May 16th, 2006

7 More Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

This is a follow-up to my post 7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail. As will the first list, this list is by no means a complete account of every reason why a web app might fail. There are countless reasons, I’m sure, and most are part of a failing strategy and don’t do the damage all by themselves. I have focused on reasons made prominent by the current situation we find ourselves in: with extremely low barriers to creation alongside an explosion of social web applications. This combination is interesting and we’re seeing the evolution of social software in near real-time.

They’re never built.
I’ve had the same conversation with many folks: good idea for web application, but not enough motivation to build it. In fact, I fall into this category. I have several prototypes sitting on my hard drive of little applications that could be something someday, and I’ve run out of steam developing them. I get distracted, start doing something else. However, this is probably a confidence issue as much as a time issue. We’re simply not sure if what we build would be successful and investing the time it takes to push it to completion is daunting. An interesting story cropped up recently about this: Michael Arrington of Techcrunch wrote about how Squidoo.com seems to be failing, suggesting that it cast a dark shadow over Seth Godin’s reputation as a marketer, and that it wouldn’t be long before Seth distances himself from it. In other words, Mike was equating Seth’s reputation with the product he built. This is precisely why it is scary to build something in the public eye. People can ridicule it, and often do. But even if Squidoo doesn’t succeed (which is uncertain) I doubt that Seth will see it as anything other than a learning experience. Now if only the rest of us could.
They’re modeling an offline activity incompletely.
This happens a lot in banking web apps. I recently switched from my bank to one with better online features. It wasn’t that my former bank couldn’t handle the transactions, but they could only do so if I actually went to the bank and talked with a teller. This is completely frustrating. An incompatibility between an online app and an offline store doesn’t make sense. How many times have you tried to redeem a coupon or gift certificate only to find that you have to go to the store? Well, we’re so used to the online world now that the web app is the store, in both a physical and non-physical sense.
They’re ahead of the curve.
Some applications are simply ahead of their time. There were online bookmarking sites way before Del.icio.us. There were photo sharing sites way before Flickr. Why is it that now these types of sites take off when before they didn’t? One answer to why bookmarking sites didn’t take off is provided by Ari Paparo, who started Blink.com in 1999. He had 13 million dollars in investment money, and he and his company couldn’t make it work. His post about why Blink.com failed is a fascinating chronicle of a company ahead of its time. He points out that bookmarks weren’t public by default, the site used folders instead of tags, the service wasn’t instantly useful, and that technology was too often a factor in decision making. Paparo says the company wasn’t ahead of its time, but I think it is pretty clear that these lessons are exactly the type that an unforgiving network teaches us over time. And 13 million dollars said that they didn’t have much time to play with.
They don’t plan for change.
One of the most common battle calls of web developers these days is that you have to plan for change. One certainty is that the app you’re working on right now isn’t the one that will be there a year from now, a month from now, or even a week from now. The software cycle is speeding up. And interestingly, it isn’t just the new, small web apps that lead this charge. It’s Amazon, Google, and eBay, who have such sophisticated backends that they’re able to manipulate, test, and retest different features on the fly to a subset of users. They didn’t get to where they are today by coming up with a fantastic initial design that “just worked”. No, they’re tweaking, tweaking, tweaking while you and I sleep.
They don’t charge money.
This is a more interesting problem than it first appears. At first glance, it would seem that charging might not be all that important to a web application whose creators are going the “let’s get a huge user base” route. This is the route that Writely took. They never charged for anything, built an awesome product and a huge user base, and got bought out by Google. But more likely they’re the exception, not the rule. At some point buying out Web 2.0 companies will slow or stop. When you charge for something, though, an interesting thing happens. You have an implicit relationship with the customer. They are literally invested in your product, will spend more time using it, and will care about whether it lives or dies. All these things add up to better feedback for the development team going forward. In addition, there is also the psychological bias of getting what you paid for. When you charge for something, announcing to the world that you think this is worth something, you are actually implanting the same thought in other people’s heads. They start to think it’s worth something, too.
They have no barrier to entry…at all.
The biggest problem with Myspace is identity. There is simply no barrier to entry for the service, not even to identify who you really are. Obviously, this helps growth because anybody can use the service. However, it also lets in anybody, and that means people who have nothing to lose and who do evil things. If they had their identity to lose, like those who get caught in the weekly sting operations we see now on TV, then that becomes a strong barrier of entry for them. For people who are simply on there to hang with friends, this is not a problematic barrier at all. They want people to know who they are! Having a small, but real, barrier to entry will trip up those people who really shouldn’t be using the service in the first place.
They don’t think holistically.
The amazing thing about Flickr is that nobody uses the service to upload pictures. Nobody says to themselves “I need to upload me some pictures”. Instead, they’re satisfying some other need in their lives, like showing off the new kid to relatives. Or showing their friends how their trip to Europe went. Or letting their co-workers in on their conference activity. All of these things have to do with their life, their relationships, their everyday activities that aren’t centered on the Web, but are made much easier by it. If we look closely, that’s what most successful web apps do: they make our offline lives richer.

