How products fit into user's habits

Editor's note: This author Nir Eyal is the author of how to build user habits. Nir is an interdisciplinary expert in psychology, technology and business, and is also a lecturer at Stanford University. The explosive growth of network application products has been a successful gathering of many entrepreneurs ' concerns, users are looking forward to a first-class solution, and all the designers do is to fit the needs of the user experience. Some of the sites that have been hugely successful, such as Pinterest, Reddit, TUMBLR, are linked to millions of users, but user needs and habits are very complex things, and internet companies are doing their best to analyze user habits, Try to build a practical product with high user stickiness and want to be the next Amazon or Google.

Instinctive behavior

Behavior is a complex manifestation of the brain's learning process, controlled by basal ganglia in the brain. The reaction is to respond to the thoughts of the brain that are actually encountered, and this is where the behavior arises, and the following describes the two behaviors that turn into habits:

The brain has a strong ability to learn to think about the solution of the problem, when you meet new things, you will also think about how to do, but will soon shorten the time to think, forming habits.

Biting the finger when a very common action, there is no thinking of the thing, is to reduce the pressure, when the user behavior to a certain degree of satisfaction, it is difficult to be broken, do not need any reason, which formed a habit. We have too much action to do in the subconscious, when you feel comfortable, the brain will naturally control.

Spiritual Monopoly

A recent study by the University of London tried to summarize the habit of using dental floss to clean teeth, the more people do this action, the more the new habits will be easier to produce, this is also common in the Internet industry, the more we have OCS stations and applications, the more user behavior easier to form habits.

Google's product is a good example, a large number of users will give it a lot of user behavior feedback, and Google will also use these user habits to improve the product, this is a good virtuous circle, even if Google has a better algorithm, save time is also difficult to detect, These technical things are not the key to capturing users.

But habits are an important factor in maintaining user loyalty, and if users get used to Google's interface, you're not comfortable with Bing, though Bing already has a lot of Google features, but a small button change requires a little extra effort to learn, Adapting to different interfaces lets Bing give users the illusion that it's not working.

The need for Web search is so great that users will have a lot of repetitive behavior on Google's browsers every day, and the gradual user will no longer think about using that searcher, and the search engine improvements are based on the user's past habits, resulting in greater dependency.

The habit of being king

On the Wal-Mart website, you'll also see ads from other sites, this may seem like a bad strategy, but the real Amazon is developing a user habit: What you buy can be found here, and it gives you the option to compare prices horizontally, and you'll want to go to Amazon for everything you buy, which is a real " One-stop shopping experience.

If your product can meet some of the user's non-recurrent needs, you can also form a user habit for your product. In addition, in meeting the needs of users, users are not looking at the technology that is involved in your product itself, but whether you really think about their experience.