"Keep Them Coming Back: 23 Habit-Making Insights for Product-Minded Founders"

"Keep Them Coming Back: 23 Habit-Making Insights for Product-Minded Founders"

Does your product motivate and reward people to keep coming back? Users want to experience connection, they want to be entertained, they want to feel like they belong somewhere. Often startups focus too much on what it does and the hard aspects of the feature, the functionality, the performance. You forget that, if the user doesn’t feel that, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is what the user feels when using it.

When startups are not doing well, it’s very often because nobody cares about you. You can do whatever you want, but nobody cares. However, when you begin doing something that matters, you’re going to get bombarded by opportunities. If you don’t have clarity on your “Wow” moment, then it’s all luck.

If you have clarity on them as a Founder in terms of what they are, what is that emotional experience that makes someone say, “Wow,” and tell their friends about what they’re doing, then you can engineer for it, you can build for it, and you can plan for it. If you don’t have that clarity, then it’s all luck.

It's important to have awareness of how your product makes people feel. A lot of how products take off is in how they make you feel. It helps if you’re a Founder to try and be that user yourself, to be able to feel, moment to moment, how your own product is making you react. Don’t focus on what users want or need, instead obsess over how they feel.

Consider all the features of your own product. Do they indulge in playful exploration? Are they fun even without a goal? Do they create moments of pleasant surprise? The real question is: Are people using the product at the frequency and timing that we want them? People have very limited attention and time. If we design with that in mind, I think we’ll make much more progress.

When designing a product, the design itself is important, but the story behind the design is equally important. You have to first have a true story. Even better, underpromise in the story and overdeliver in the experience. Give your customer a new superpower. Really understand your customer and speak their language. What is their pain? Understand their pain. Remind them of their pain. And then show them the way forward that takes away the pain — and gives them a superpower they’ve never had before. You also need to make people feel that your product is important in their life.

It's crucial to remember that not everybody around the table is going to think the same way. What’s rational to one person is emotional to another. Habit is one competitive moat. In third-party studies, when comparing search results, people can't tell the difference between Google and Bing. However, people still choose to use Google out of habit. When a habit is formed, consumers don't even consider whether the competition is making a better product. First-to-mind wins.

Engagement cannot be bought, it has to be designed into the product. The product has to actually satisfy a user need and provide real lasting value. The behavior should occur with sufficient frequency for a habit to form. If people aren't using the product as expected, the hook model can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify deficiencies.

The easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it. Design the key behavior or habit to be as easy as possible for users to perform. Additionally, utilize the psychology of variable rewards to keep users engaged. The unknown is fascinating and keeps users searching for the next reward.

The more data, content, followers, and reputation a product accumulates, the stickier it becomes. Invest in the product to store more value in it. A behavior happens when motivation, ability, and a prompt to trigger the behavior come together. If any of these components are missing, the behavior will not occur. Motivation is influenced by the amount of effort, time, and routine changes required for the behavior.

To create a new habit, define a unique form of proof of work that provides a sense of progression. Provide a challenge and give users hope that they can overcome it with time or improvement in their skill level. Additionally, tap into the emotional value and status that comes from ownership of virtual goods.

Successful Founders are great students of humanity and psychologists. They understand human psychology and apply these insights to their products. A habit that starts small but can snowball to become a new center of gravity for a new habit or behavior is what investors look for.

When looking at a company, it's important to consider the depth of the numbers for the people who have already converted to the product. A deep meaningful connection with early users can be expanded to a larger user base. Look for trends, sticky users, and a growth hook that users care about.

Effort and time are precious. Creating a social network that shows the time spent making a post brings humanity and energy into the media form. Help people do what they already want to do and make them feel successful. Simplicity changes behavior, so be the simplest and most satisfying solution for users.

The Law of Least Effort is a principle of human nature. People generally choose the easiest path to do something. Tap into the social feeling of community that comes from synchronous and synchronicity. Acknowledge that some people find joining in with the mob to be a positive experience.

Align product performance metrics to the true user experience by understanding how users think and feel. Behind every great product is an insight about human psychology. Emotional experiences are important as they make users feel like they have done something meaningful.

In conclusion, to keep users coming back to your product, consider their emotional experience, design for habits, provide real value, and make the user's journey as easy as possible. Three actionable advice for product-minded founders are:

1. Understand and prioritize the emotional experience of users. Focus on how your product makes them feel rather than just what it does.
2. Design your product to create habits by making the key behavior or habit as easy as possible for users to perform.
3. Provide real value and solve a user need. Create a deep meaningful connection with early users and expand it to a larger user base.