What are product specifications?

How will you know that pursuing a new product idea will be a worthwhile investment for your company? Making sure that it will fill a specific need and that there will be a reasonably high level of demand for it is an important step. This process involves a significant amount of careful planning, and product specifications can help you make sure that every detail is a good match for your target audience.

Here are some of the most important things to know about how product specifications, or product specs, work and why they play such an important role in designing an innovative product that is a good fit for your customers. You can also learn how to write effective product specs that make your brand’s latest ideas stand out.

Understanding what you want the purpose and functionality of a new product to look like before moving forward helps ensure that every decision you make throughout the development process supports your goals.

Product specifications are detailed documents that describe the specific requirements the finished product or feature will need to adhere to. This information helps developers stay on track and avoid overlooking potential problems throughout the development process. It ensures that every detail of a design contributes to making the product the best possible fit for a particular target audience.

Examples of product specifications

The specific details that make up your product specification can vary depending on the type of product you are designing, the purpose you want it to serve, and its overall complexity. However, all development teams should consider the following common product specs to make sure that there is a viable market for their idea before moving beyond the brainstorming stage:

• The specific purpose of your product and the problem you want it to solve

• The product’s exact dimensions, weight, volume, color, and other physical design elements

• Specific materials that need to be used or features that need to be included to meet general safety guidelines and industry standards

• Software programs or other devices and products that you are specifically designing your product to be compatible with

• Any other defining characteristics that describe important aspects of how the product works and what it is for

Product specifications describe the following:

• The product your business is looking to create

• The purpose it will serve

• Who it is primarily intended for

• How it builds upon similar products or earlier versions of the product that your business has previously released

• Other information that explains why the product may be profitable

Good product specs can be complex documents that contain many details. Importantly, they should contain everything readers need to know to get an accurate sense of the role a product idea will fill, how it will look, and how it will work. Working through each of these details is a methodical approach to making sure that every aspect of a new product makes sense for its intended purpose.

Here are some of the most important things to know about writing strong product specifications that produce the results you want:

Gathering customer insights

You want to design something that comes as close to your target audience’s vision as possible. Determining what details are most likely to capture their interest in your new product is key.

Being among the first to launch an innovative feature that gives your brand a competitive advantage, especially if it evolves into a standard over time, can be beneficial. However, your business won’t want to waste time and money adding too many options that don’t interest the majority of your potential customers. Find the sweet spot between too basic and too complex. This can go a long way toward ensuring that the majority of your new product’s users are happy with most of what it has to offer.

Use a variety of methods to learn about what your current and potential customers are most likely to be interested in. This is an important early step in increasing the likelihood that your final product specifications will be a good fit for your target audience. To do this, your team can:

• Use email or text messaging to send past customers new surveys.

• Review past complaints to identify the most common pain points associated with using a similar product.

• Compile a list of feature requests your social media followers ask for and other comments that have been made on your recent posts.

• Perform general market research to learn more about the main features and other specs that are most likely to convert potential customers who have not yet connected with your brand.

Collaboration across teams

Once you have determined what need you want your new product to fill and how your target audience wants you to do it, representatives from teams across your business will need to meet to determine the best strategies for turning your vision into a reality.

Most of the work involved in designing a new product and identifying its specifications will ultimately fall on your development team. Despite this, obtaining insights into your business’s finances, typical marketing strategies, and other details can help you better understand the resources available to you. You want to avoid running into problems completing overly ambitious projects later on.

Iterative feedback processes

Continuous feedback is a must when it comes to making sure that your team has the information they need to make continuous improvements.

Incorporate iterative feedback, user testing, customer surveys, and other methods for better understanding whether your product’s specifications are providing the results you expected. Make changes as needed to give your customers the best possible user experience.

The main concepts that should be included in most types of product specification sheets include the following:

• The product’s size and weight

• The materials that the product will be made of

• A general overview of what the product is and what it will do

• A general overview of the product’s target audience

• What metrics will be used to gauge success

Your initial product specification plays a key role in determining the details of your product before it reaches customers. However, the original version of your finished product shouldn’t necessarily be the final version.

You can take steps to continuously improve future versions of your product through customer feedback. This will enable you to collaborate with your audience to tweak issues that weren’t noticed before your product hit shelves and add more features that make it a better match for your customers’ preferences.

Implementing customer feedback

Inviting a small number of your brand’s top customers to try out a prototype of a new product—or an upgraded version of a current product—before releasing it to your full customer base can be a particularly helpful way to find out whether your users are actually experiencing the expected benefits.

Your team is aware of and focused on exactly how your product is supposed to work. As a result, they may overlook details that don’t quite function as intended. Your most loyal customers are likely to be eager to share everything they love about your product, bring up any problems they encounter, and offer suggestions for making an even more attractive product. These users have a more limited understanding of the details of your product than your developers, so they tend to be more likely to pick up on issues.

Your team can also use customer surveys to bring in similar information when your customers have begun to purchase and use your new product.

Email surveys are generally the most effective method for learning what verified purchasers think about a specific product—especially when they are sent a reasonable amount of time after they receive their order. The most effective email surveys should be sent after customers have had plenty of time to try out and become familiar with your product but soon enough to remember their first impressions.

Other product survey options include sending customers surveys by text, speaking with them on the phone or in person, adding a popup to your website that asks visitors quick questions, asking social media followers specific questions, and observing comments that are organically generated on your posts.

Good product specifications involve creating a detailed description of each of the items on your list and making sure that your reasons for making each decision are clear.

The three main types of product specifications include the following:

1. Performance specifications

2. Design specifications

3. Functional specifications