Case study: shipping what customers want (Notion vs. Gumroad)
The goal of a product manager should be to anticipate and exceed their customer needs.
Steve Jobs said it best:
Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
In this article, we’ll cover two quintessential examples of software companies shipping what customers want vs. doing the opposite:
These new releases demonstrate the Notion product team has paid close attention to what users have been doing with Notion — especially the “hacky” solutions they have used to extend Notion’s capabilities. By doing so, Notion’s product team has been able to consistently generate user delight when announcing new releases:
For instance, Notion users had relied on complicated formulas to construct percentage bars for years prior — so much so that it became a common feature of most Notion templates. By noticing this trend, Notion was able to identify a highly-anticipated feature that was guaranteed to be well-received by users.
Major launch: Notion AI
Following the same line of thinking, Notion was able to identify a wholly-new product opportunity by carefully observing & understanding how their product was being used.
Several Notion-based blog businesses have taken off in the last couple years:
Feather.so
Popsy.co
Super.so
Notion noticed blogging was a core use case for many of their users — and they found a way to capitalize upon this by building Notion AI.
Rather than blindly chasing the hottest trend in tech (AI-generated text & art), Notion was able to identify a meaningful use case for their existing customer base.
Gumroad: shipping what users don’t want
New branding
Gumroad re-branded just before Black Friday of 2021, and it was met with mixed reactions for good reasons:
Although the new brand is bolder and more accessible than before, Gumroad’s new look does not mesh well with most creator’s websites and design styles. Along with the new brand, Gumroad removed most customization features such as custom CSS, which many creators relied upon heavily to style Gumroad elements to be consistent with the rest of their website.
The goal of embedded no-code platforms like Stripe, Typeform, etc. is to fit in seamlessly with other user interfaces, appearing as a “native” element. Instead, Gumroad’s new brand stands out in stark contrast to most websites, with a bright pink, high-contrast color scheme and distinctive font that is impossible to miss.
Gumroad’s embed appears as a gaudy, off-brand element in the midst of creator’s website, whereas it once fit in to any site relatively seamlessly:
Removing cart overlay
Gumroad followed this up by removing their cart overlay a few months later. The cart overlay once allowed customers to check out directly within a creator’s website. Now, users are sent to app.gumroad.com and back every time they click on their cart.
The new cart also includes links that distract potential customers by redirecting them to discover.gumroad.com, where they can view and purchase products from other creators:
Before 2022, Gumroad’s shopping cart appeared as simple overlay on your website
The update was met with mixed reception, drawing ire from software developers in particular:
The above two changes alone have impacted conversion rates seriously enough to cause many long-time Gumroad supporters to leave the platform.
To top it all off, Gumroad abruptly announced a drastic pricing change just before the holidays in 2022, which will result fees increasing by over 4X for their top-selling creators (those over $1M lifetime sales currently pay 3% and will pay 10% + 2.9% processing after the change).
Apart from the rebrand, Gumroad’s major feature release for the last ~1.5 years was a new Notion-style content editor. Prior to this, Gumroad creators could only upload files for their product’s content. Now, they can create product pages in a “Notion-style” UI, with inline file & video embeds.
However, the vast majority of Gumroad creators sell files (ie. templates, eBooks, plugins), which means they have little-to-no use for such a sophisticated editor. Though it may be useful for course creators, this feature neglects a large chunk of the user base who will not benefit from it:
All this aside, one new feature Gumroad shipped in 2022 that creators were very happy with was their new mobile app widget, which allow creators to easily view their earnings:
Since this article was published, Gumroad launched several new features that creators had been asking for years (like bundles, written reviews, and collaborations).
Despite these improvemenets, Gumroad’s GMV has fallen nearly 25% in the year ~2 years since the rebrand and price hike. The graph below (from their Q3 2024 Board Meeting), showed that GMV had reduced by nearly $2 million from a peak of $16 million in 2022/23.
The reason behind this stagnating growth boils down to one simple thing:
Gumroad continues to guide their product strategy by shipping things users do not want, such as adding a “tipping” feature, but setting the default to 20%, or removing the “Creator Balance” from the Payouts page:
Conclusion: how to ship what your users want
To understand what it takes to ship features that your users will react positively to, we can simply look at the differences between the two case studies above.
They can be simplified to a couple key principles (both “don’t” statements):
Don’t ask your customers what they want (UX interviews, market research) — instead, pay close attention to the most popular “hacky” solutions that customers devise on their own, then build these features into your product
Observance: Notion percentage circles, Notion AI
Transgression: Gumroad removing custom CSS
Don’t modify core behavior of the application or implement major changes to functionality (if you must, always include an opt-out)
Observance: none of Notion’s shipments affected the core experience
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