User operation: How to stimulate users’ desire to act?

Why do users want to use/participate/take action as soon as they see some products/activities/advertisements?

Your stuff is always done well, but users never do it the way you expect. Don’t use the product, don’t attend the event, don’t react to the advertisement…

We all hope that users will act as we expect. Dreams are always beautiful, but reality comes too suddenly.

So how do you get your users to take action immediately?

For example, participating in your activities, opening your official account, joining your community, watching your Douyin videos, purchasing your products... and so on.

What I want to share with you today is very suitable for this topic, and it is BJ Fogg's behavior model.

The Fogg Behavior Model is a good way to explore user behavior. It believes that for a behavior to occur, three elements must be present at the same time: motivation, ability, and trigger.

The part above the blue curve in the above figure is “where a user behavior may occur.”

That is to say, an action may only eventually occur when a person has sufficient motivation, the ability to do it, and the triggers that can trigger the user's action.

Next, Lao Zei will talk with you about how to get users to take immediate action from three aspects: motivation, ability and triggers.

01. Motivation

Motivation is the most direct reason why users take action because they expect some kind of reward. For example, seeing a doctor and taking medicine is because they expect to get better soon and avoid the pain caused by the disease.

This is the most critical step. If users are not interested in your product, your official account, and have no motivation to take the actions you expect them to complete, then how can they take action?

We often say that we can understand user needs and explore user pain points, which actually means we are trying to find user motivations!

What do users hope to achieve with your product? Why should users attend your event? What is his reason to open and follow your official account?

We can activate user motivation in several directions:

1) Find fun, 2) Avoid pain, 3) Find hope, 4) Avoid fear

5) Find a sense of belonging, 6) Avoid prejudice, 7) Find benefits, 8) Avoid anxiety

In addition, people are born with eight strong primitive desires, which will directly affect our action decisions. They are the best motivations we can use.

Avoid fatigue and enjoy a comfortable and pleasant life

Enjoy food and drinks

Freedom from fear, pain and danger

Attractive, seeking sexual partners

Stay young and healthy

Compare with others and gain more advantages

Take care of and protect your children, family and loved ones

Gain social recognition and respect

Therefore, if you want users to take action immediately, you must first provide some kind of reward that users demand and satisfy their "motivation." Activate certain "needs", "pain points" or "interests" of people.

02. Capabilities

Even if users have motivation, they may not necessarily take action. For example, if you want to quit smoking, the motivation is always there, but the action is always delayed.

If you want to increase the occurrence rate of a certain user behavior, there is one thing that must not be missed, which is to ensure that the user has sufficient ability to do it. The whole process can be complicated, but every link needs to be simple and easy.

People are used to staying in their comfort zone, unwilling to take risks, unwilling to change, and unwilling to think outside the box.

So even if your product, activity or advertising call is worth trying, if change or action is not easy and the threshold is too high, many people may give up.

From motivation to action, the cost that users have to pay for self-change has always been a mountain that is not easy to climb.

This cost is often not just a monetary cost, but also includes image cost, action cost, learning cost, health cost, decision-making cost, etc.

A team conducted a jam experiment in which they provided consumers with a jam tasting event.

The experiment was divided into 2 groups. One group had 6 types of jams to try, and the other group had 24 types of jams to try. After trying all of them, they could buy any of them at a price lower than the market price.

As a result, 30% of the tasters in the group of 6 jams chose to buy, while only 3% of the tasters in the group of 24 jams ultimately chose to buy.

The reason is simple: low decision costs lead to a high number of actions. The 24 types of jams may seem more tempting, but in fact they increase the selection and decision-making costs for consumers. It is difficult to choose, as they want this and that, and finally give up the purchase.

Therefore, in order to cross the action threshold and ultimately transform motivation into action, what we need to do is to make users more capable, reduce their overall action costs, and enable them to take action more conveniently.

In addition to providing sufficient motivation, we also need to tell users that "it is actually very easy to take action" and "it can be done easily" and so on, and let them feel it.

Of course, cost and ability never exist independently. How much a user can pay depends on how much temptation you offer.

03. Trigger

With the motivation and ability, all that’s missing is the right timing. Trigger refers to the incentive that prompts users to take immediate action.

For example, if you have a cold, you may not buy medicine even if you are motivated. But when you see a news report saying that you may get XX disease if you have a cold, you will immediately go buy medicine.

This news was the trigger.

We need to figure out when and where users are more likely to use this product? What emotions would motivate them to act? What kind of copywriting can impress them? What kind of results would they not want to see? What kind of scenes would excite them and so on.

Simply put, there needs to be an action trigger to further stimulate people's certain "needs", "pain points" or "interests".

This trigger is divided into external trigger and internal trigger.

External triggers: These are the stimuli or prompts that we see, hear or feel directly, such as: "Don't miss it if you pass by!" "80% off all items today."

Internal triggers: Mainly psychological. In a certain scenario, the user’s core pain points are aroused or amplified again. The human weaknesses, emotions, and various psychological principles we often talk about are of this type.

