How to use scientific methods to help you improve user stickiness?

How to improve user stickiness? Today, Ali Kam Sheng classmate translation of good text, from psychology, user behavior habits, hook-like model, triggers, motives, etc. to give a scientific analysis of the professional, fluent and orderly, step-by-step, there are a lot of flash knowledge points, to collect!

　　Preface

How to improve user stickiness? This is the product has a certain UV will face the problem. Most of the products are trying to actively contact users, such as the electric business app to the user on a regular basis to push all kinds of discount promotional messages, to attract users back to the app; SNS app will give users "you pay attention to the People xx update the status" and other dynamic; some diary app will push the message regularly, prompting the user how many days did not go and so on. But for users, what kind of connection would they be more receptive to? The author describes what a hook-like theory is and how we can use this theory to help improve user stickiness.

The first time he met Joe, he had two children when he was 35 years old. Looking at his own swimming circle, he decided to lose 20 pounds. He bought the latest sports equipment, the best health management app to record his diet and exercise. For the first week, he was firm in his plans and lost a few pounds, his enthusiasm weakened a lot in the second week, and after one months, he completely stopped recording and got fat again. He is very dissatisfied with his condition, and he blames himself for losing weight.

So why is it so hard for Joe to change his behavior? Because we make 45% decisions every day out of habit, never thinking.

Some cues such as feeling bored/feeling hungry, some action, some time, some emotion may trigger us to do certain actions. We get a physical or emotional reward when we're done with these specific actions. The habit of doing so often makes us become accustomed to it.

Let's take another look at Joe, if Joe wants to go to the gym after work.

When he came home (implied), he sat in front of the TV (the customary movement), he felt happy and relaxed (rewarded), and by the cycle of the day, Joe had linked home and watching TV and feeling relaxed, and this pattern was written into his neural circuitry to form a fixed habit, and that is, for Joe, The reason why this habit is difficult to change.

It is possible to change habits, but to undergo continuous, repetitive efforts.

　　How the technology can provide help

Technology can help users to a large extent, as designers, we have the opportunity to affect the user, not only prompts the user new action. If used properly, technology can promote and strengthen long-term positive habits. Using the hook-like model of Nir Eyal as a framework, I'll delve into how to build products that help users develop good habits, some of which have been applied to existing health apps.

　　Hook-like model

Nir Eyal's hook-like model focuses on habit formation, which helps us design apps that change user habits and enables users to use apps more.

From the hook-like model, the user needs to trigger an action to be directed to the custom we want the user to form, and when the user performs this action, the app should give the user the incentive to repeat the action.

By repeating this action several times, users are starting to invest more in your app. Users are constantly repeating the action on the hook-like model, helping them develop good habits and increasing the frequency with which they use the app.

　　Trigger

When new habits are formed, triggers usually come from the product itself, which may be email, push messages, SMS prompts, and user-worn device vibration cues.

As designers, we usually do not pay much attention to message reminders, usually after product design to realize this problem, but, triggers are usually to improve user frequency, set the key to open the app.

In order to be effective, triggers must be timely, interesting, and operational.

Timely: Triggers need to appear when the user is most likely to perform an action. At three o'clock in the afternoon prompts the user to say that the weight is far inferior in early morning reminder has the effect. Nike's FuelBand bracelet is a good time to be reminded.

Nike encourages you to move more with the "win This Hour" design, and each hour you will receive a message reminding you to "win" this hour for five minutes of exercise. It encourages you to take action immediately and is an excellent trigger.

Interesting: Users receive a lot of reminders every day, it's hard to get attention from users, and interesting triggers can stand out.

MyFitnessPal, a movement and diet tracking software, alerts users to action by repeating push. And Carrotfit, also a sports and diet tracking software, uses a serious, fun, and diverse push to encourage users to act.

Operable: This is the most important point, if the target action can not be directed, trigger formation habit of the role will be much smaller.

At the end of the week, Fitbit sends a message to the user summarizing the week's performance and comparing it to the previous week.

Users do not need to log on to see their status, messages can activate inactive users. But the message does not tell the user what to do next, and because there is no explicit instructions, Fitbit lets the user decide what to do next.