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Comments ( 33 Responses so far )

1. Derek organ on May 16th, 2006 (Comment) #

Great post, hopefully we won’t fall into any of those traps. I’ve seen a few lists like this but i think this one addresses the most important issues.

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2. itsallgeektome on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

I’ll add another one:

1) They’re applications that aren’t suitable for the web.

One of the things I’ve seen “Web 2.0″ bring out in companies is similar to what I saw in the heyday of the bubble. People are putting apps on the web because they can (and it’s the hip thing to do) and not because they should. Web applications are very good at certain things, specifically when you want a community effort or the ability to share data with a wide audience quickly. There are however, things that are better done on a desktop app. Does it make sense to do number crunching on a web server somewhere when everyone has a perfectly good 2ghz computer accessing the page? Not every program on your desktop should be made a web app… no… really!

Doesn’t stop people from trying though.

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3. Mike Johnston on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

This is fantastic. Great Stuff. It is interesting however about the charge for or not charge for this service issue. It is true that the general public does understand that something is “worth something” but all too often the “coders” are so caught up in “the internet is free” that they loose site os the end goal. You shouldn’t over charge for an application, but you should not starve while everyone else reaps the benefit of your hard work.

4. Brad Garland on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

Wow, great site, consider it added to my list of sites to catch up on.

Keep it up.

5. Shanti Braford on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

Re: #1 –

If you’re comparing webapps vs. desktop apps (I mean, what else is the point here?), then webapps (imho) increasingly have a much higher chance of getting built than desktop apps.

There are hundreds of thousands of ‘Squidoos’ (software that may or may not hit its stride) in the desktop app realm (read: mostly shareware, trialware, adware, etc.). For every Photoshop, there’s 500 apps that only 15 people have heard of and are actively using.

The beauty of webapps is that they can be knocked out in a few long weekends, where desktop apps can take considerably longer, even with newfangled tools like C#/Java toolkits. (trust me, I’ve done both)

Re: #5 –

Yes, that can be a major problem with many of the new 2.0 webapps that aren’t going for a mass consumer market (read: YouTube, etc).

If you can build a real service that people are willing to pay money for, you only need a few hundred to a few thousand people using your service @ $19 - $99 monthly a pop, to build a solid footing.

That alone won’t make you the next SAP but you’ve got to start somewhere. Next add other product lines just as 37 Signals has done.

(disclaimer: this is our business model at SproutIt.com and it seems to be going well so far :))

6. Dmitry Buterin on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

Great list (and great blog). Some other points:
- time and effort to start using the site might be too high. For example, I come to many online spreadsheets website and try to figure out - how exactly can I use it in my life - and never quite figure that out. Or maybe the site requires a time-consuming setup process to import all my pictures, tag them, whatever.
- general unfriendliness of the web app. I see it especially often with government-run websites. They pay tons of money for technology (IBM, whatever) and then never spend time/effort to figure out what people what to do and how web app can do it in a usable way.

7. Rydal on May 18th, 2006 (Comment) #

Excellent post, I definitely understand. I do have a bunch of half baked apps parked in my storage - I probably jumped onto something else or it did not seem to be of any value at the time of discovery. Off course, people always prove me wrong. My #8 would be “Stick to the application and complete it.”, because I tend not to completely build my ideas (jump into a new idea), I do have a whole lot of half baked applications. However, whats painful is the fact that I know what the problem is and how to solve it but I still can’t get around it!