So, what are some good ways to accomplish triggering or suggestion?

I have read the public account "少加点班" by Li Shaojia before. The owner has very good insights on this, which are of great guiding significance. I would like to share them with you:

A large number of scientific experiments have shown that almost all the "cues" of behavioral habits can be classified into the following four categories: situation, time, emotional state, and prelude behavior.

1) Context, that is, the specific and vivid scene or environment in which the user is located.

Generally speaking, we can find the first step to stimulate user action by starting from the typical scenarios in which users use the product: user hints.

For example, "Himalaya": When there is a traffic jam on the road, listen to Himalaya.

2) Emotions, which trigger the user’s mood when using the product, are especially suitable for emotional products.

For example, live streaming products: "Watching TV shows is tiring, and games are expensive, so live streaming is more fascinating." (Example)

3) Time, which refers to the specific time when the product is suitable for use.

For example, Luoji Siwei sent a voice message on WeChat at six in the morning. For example, "Reading at Ten O'clock", the name alone gives a very clear hint.

4) Prelude behavior, which refers to what you are likely to do immediately after doing something.

For example, if you are operating a product that is used after brushing teeth, you can use "brushing teeth" as a "hint".

For example: "Rinse your mouth after brushing your teeth to make up for the defects that cannot be brushed" (example)

In short, what you need to do is to understand the emotions and psychology that may complete the internal triggers, and then use external triggers to stimulate users to take action.

04. Some Examples

Now that we understand the motivations, abilities, and triggers that drive user action, let’s look at a few examples.

1) Learning community

There are many learning communities now, such as "Change Yourself in 7 Days", "14-Day Reading Plan", "21-Day English Skills Development", etc., which are very popular and effective.

The corresponding "Fogg Behavior Model" is:

Motivation: To overcome one's own laziness and solve users' growth anxiety, to make progress together with a group of people with common characteristics, to free oneself from anxiety and find hope;

Ability: It is not difficult to take action. You just need to join a group or pay a certain amount of growth money, and there will be professional teachers and a group of people to complete it together. The monetary cost, learning cost and action cost are all very low.

Triggers: Only 7 days required, lectures by big names, half price for the first 100 students, guaranteed employment upon completion of study, and certificates etc. are all triggers.

2) Official Account Operation

When it comes to public account operations, the opening rate of pictures and texts has always been a matter of life and death. A good title is half the battle. This statement should be fully verified in this fragmented era.

So how can we encourage users to click on titles simply by looking at the titles of pictures and texts?

The corresponding "Fogg Behavior Model" is:

Motivation: Users want to resolve doubts/satisfy curiosity, seek benefits, gain advantages, check news, gain emotional comfort, learn practical skills, seek recognition, care about hot topics, etc.

Ability: Clicking on the title itself is a very low-cost activity, and at the same time, the user’s understanding cost must be reduced, otherwise they will not click if they don’t understand it.

Trigger: Corresponding to the motivation, the triggers that make users click on the title are: creating suspense and curiosity, being related to "me", thinking outside the box, chasing hot topics and hanging out with rich people, highlighting benefits, creating an atmosphere of urgency, emphasizing scarcity, using endorsements from big Vs, adding modifiers before and after the title, implying danger, expressing emotions... and so on.

3) Japanese rice cooker

When rice cookers were first introduced in Japan, their main selling point was “convenience”, but sales were poor. Subsequent investigation found that the reason was that the housewife felt that using an electric rice cooker would greatly damage her image of hard work, and her mother-in-law would think she was being lazy.

Later, businesses began to promote the selling point of making rice healthier, and rice cookers became popular. In fact, cooking with rice cookers may not be healthier, but merchants’ strategies help consumers bypass the image costs.

The corresponding "Fogg Behavior Model" is:

Motivation: I want to cook more conveniently and want to buy a rice cooker.

Ability: This case actually did not change the monetary cost, learning cost, etc., but helped consumers reduce the image cost of purchase, which is the key.

Triggers: Discounts, eye-catching advertisements, and easier cooking are all triggers.

4) Tik Tok

Why are more and more young people falling in love with Douyin? They watch it whenever they have nothing to do and often stay up late at night to watch it?

This can also correspond to the "Fogg Behavior Model", which is:

Motivation: to have fun, to find belonging, to avoid anxiety and fatigue, to enjoy a comfortable and pleasant life, to see young men and women, to post my own videos

Ability: The operation of Douyin is quite simple. You can watch it by opening it and scrolling with your fingers.

Triggers: Not being able to sleep in bed at night, being bored on the way to work in the morning, a popular video, a sentence like "Here you are, brother" or "So exciting", a popular background music, a beautiful girl, etc. may all be triggers.

In summary, an action is most likely to occur only when a person has sufficient motivation and ability, and there are triggers that stimulate the user to act.

If users are slow to take an action you expect, think about it from these perspectives, list the Fogg behavior model for a product or activity, and then work on solving it.

Okay, that’s all I have to say. I hope this helps you.

Source: Mumu Laozei