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Successful e-commerce products start with the progress a customer needs to make in a particular situation—not with a list of features the team wants to ship. That shift can reveal that the best solution includes product changes, easier purchasing, useful services, or a better handoff between channels. “One real problem” is a focus for discovery, not a rule that a product may have only one feature or serve only one need.
What does it mean to solve a real customer problem?
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) describes a job as the progress someone wants to make in a particular circumstance. It is more specific than a demographic label and different from a requested feature: the same person may need different things in different situations. A job can include functional goals as well as social and emotional concerns. [Harvard Business Review] [Microsoft Research]
That distinction changes the starting question from “What should we add?” to “Why would the customer buy our product or service?” Microsoft Research describes the inquiry as understanding what people are trying to get done and what problems they are trying to solve. The answers help a team judge which capabilities matter in context, rather than assuming that more options automatically create more value.
Why a feature list can miss the opportunity
A feature request names a possible solution; it does not necessarily explain the underlying need. A customer asking for a faster checkout might be trying to avoid a missed delivery window, reduce uncertainty, or finish a routine order with less effort. Those circumstances could point to changes in checkout, delivery information, saved preferences, or a service outside the checkout itself.
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In a 2016 Harvard Business Review account, a condo developer first focused on attractive physical features for downsizers. It later recognized a broader life transition behind the purchase and added moving support and help with decisions about what to keep or discard. The opportunity was not simply to improve the condo; it was to make the customer’s transition easier. [Harvard Business Review]
For an e-commerce team, this means looking beyond the product page to the connected work a buyer is trying to complete. McKinsey’s discussion of customer-focused commerce makes a similar case: businesses can treat e-commerce as a bolt-on sales channel when customers need broader help across products, services, and touchpoints. [McKinsey]
How to find the job behind a purchase
Study a concrete situation rather than asking only what customers want in the abstract. Microsoft Research notes that approaches to defining a job differ, so teams should be deliberate about their research objective and the circumstance they are investigating. These prompts can help structure discovery; they are not a universal prescribed interview script. [Microsoft Research]
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- What happened that led the person to seek a change or make a purchase?
- What outcome were they trying to reach, and what would count as progress?
- What alternatives did they consider, including doing nothing or using a workaround?
- Where did effort, uncertainty, anxiety, or inconvenience arise?
- Which parts of the experience mattered in that situation, and which were incidental?
Keep the inquiry anchored in actual circumstances. A feature that matters to one customer in one moment may be irrelevant—or even inconvenient—to another. The aim is to understand the job well enough to evaluate possible solutions, not to assume one customer profile predicts every purchase.
What the milkshake example teaches product teams
Harvard Business School’s milkshake account illustrates why context matters. Some commuters bought a shake to make a drive less boring and stave off hunger. In that situation, thickness and the ability to consume it cleanly with one hand were relevant; a quicker purchase and pickup also helped. Parents bought shakes for a different job and circumstance, so the useful attributes were not necessarily the same. [Harvard Business School]
The commuter was not choosing only among other shakes. Bagels, bananas, and doughnuts could also address hunger or make the trip more pleasant. Comparing a product only with direct category competitors would therefore miss some of the alternatives customers actually weigh. [Harvard Business School]
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The broader lesson is not to copy a milkshake’s attributes. It is to identify the situation first, then ask which product qualities, purchase steps, and service details help the customer make progress in it.
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Map the journey around the customer’s goal and identify where products, services, and channels help or hinder it. In McKinsey’s Grainger example, the industrial supplier connected factory-floor vending machines to automatic replenishment and offered digital capabilities such as order history, round-the-clock service, advanced search, and e-procurement through its site and app. McKinsey reported that these digital initiatives were responsible for 75 percent of Grainger revenue in its 2023 article. That is a company-specific reported figure, not a forecast or causal guarantee for other retailers. [McKinsey]
When comparing possible solutions, assess more than feature count or conversion at one step. Consider the customer’s functional outcome, relevant social or emotional concerns, effort and continuity across preferred channels, and the delivery, cost, and operational implications. These are useful decision lenses drawn from the cited customer-job and product-development discussions, not a validated scoring formula. [McKinsey] [Harvard Business Review] [McKinsey]
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Turn customer insight into a focused roadmap
Once a team has evidence about a customer job, translate it into a small set of customer outcomes and prioritize work by the value it can deliver. A roadmap should make clear which customer situation a piece of work addresses and what improvement the team expects to enable. That keeps prioritization tied to a real need while leaving room to test whether the proposed solution works.
McKinsey’s product-development article describes one operating approach: cross-functional teams of five to ten engineers, iterations lasting two to four weeks, frequent demonstrations, a centrally prioritized backlog, and a minimum viable product (MVP) with enough functionality to add value. It also describes reallocating teams as priorities change. These are examples of practices, not universal prescriptions or guaranteed outcomes; an organization should adapt its process to its product, constraints, and evidence. [McKinsey]
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A problem-first approach does not mean rejecting features. Features are often how a product delivers value, and teams can deliver them incrementally. The distinction is whether a capability is connected to a customer outcome and supported by evidence, rather than included merely because it is easy to imagine or requested without context. [McKinsey]
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What this approach can—and cannot—establish
JTBD offers a useful way to frame discovery and product decisions, but it is not the only valid product strategy. The cited examples illustrate how customer circumstances can reveal solutions beyond product functionality; they do not prove that focusing on one problem automatically causes e-commerce success. A team still needs to test its assumptions, weigh operational realities, and learn whether its solution helps customers make the progress it set out to support.
For readers who want to explore the framework further, Microsoft Research identifies Jim Kalbach’s The Jobs to Be Done Playbook as a resource. [Microsoft Research]
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