33 products left, but today CommandBar
Hi friend 👋,
I've been giving some serious consideration to business-to-business technologies. The development of a product is never finished if there is a dedicated team working on it. Nobody is satisfied with the current feature set, consumers, or revenue. Instead of improving the experience, most teams hunt for new features that can be used as a selling point and generate cash in the short term. This attitude produces usually complex products with tens of options, especially after a few years. "Yes, we started as an XYZ tool, but you can also do ABC, DEF, and GHJ in our tool," it says. Is it problematic? I'm actually not sure. That could possibly work if you overcome all of the experience challenges. Consider Atlassian or Twilio; they developed empires using this strategy.
This is also a new challenge for product managers. Everyone knows how to develop a feature in the best way possible, but it's extremely unusual to find someone who can combine these elements in a fantastic composition without sacrificing consistency and simplicity. In addition, new user experience standards are emerging. In your preferred tools, do you use cmd+K or cmd+space? Even for the operating system, it is my go-to activity. Every page has millions of buttons, so instead of searching the entire screen for the one I'm looking for, I just type the action I want to do. The first ones that come to mind are Linear, Notion, Slack, and Figma. Is it, however, simple to implement in-site search with clever gimmicks in our product?
Today, CommandBar is our product.
CommandBar is a simple in-app search plug-in that allows you to connect various sources rather than just your tool. Let me clarify. You have a list of actions in the dashboard, a blog, help documentation, developer documentation, and so on. CommandBar provides a single search engine for all of them, so they're all just a handful of key presses away from your users. Furthermore, you may always highlight actions that are vital to you and your client, as well as new features in the bar. They also have an impressive set of integrated tools.
If you are in the B2B industry and service hundreds of individuals with your dashboard, you must provide an excellent search experience. The sole disadvantage of CommandBar is its price. Fortunately, there are some choices. Magny is a much cheaper and promising alternative being developed by one of my friends and his team. I know it appears to be a nice-to-have, but trust me when I say it isn't. Integrating with that type of tool only takes a few days, and you will have a far better experience. It's worth a shot!
We’ll talk again tomorrow.
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