It can be a differentiator but it's a hard one to sell. Telling someone your software is easier to use will usually be met with an eye roll or a snarky "of course you think it's easier to use, it's your software...". Ease-of-use needs to be either demo'd or experienced during a trial period. The question is how do you get a potential user to that point?
Further, you'll notice very few companies that make highly usable products advertise them that way. Look at an Apple ad or Netflix or Toyota. Very rarely do they ever talk about ease-of-use. They always focus on what the product can do and how it makes you feel.
You're assuming your prospective customer is able to tell a good design by just looking at it. Has that been your experience? How do you show them attention to design?
What you say is true if you restrict the term usability to just mean user interface design, but usability can go far beyond that. Usability should be about how your product solves a problem, not just how its options and menus are laid out. As soon as you hear about how Dropbox works you know instantly that it's far more usable than other sync options.
It will also become a differentiator in that services that don't have good usability will become ostracised.
I remember when Wifi was becoming mainstream in Estonia's capital Talinn. Coffeeshop owners started providing Wifi, not because it brought customers, but because not having it pushed customers away.
Usability (in the sense of a product not frustrating the user's intentions) will always be key to getting good word-of-mouth advertising. Friends don't tell their friends to buy frustrating products or services. When I first started using Google for Web searching, way back before Google's IPO, I told all my friends about it, because it got me better results than the other search engines of the time.
After edit: And the reason I knew about Google way back then is that I checked my server logs for my personal website, and noticed a new search engine spider coming by to visit. As I began using Google, I discovered its usability, and soon began telling everyone I knew, tech-oriented or not, about it. That's viral marketing at its best.
"Businesses can’t make their products usable by just painting a thick coat of usability over their already functioning complex applications. "
I don't know about you, but I can think of more than a few products where layering on a thick coat of usability might not solve all their problems, but it would be a jolly good start.
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[ 372 ms ] story [ 747 ms ] threadFurther, you'll notice very few companies that make highly usable products advertise them that way. Look at an Apple ad or Netflix or Toyota. Very rarely do they ever talk about ease-of-use. They always focus on what the product can do and how it makes you feel.
I remember when Wifi was becoming mainstream in Estonia's capital Talinn. Coffeeshop owners started providing Wifi, not because it brought customers, but because not having it pushed customers away.
After edit: And the reason I knew about Google way back then is that I checked my server logs for my personal website, and noticed a new search engine spider coming by to visit. As I began using Google, I discovered its usability, and soon began telling everyone I knew, tech-oriented or not, about it. That's viral marketing at its best.
"Businesses can’t make their products usable by just painting a thick coat of usability over their already functioning complex applications. "
I don't know about you, but I can think of more than a few products where layering on a thick coat of usability might not solve all their problems, but it would be a jolly good start.