What to do when users tell you one thing and data tells you another?
Today, though, we discovered that the sales of the retailer are negatively impacted by one particular piece of our application. That is, once users engage with this particular feature, they become less likely to purchase (though on the whole the application is a net positive). The problem is that, from collected written feedback, this is clearly users' favorite feature. It has also been the source of a lot of buzz/press for us because it's something new/cool that has never before been part of the online shopping experience.
So what do you do when your users are telling you they love one part of the application, but you have data that says your customers might be better served by getting rid of it? PG says to do what's best for the user. Usually I agree with this, but our users aren't the ones paying us.
We've started by doing user interviews about the offending feature to see if we can better understand what it is about their interaction that may be deterring them from purchasing. It's not clear, though, that there's a tweak we can make that will change their behavior without ruining what they like about the feature. What should we do?