How Evernote Made Remembering Everything Simple
The first time you tell people about Evernote, they never get it. Give them a few months though and they’ll come back to you raving about how much they love the premium subscription they just bought for the note taking service.
It’s hard for people to understand why they would want to use Evernote the first time you show it to somebody because to them it sounds like other applications they seen, but have never had to use. They’ve gotten by just fine all this time without it. Evernote lets you take notes, it lets you organize those notes into notebooks, and you can sync those notes across your computers.
When you start explaining the more unique features of Evernote, it make the program sound even more complicated… On top of taking notes you can clip webpages, save files and photos, email notes into the system, and finally you can search text across all of your notes, even the text from your photos.
In every case I’ve seen it’s always been instant hesitation, skepticism, or a canned response like “Why don’t you just use X?”
Inevitably though those users get hooked. So how?
It’s probably because once they start using the program, it’s not like using a desktop application. Evernote is used less like a desktop application, and more like a smartphone app.
My buddy Terence Lo replied to me on Twitter when I first shared this idea kept it simple and in perspective:
@malcolmbastien plus it solves a fundamental problem everyone has.
Terence Lo
He’s 100% right about that, but even so I just don’t think that that completely explains why Evernote has become as popular as it has. What ashows us that there is in fact more to it is that Evernote isn’t the only, or even the first solution of its kind. There are others like Yojimbo, and 3banana that do a lot of the same thing. I don’t know if either of those are lauded as $10 million companies.
There can’t be such a big gap between every single note taking application that’s existed, and with Evernote. Even if the gap was big…$10 million big?
In an article on Mashable they have some statistics about how many new users Evernote is signing up from mobile. I think the key is somewhere there.
Unlike other note taking applications that were out before Evernote, Evernote is a great smartphone app. It’s great on the on the iPhone, on the iPad, on Android, and on BlackBerry. Even on the desktop, Evernote works like a smartphone app.
Evernote works like a smartphone application. No files, no folder structure, and no saving or loading. Everything is saved automatically and all store on the cloud. It gets rid of all the complex pieces that people are losing patience for.
So the reason for people’s initial skepticism? They’re thinking in terms that apply with what they’ve always used on the desktop, but that don’t apply with Evernote.
Is this the blueprint for the next successful consumer productivity apps for the next decade? What if other verticals embodied these same ideas into their software?
Except to see a lot more Evernotes, more Simplenotes, more Dropboxes, and a lot less of what we’re used to.
