I've learnt from experience that there's another warning sign: Silence. If no one is making suggestions, complaining, or promoting your product then it indicates apathy. Which means that you aren't solving a critical problem

Reminds me of the saying: the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

What if your product is just not critical? Is that a terrible thing? I can't imagine every application is absolutely critical to an operation. I would argue that most B2Cs and a good percentage of B2Bs are not critical software, but many of them do just fine.

For example, if your product or app is a game.

"I’m really busy right now but I’ll start using your GAME soon"

I'm sure every game developer would like to make a game that people play even when they can't afford to spend the time playing it, but because they don't doesn't mean their game sucks.

I really wish the author had mentioned the name of the app with the sucky UI. I would love to take a crack at implementing a competing program with an awesome UI so I could completely own that market.

Well, if that is all it takes to dominate the market. We can narrow down the app with sucky UI to only every application on the market since the existence of software.

Pick one you find interesting and go with it.

It's gotta be JIRA or AdWords. Those are the two most widespread apps with crappy UI that Performable is likely to use.

Odd, I must be the only person on the planet who actually likes JIRA. Probably because my point of reference is Bugzilla.

I really like Jira too, but I could still go on and on about things I find crappy about it. :)

If you can spare the time we would love more UX feedback for JIRA :)

Happy to hear that! I'll wait until we upgrade to the newest version before I start, though. No use complaining about stuff that's already been fixed. :)

Great! We look forward to it. Any feedback you have can be reported on http://jira.atlassian.com :-)

Someone in the comments said Basecamp. I second that.

Have you tried Greenhopper? Atlassian bought them-- I couldn't bear to use JIRA without it.

There's more to owning a market than just a slick UI.

True, but not much more.

Yeah, I came over here to say exactly the same thing.

Although solving a critical problems is a significant advantage (especially in the b2b market), I think it is also possible to establish a business based on adding-value or improving upon various aspects of a business or consumer experience. Add-ons to existing products and web apps that simplify a more complicated workflow are good examples.

I find that much of the functionality of many successful web apps can be replicated in a spreadsheet, but the added value of the time savings, improved functionality and simplified workflow make the web app worth the price (although not necessarily critical).

The warning signs are people saying "I'd use your product if..."

OK, but what if people use and like your product for years, but it still spreads slowly?

Broadly speaking, your market might be too small (-> grow your product into a larger, related market) or your marketing might be inadequate (failing to increase your share in your current market) or the competition is better in some way.

This is an interesting blog post because I've noticed that often the apps that solve the most "mission-critical" problems have the worst UIs. Maybe its the complexity of the task as much as lack of effort? I'm not sure. On the other hand the most beautiful UIs are often on top of apps solving extremely trivial problems.

More likely you keep working on your UI until you get traction. If you are solving a real problem, you can get traction while your UI is not very good.

If there is I haven't found it yet. Thanks for checking out my post.

To be honest, your post was just OK, but it lead me to your button generator (http://www.performable.com/buttons/), which is hands down the best online button generator I've come across.

[insert lame cancel button pun here.]

I love the critical feedback!

Would love some on how we can make the button generator better.

Having the "Yes, send me product updates (big improvements coming) & marketing tips!" checkbox enabled by default gives off a bad smell. It is the little brother of e-commerce sites that sneak stuff into your cart when you aren't looking.

Let subscriptions be an active decision instead of an accident.

I'd love to see some data showing what the most popular calls at action you're seeing are...