I’d love to see someone write a book on the “trial and error” company. Because that’s what most web companies really are: once they get a web application up on the web and start attracting customers, they can quickly use the statistics they gather as to how users reach their site and how they use their site to make adjustments quickly to make the customers happy.

Of course in a sense all companies are trial-and-error companies. Unfortunately most non-web based companies use customer support as the primary source of feedback from their customers, but rather than consider customer support part of the development process or part of the feedback process, companies seem to treat customer support as a necessary evil, as a cost center to shut the customers up.