How to Drive Customer Engagement by Building Habit-forming Products
If your business relies on human interaction with your product, then you're essentially in the business of human behavior. And if you're aiming to boost customer engagement, creating a habit-forming technology is crucial.
Many of us have a routine involving getting our daily coffee, running, or checking social media apps. These habits are behaviors we've learned from receiving a reward. Drinking coffee provides a caffeine boost, running releases endorphins, and scrolling through endless content on social media apps offers trending news, giving us a sense of satisfaction or relief. The more we associate an action with a positive outcome, the more likely we'll repeat it, thus forming a habit.
To create a habit-forming technology like a fitness app, game, or online service, we can use the Hook Model, a Behavioral Design framework created by consumer psychology expert Nir Eyal. The Hook Model offers a fascinating way to change behaviors practically and ethically.
“Hooked” - the Bible to building habit-forming products
In his book "Hooked," Nir Eyal addresses the factors differentiating successful products from those that fail. He delves into the psychology of why we gravitate towards specific products and whether there are underlying patterns in how technologies are designed to hook us.
Eyal presents the Hooked Model, a four-step process successful companies use to encourage customer behavior through repeated "hook cycles." Using this Model, these companies can foster user engagement without relying on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Drawing on his extensive research, consulting, and practical experience, Eyal provides a practical guide for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who wants to understand better how products influence our behavior. His book offers insights on creating user habits that stick, actionable steps for building beloved products, and examples from a range of successful habit-forming products, such as the iPhone, Twitter, Pinterest, and the Bible App.
Are you building a vitamin or a painkiller?
Investors often ask whether a product is a vitamin or a painkiller. A painkiller solves a specific need and relieves pain, while a vitamin appeal to users' emotional needs and serves little functional purpose. Social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram could be seen as painkillers since they offer relief or satisfy an itch, namely the desire to update ourselves on what's happening in our digital communities.
The Hook Model aims to create a habit-forming technology that offers relief or painkillers. To do this, we need to design for the four critical phases of the Hook Model: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment. Once users go through these phases, they start associating the product or service with relief, and that's when a habit is formed.
The Hook Model strives to establish a habit by linking the user's need with the designer's solution through repeated interaction. To effectively apply the Hook Model, Nir Eyal proposes five essential questions:
Internal trigger: What is the underlying desire or pain motivates users to seek your product or service?
External trigger: What initially prompts users to engage with your product or service?
Action: What is the most straightforward action users can take to anticipate a reward, and how can you streamline this to enhance ease of use?
Variable reward: Does the reward for your product or service satisfy the user's needs while simultaneously fostering a desire for more?
Investment: What actions do users take to invest in your product or service, and how do these actions increase the product's value and trigger the next interaction?
Creating Habits for Customer Engagement
If you want to drive customer engagement, building habit-forming products can be a highly effective strategy. Here are the essential steps to creating a habit-forming product:
Define your target audience and their needs: Determine whom your product is intended for and what problems it solves or fulfills their needs.
Utilize the Hook Model: The Hook Model is a four-step process that involves trigger, action, variable reward, and investment. Applying this Model can help create a habit-forming product that encourages customer behavior.
Focus on creating a painkiller: It's more effective to create a product that solves a specific need or relieves a particular pain for the customer than a product that appeals only to emotional needs, like a vitamin.
Provide a variable reward: Keep the user engaged and interested in the product by offering a reward that changes based on their behavior.
Encourage investment: Encouraging the user's investment in the product deepens the habit and strengthens the relationship between the user and the product.
Use feedback to improve: Continuously collect feedback from users and use it to improve the product and create a better user experience.
Following these steps, you can create a habit-forming product that encourages customer engagement and fosters a loyal customer base. Remember, the key is to create a product that satisfies a specific need for the customer and provides a variable reward that encourages the user to form a habit of using the product.
Swamini Khanvilkar is a result-oriented Marketing Manager and Content Writer with over five years of experience in Digital Marketing, Creative Writing, B2B & B2C Lead Generation, Market Analysis, and Team Management. She founded Devoir Media to provide purpose-driven marketing solutions and empower impact-focused businesses worldwide. With experience working in the FinTech, EdTech, Crypto, Dentistry, Publishing, and Retail industries, she has helped companies in the UK, Europe, Africa, and India. Connect with her on LinkedIn.