Every trading app has more feature requests than developers. The hard part of product isn't finding ideas; it's deciding which three of the forty get built this month.
Two questions, scored honestly
Every request gets two scores:
- Trader impact. How often would a trader use this, and how much better is the decision they make with it? A feature used daily for entries beats a feature used once to change a setting.
- Engineering cost. Not my guess: the developers' estimate, including data sources, edge cases and maintenance.
High impact and low cost ships first. High impact and high cost gets broken into a smaller first version. Low impact rarely ships at all, however loud the request.
The live-trade test
Before a feature reaches a developer, I ask one question: would I use this with a position open? If I'd ignore it in that moment, so will most traders. This single test removes more ideas than any spreadsheet.
Why automated analysis beat more chart types
A real example from Chart AI. One option was more chart types and layouts. The other was automated pattern detection: the app finds head-and-shoulders, wedges and triangles and explains them. Traders spend far more time looking for an entry than changing how a chart looks, and a chart type is chosen once, while an entry signal is needed every day. Pattern detection won, and it became one of the features traders open the app for.
Things I deliberately deprioritise
- Features that only look good in a demo. If it needs a tutorial to be useful, it isn't ready.
- Clever indicators nobody asked for. More lines on a chart usually means less clarity.
- Anything that sounds like advice. If the wording can't pass legal review, the feature needs rethinking, not rewording.
Keep the loop short
Prioritisation isn't a quarterly ritual. I revisit it every sprint, because the market changes what traders need: a liquidation-heavy week makes a liquidation feature urgent in a way no roadmap predicted.
This article is for education only and is not financial advice. Markets are volatile; do your own research and manage your risk.
