There is a vast graveyard littered with companies who had great ideas and innovative products, yet failed to gain traction in the market because they didn’t understand their customers or neglected their user experience.

For people who love to build things, when something’s not working, it’s tempting to press on and simply build more features, or pivot and try something else. Despite our best intentions, hard work and honest belief in the value of our products, many still fail. But why?

The truth is sobering. Other than the exceptional cases, consumers are impatient and disinterested in your product. Even the ones who sign up to try it out, only a small percentage are willing to stick around to use it more. A typical product might see 90% refuse to sign up. And then of the ones who do sign up, over 90% of users disengage and become inactive over time.

It’s a great frustration for entrepreneurs. But there’s hope. While these metrics are terrible, they are also normal and well understood, and there is a vast body of literature and dedicated fields of study on topics surrounding adoption cycles, usability, user behaviour and strategies for how to solve UX problems.