6 principles to turn a good digital product into a great one in 2025

How to elevate your product experience to unlock product-led growth in the age of no-code development and AI agents

For the last 15+ years I’ve helped both startups and big companies design and build digital products, through the peak of UX design and design thinking and into the modern era of AI development and no-code tools.

Over time, the methods of creation change, but the things that are difficult have always remained the same.

We live in a world now where going from zero to good can be done in days, not months, and prototyping an idea can be done in minutes rather than days.

But the real challenge lies not in going from zero to good, but in going from good to great. And in a world where everyone can create ‘good’, being great matters even more.

So what are the things that define a great digital product over a good one?

I’ve taken everything I’ve learnt over the last 15+ years and boiled it down to 6 key differences that great products deliver on where good products fail.

1 — Great products are opinionated

The best products, services and businesses now stand for something, or take a stand against something.

Take Strong Brand Social for example. Their intro workshop is called ‘F*ck the algorithm’ — and they have built a community of thousands who resonate deeply with this message.

Or take Cora from Every for example. Presented as ‘email for people who hate email’, they have an opinionated stance on what email should look and feel like, and they double down on it through the product experience.

It’s no longer enough to just do something well, you need to have an opinion on something, and build something that solves for that opinion as well as solving for the problem.

2 — Great products are aesthetic

The best products feel almost magical to use. And this magical, ‘aesthetic’ nature goes beyond just the visual and into the realm of ‘feels’, ‘vibes’, and the philosophical definition of…