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8. Mike on May 19th, 2006 (Comment) #

I am really enjoying your 7 reasons posts! They are great. We are trying hard to avoid all of these mistakes with our two new sites (www.blinklist.com and http://www.blinklife.com). I definetly hear you on the tweaking, tweaking, point! It is a constant iterative process and you are never done!

9. Gopal Balaji on May 19th, 2006 (Comment) #

great article. Its a lesson for us since we are also building a web 2.0 app which is basically for people who need it to use it on their day to day life strictly business.

thanx for your suggestions and we will try to adopt it.

g.balaji

10. Damon Barati on May 19th, 2006 (Comment) #

Joshua:

Reason 7 and the flickr example you cited made me think about photos.yahoo.com, since that’s what I’ve been using for the same reasons - sharing photos with relatives.

Now I haven’t done any research into which gets used the most - I have seen other folks’ posting on flickr, but I don’t post there. I wonder how much of flickr appeal is just not plain-old “in fashion”. What are your thoughts?

11. Peter Caputa on May 22nd, 2006 (Comment) #

I’d suggest coming up with a different way to explain number 6. Barrier to entry usually refers to barrier to entry into a market. For example, social networking for bands has a high barrier to entry because bands have established many relationships with fans on myspace. Therefore, it’d be difficult for a new website to enter the space.

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12. bio on June 2nd, 2006 (Comment) #

the greatest blog i’ve ever seen.

charging doesn’t work because free sharing is the expected mode of web. but most users forget that behind this “free sharing”, there must be a “give and take”. most users just demand on the “take” and let investor doing the “give”. its therefore solely a burning game.

as web usage has been surging year over year despite the burst of bubble, the business value must be out there but we just don’t know how to tap it.

i always wonder what’s missing is a economic system that tie up web usage. Say, you may earn some points for reading or clicking through an ad banner. This points can be then be used for say sending a web mail, downloading music…etc. A common web currency (or even we may have FX among different sites) is essential for the whole thing to work. Every click will then be of virtual $ value.

many online games actually have similar kind of concept. but there’s no standard for interoperability among apps. as big as yahoo, its web currency is being applied to its web gadgets like online game, dating, auction. But it seems not a very successful business.

just some thoughts.

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13. Tim Thompson on July 11th, 2006 (Comment) #

Your points were valid, but one of your commenters said ‘time and effort to start using the site might be too high. For example, I come to many online spreadsheets website and try to figure out - how exactly can I use it in my life - and never quite figure that out’ One of the reasons is that web apps don’t easily mesh with offline content and yet most people have most of their content offline.
We used to talk about ’stickiness’ web 2.0 apps have helped here with feature sets and sites that require a time investment, but generally even sites like Flickr will be abandoned for the next big thing if its better.
So the solution is to go back to good old fashioned desktop apps and mix em with web apps to create the seamless interface we all crave.
Thats something we have spent the last three years trying to address at http://www.i-sho.com

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14. Thomas Solar on January 6th, 2007 (Comment) #

this is my first comment in this blog but i will immediatelly add it to my blogroll.

i love this critical view of the revolutions of the web. thx very much

Energie

15. Matteo La Rosa on February 14th, 2007 (Comment) #

I had only now the time to follow some interesting blogrolls and find my here up to here.
Well, this is a relly interesting blog that I will follow from now on, and this article (with the previous one) is really illuminating!
Thanks for the good work.

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16. Pozycjonowanie on April 13th, 2007 (Comment) #

17. Gardening on April 28th, 2007 (Comment) #

Several fresh articles about gardens and gardening

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18. Tom on July 6th, 2007 (Comment) #

This is another post on my list of “look at this posts when creating new sites”. Together with your previous post “7 Reasons…”
Thanks for these very good summaries.

19. Pantoffeln on October 22nd, 2007 (Comment) #

I probably jumped onto something else or it did not seem to be of any value at the time of discovery. Off course, people always prove me wrong. My #8 would be “Stick to the application and complete it.”, because I tend not to completely build my ideas (jump into a new idea), I do have a whole lot of half baked applications. However, whats painful is the fact that I know what the problem is and how to solve it but I still can’t get around it!

20. web design on February 7th, 2008 (Comment) #

Testing is the only way and solution such problems.
Thanks for very interesting article. Keep up the good work. Regards

7 More Reasons Why Web Apps Fail

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