Yesterday, I was in a local business and saw this old school calendar on the desk. Actually, they had one on each desk. None of them had a sign of use in 2007. I immediately made the connection of how long it takes to change human behavior patterns. We didn’t just wake up one day and start using Outlook or iCal. Actually, it was just the opposite. It took years to migrate to digital calendars and there are still plenty of people (execs I know) who use a DayRunner or a large desk calendar.
Since my startup requires people to change from paper to the web, this reinforced that a web app doesn’t have to be a complete replacement for an offline alternative. Each web app doesn’t have to pull rss feeds with Flickr photos and allow the user to connect to friends. The popular calendar sites Upcoming, Trumba or 30 Boxes haven’t erradicated the paper calendar market, but they’re taking a piece of the pie by making a product that lets the user do more of what THEY want (not what us web geeks want). Even the best web apps still have viable offline alternatives as seen by the book stores still standing after Amazon changed their world.
As you build your next great startup, remember you don’t have to create the hippest, most feature rich site (seen Dropboks yet?). You just have to find the user’s needs (not always easy), then nudge them along by introducing more features. I know we’re still trying to figure it out with our users, but we know we all must test more features and kill the ones they don’t like!
