just the time it takes to test it out, it has to meet certain criteria. Often, great though the application or service might be, it’s missing some of these things, and building huge walls to actually getting and retaining users.

Stupid Simplicity

If it takes me more than six seconds to figure out what an application does, odds are I’m going to stop using it. Applications, to have sticking power for me, need to be the simplest among competing apps. This isn’t to say it can’t have more features, or even be more complex to use – it just has to lower the learning curve.

Popular applications are popular because, at their basest, they’re stupidly simple. Users can complicate them in their own way, to suit their own needs, but leave that to the users. Simple wins.

Be Different, And Tell Me About It

The first question I always ask when I’m testing an app: Why should I use this application, in a market in which there’s definitely competition? So many applications exist, all of which do essentially the same thing – what sets this one apart? I love when apps make that obvious. Tell me not only what you do, but what you do that no one else does. If the answer is nothing, I’m gone.

The answer to this question can sometimes be, "we do the same things, better." That’s fantastic too, but tell me why. If an application’s going to make its way into my life, it’s not because I arbitrarily choose it – it’s because it’s the only one that works just right, and I can’t not use it. So tell me, repeatedly, why that’s you.

Increase Long-term Benefit

So many applications do one thing, that I need one time. That’s all well and good, but for most of them, the one-time benefit isn’t worth the time it takes to set up and get an application running.

After I set up, sign up, and learn an application, what’s the value? Am I going to care about this in three days? How about three months? Three years? If there’s no value beyond the first time I use it, I’m probably not going to use it at all.

Play Nicely

I already have a set of applications, systems and tools that I use. Any application that’s going to have sticking power isn’t going to make me drastically change that. I don’t mind an application that works on its own, or doesn’t integrate with other apps, but it’s got to play nicely. Don’t not work with Word, or not offer exporting to PDF. Don’t make me change my whole system to use your app – you’ll lose.

What do you think? What are the prerequisites to you actually adopting and using an application?

Photo: SheepGuardingLlama