A habit is at work when users feel a tad bored and instantly open Twitter. They feel a pang of loneliness and before rational thought occurs, they are scrolling through their FB feeds. A question comes to mind and before searching their brains, they query Google. The first-to-mind solution wins.
Over time, Barbra associates Facebok with her need for social connection.
Feedback loops are all around us, but predictable ones don’t create desire. The unsurprising response of your fridge light turning one when you open the door doesn’t drive you to keep opening it again and again. However, add some variability to the mix — suppose a different treat magically appears in your fridge every time you open it — and voila, intrigue is created.
Variable rewards are one of the most powerful tools companies implement to hook users.
If it can’t be used for evil, it’s not a superpower.
In the free-to-play video game business, it is standard practice for game developers to delay asking users to pay money until they have played consistently and habitually. Once the compulsion to play is in place and the desire to progress in the game increases, converting users into paying customers is much easier.
As usage increased over time, so did customers’ willingness to pay. After the first month, only 0.5% of users paid for the services; however, this rate gradually increased. By month 33, 11% of users had started paying. At month 42, a remarkable 26% of customers were paying for something they had previously used for free.
By addressing shoppers’ price concerns, Amazon earns loyalty even if it doesn’t make the sale and come across as trustworthy in the process.
In fact, people are so comfortable comparison shopping on Amazon that they frequently use the company’s mobile app to check prices when standing in the aisles of real stores — often making a purchase from inside a competing retailer.
It’s never been easier to launch a new product or service, yet most new endeavors fail. Why? Products fail for a variety of reasons: Companies run out of funding, products enter market too early or too late, the marketplace doesn’t need what companies are offering, or founders simply give up.
Painkillers solve an obvious need, relieving a specific pain, and often have quantifiable markets.
Vitamins, by contrast, do not necessarily solve an obvious pain point. Instead they appeal to users’ emotional rather than functional needs.
- What habits does your business model require?
- What problem are users turning to your product to solve?
- How do users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution?
- How frequently do you expect users to engage with your product?
- What user behavior do you want to make into a habit?
Yin doesn’t realize she’s hooked, although she admits she regularly snaps and posts dozens of pictures per day using the app. “It’s just fun. I don’t have a problem or anything. I just use it whenever I see something cool. I feel I need to grab it before it’s gone.”
Yin often uses Instagram when she fears a special moment will be lost forever.
The severity of the discomfort may be relatively minor — perhaps her fear is below the perceptibility of consciousness — but that’s exactly the point. Our life is filled with tiny stressors and we’re usually unaware of our habitual reactions to these nagging issues.
The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user’s pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company’s product or service as the source of relief.
The Internet is a giant machine designed to give people what they want. We often think the Internet enables you to do new things. But people just want to do the same things they’ve always done.
These common needs are timeless and universal. Yet talking to users to reveal these wants will likely prove ineffective because they themselves don’t know which emotions motivate them. People just don’t think in these terms. You’ll often find that people’s declared preferences — what they say they want — are far different from their revealed preferences — what they actually do.
Obama’s campaign leveraged a deeply inspiring message and image during a time of economic and political upheaval.
Web 1.0 was categorized by a few content providers like CNET or the NYT publishing to the masses, with only a tiny number of people creating what others read.
Take a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time. Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.
People often anchor to one piece of information when making a decision.
Which resources are limiting your users’ ability to accomplish the tasks that will become habits?
- Time
- Brain cycles (too confusing)
- Money
- Social deviance (outside the norm)
- Physical effort
- Non-routine (too new)
The study revealed that what draws us to act is not the sensation we receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.
Laughter may in fact be a release valve when we experience the discomfort and excitement of uncertainty, but without fear of harm.
Variable rewards can be found in all sorts of products and experiences that hold our attention. They fuel our drive to check email, browse the web, or bargain-shop.
The phrase “But you are free” disarms our instinctive rejection of being told what to do. If you have ever grumbled at your mother when she tells you to put on a coat or felt your blood pressure rise when your boss micromanages you, you have experienced what psychologists term reactance, the hair-trigger response to threats to your autonomy.
The more effort we put into something, the more likely we are to value it; we are more likely to be consistent with our past behaviors; and finally, we change our preferences to avoid cognitive dissonance.
These tendencies lead to a mental process known as rationalization, in which we change our attitudes and beliefs to adapt psychologically. Rationalization helps us give reasons for our behaviors, even when those reasons might have been designed by others.
Every time users of Apple’s iTunes add a song to their collection, they are strengthening ties to the service.
An average Snapchat user sends 40 photos every day.
Peddlers tend to lack the empathy and insights needed to create something users truly want.
Often the peddler’s project results in a time-wasting failure because the designers did not fully understand their users. As a result, no one finds the product useful.
Paul Graham advises entrepreneurs to leave the sexy-sounding business ideas behind and instead build for their own needs: “Instead of asking ‘what problem should I solve?’ ask ‘what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?’”
Whenever new technologies suddenly make a behavior easier, new possibilities are born.