There is a common mistake that people pick a product without considering alternatives, and so they may get not what they want or need. Let us see why alternatives are essential and how to check them properly.

Do I Need Alternatives?

If you need to choose a product, then you have two options.

The first option: get the first product you can find. This option is suitable for relatively cheap products (food, transport, etc.) as the time you may spend on considering the alternatives may be more expensive than the difference between the first and the best products.

The second option: collect a list of product variants that match your need, compare them, and select the best product. This option is better for expensive or important products as you may rely on this product in the future, and you must not be disappointed in it. To avoid this tragic scenario, you should evaluate possible alternatives.

Evaluation Of Alternatives

You should start by collecting the product's needs, checking the importance, and then ordering needs by importance. This table will be the source or evaluation criteria used to compare several products. Some requirements may be objective (e.g., laptop disk size), while others may be very subjective (e.g., whether you like the look of a laptop) — both are fine as long as you can use them to evaluate a product.

Then you should write a list of possible alternatives. You may use any available data source — Internet search, recommendations, video reviews, etc. The critical part here is to do an initial (rough) evaluation of the products to see if they even match your minimum requirements.

Finally, you have to evaluate every suitable alternative using the criteria table you created earlier. It may take some time, but in the end, you should end up with values for each product for each criterion. Having these values, you should order products by the importance of criteria and end up with the list of products ordered by your preferences. If everything has been done properly, the first product will be the most suitable for you.

Ask An Expert

Sometimes you may not feel confident enough to collect a list of criteria or do a proper evaluation. In such a case, it is a good idea to ask an expert for help.

You still should start from understanding what you need and a rough idea of what product may suit your needs. Having this information, you can ask an expert in the related area to check your criteria, prepare a list of products, and do the evaluation. In the end, you will have the same list of suitable products, and the best product should be the first.

You may also ask an expert for an independent recommendation for your situation. There may be a better way to solve your issue than getting the required product. In such a case, you should start by reconsidering your needs and repeat the whole process from the beginning.

The Conclusion

One way or the other, you will have the list of preferred products, and its truthfulness depends on how fair you (or an expert) was during the evaluation.

Talking about the advice from an expert — the higher the price or importance of a product, the better it is to ask for an external opinion. You may need to pay for it, but then you will have a view of a person who works with the required products for a long time, has a lot of experience, and may even understand your needs better than you.

The mentioned process is very good for most of the regular products you may need and good enough as the first iteration of evaluation for irregular cases. It is up to you to decide what you want and if you are ready to pay the price to get what you need.