Giving users clear instructions is helpful for improving user stickiness and operational effectiveness. Shapeup use simple action instructions, such as "stop to a distant place", "take the stairs do not ride the elevator", significantly improve the user's weight loss effect.

　　User intrinsic triggers

The most important thing in a timely, interesting, and operable trigger is to get the user to take action, create repetitive habits, and triggers from within the user itself.

Positive emotional reactions (such as belonging, fullness, boredom) and negative emotional responses (such as boredom, loneliness, depression, anger) are the most powerful motivating factors in forming habits.

Each use of the product in the process of strong emotional response to the user to form a habit. To stimulate a strong emotional response, we need to identify which users are pain points and try to solve them.

For this to happen, Nir Eyal suggested 5 "why" methods. The general idea is to constantly ask why, until you successfully hit the inner pain point.

Let's take a look at Joe and Jessica, both of whom have purchased wearable equipment.

Joe and Jessica all want to track their whereabouts and practice. But when we constantly ask why, we realize that their intrinsic motivations for buying wearable devices are different.

When users of different intrinsic motivations use the same triggers, the product does not allow the user to form a habit. If you do not aim at the pain point, the trigger cannot be instantiated.

By grouping users into intrinsic motivations, we can now push personalized messages for different users.

For those who need approval, you can use the message "Look good" and "you are doing a great job". Onedrop, a diabetes management application is using positive notifications to keep users motivated.

For those who want to be admired, the message "How many competitors you beat today" and "you nailed it" will work.

Targeted triggers can promote more action, and by reusing, the emotions associated with the user can be reflected on the product, becoming an internal trigger that will enhance the user's future interaction with the app and the sense of engagement.

　　Let's go

Triggers do not necessarily allow users to act, and we need to understand what the user's motivations and capabilities are to act. Fogg's action model (FBM) shows whether the user takes action with a significant correlation between motivation and ability.

According to FBM, triggers may cause the user to act when the user can act, but the triggers do not work when the user has no ability or motivation to act. If the user gets hurt and doesn't have much interest in the marathon, the trigger doesn't motivate him to run. FBM is committed to enabling the user to be in a state of activation, which can be achieved by enhancing the user's motivation or ability.

　　Promotion Motivation

There are a number of ways to promote user motivation, and people's motivations come mainly from three aspects:

1. Increase the sense of pleasure/reduce pain

Nike's FuelBand through the hand ring LED lights indicate your day's exercise, color prompts the user with a sense of pleasure, prompting the user to light it and complete the movement.

"When I'm hundreds of paces from the target, I walk around my apartment one hours before I go to bed to improve my score"--roger Cheng (FuelBand user)

Pactapp requires users to make a weekly commitment, users will lose a certain amount of money when they do not fulfill their promises, the loss of money will cause high levels of pain in the brain, pactapp this way to promote the user's motives.

2. Hope/Fear

Another way to boost the user's motivation is to give the user hope, or to ease his fear, when the user anticipates that something good is about to happen, the "hope" uses the household to have a greater incentive to act. MyFitnessPal encourages users to take more steps through the user's hopes of accomplishing their goals.

3. Social identity/exclusion

As a social animal, social identification and exclusion is a powerful weapon to promote power. Fitocracy is doing well in this area and it provides a strong community, and when a user completes an action, other users are prompted and will be led to take action. This forms a sense of identity and feels that being part of the community is a powerful motivator for user action.

More effective than social identity is that people do not want to be excluded from the group, the number of groups in the Nike team to achieve the goal, which gives users a stronger incentive to achieve goals so that the group can achieve goals.

　　Ability to improve

The ability to ascend is not achieved by training or increasing resources, but by making the task simpler to achieve, reducing the time required for the task and reducing the physical and mental effort required.

For example, MyFitnessPal shows all the food that the user has added before, helping the user to record his or her own diet without requiring the user to search or re-enter the information. By simplifying food management, MyFitnessPal improves the user's ability to manage food, so users are more likely to use it to control their diets.

　　How to form a habit

Understanding the user's motivations and capabilities, designing the appropriate triggers is only half the work done. Triggers can help users take action to increase the frequency of user use. But the experience of user action is also critical, which determines whether users will repeat similar actions.

In order to create a product that can help the user form a habit, we also need to understand how to reward the user after the specified action, how to let the user repeat the action and get the reward, finally form the habit.