How to make users addicted to your product? These 4 steps are required

What would happen if users fell in love with products?

It may be like WeChat , thinking about him/her from time to time, wanting to have close contact with him/her, wanting to be with him/her for a long time. It may seem plain, but there are also little bits of joy in getting along with each other.

Maybe it will be like Honor of Kings , a passionate love story that makes me excited every time we spend time together.

Let users fall in love with the product, fall in love with the product, spontaneously invest in developing it, and form usage habits. This is what every one of our product and operation teams dreams of, but not every product can do it.

Today, I will combine the latest self-control research results with the addiction model to share how to use a systematic approach to help users develop the habit of using products.

This is an article that requires you to take the time to read carefully and make a summary. Skimming the article is not a good way to learn. I suggest that you make a summary based on examples around you to deepen your understanding.

Understanding human behavior and decision-making mechanism from self-control

Regarding human decision-making, the mainstream view now is the struggle between emotion and rationality. I want to buy an iPhone X on an emotional level, but rationality does not allow me to do so. According to the latest research results, this statement is outdated.

Researchers conducted a study on shopping and found that when people shop, two brain areas are more active, which play a key role in judgment.

The first one is the nucleus accumbens. The nucleus accumbens becomes active when a person anticipates a reward or sees something they like. Studies have shown that the more active the nucleus accumbens is in a given product, the more likely you are to buy it.

Second, the insula. When people feel pain and unpleasantness, the insula becomes active, and the more active it is, the less likely they are to buy.

When people encounter a product and want to buy it but don't want to buy it, both areas will be active and these two emotions will be intertwined, just like what I think is the collision of sensibility and rationality.

In fact, both of them are emotional. We are driven by thoughts, and both sides use rational tools to justify their own views. Whichever brain area is more active, we are more inclined to take that kind of action. The party chosen by dopamine will win.

The so-called abstract rational thinking system of humans is located in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain. It is not an independent system. It is closely linked to the dopamine system. The dopamine system is able to evaluate the value of each thing and provide pleasant feedback.

In other words, the decision that makes me happier is the one I prefer. This is why it is becoming increasingly difficult for some people to change their bad habits. The pleasure gained from each action increases the weight of the decision and establishes the advantage of the decision. People will be more inclined to this behavior, become addicted to it, and find it difficult to extricate themselves.

Similarly, if you want to cultivate user usage habits, you also need to cater to this system and design a product addiction model.

Addiction Model

Nir Eyal, the author of "Addicted", summarized this "addiction model" based on the laws of human behavior and psychology and his own practical experience. I made some adjustments and deletions based on my own understanding of the original text. Students who are interested can read the original text.

The four modules of the addiction model

1. Trigger

The triggering link is mainly divided into external triggering and internal triggering.

External triggers are contact media, which mainly include the following methods.

• Paid trigger, display products through paid promotion .
• Feedback triggering, through the active operation of external display channels , obtains free exposure and recommendations. The operating cost of this kind of relationship is relatively high and it is rare to come across one.
• Interpersonal triggering achieves viral growth through recommendations and dissemination among users, which is the method currently pursued by the public.
• Autonomous triggering: users agree to allow product information to be exposed and displayed, such as email and mobile phone push.

The internal trigger is the connection we need to establish with the user in the entire model, a trigger anchor buried deep in the mind. You can’t see or touch it, but it’s always there in your mind, and negative emotions are a strong internal trigger. Discovering the user’s potential emotions is the key to establishing internal triggers.

External triggers remind you to act, internal triggers motivate you to act, and internal triggers are divided into the following three types.

• Pursue happiness and avoid pain.
• Pursue hope and avoid fear.
• Seek recognition and avoid rejection.

Generally, we can find the user’s internal triggers through the “5 questions method”, that is, 5 whys.

For example:

1. Why do we check our Moments ?

Answer: To receive information posted by friends.

2. Why do we need to introduce information?

A: To get information instantly.

3. Why do we need to get information instantly?

A: To understand the lives of my family and friends.

4. Why do you want to know about other people’s lives?

Answer: To keep up with the times and keep pace with the surroundings.

5. Why do I care about this?

Answer: Because we are afraid of being abandoned by the circle.

Fear is the biggest internal trigger for us to use our circle of friends. In most cases, we are unaware of this emotion, which lurks deep in our thoughts. When we restrain ourselves from using Moments and don’t check them for a few days, we will feel anxious and fearful, afraid of being out of touch with our friends. This action may also include other internal triggers, such as expecting others to like and comment after posting to Moments, which is a pursuit of recognition. We should consider these aspects more during product design to reduce users' fear and enhance social identity.

Internal triggers are sometimes used in advertising to touch people’s emotions and induce emotional resonance, thereby achieving the purpose of promotional effects.

After understanding what triggering is, we will officially start to enter this stage and learn how to construct an addiction model.

1. Who is the target audience of the product?
2. What habit do you want users to develop, and which action?
3. What kind of emotional needs of users can be solved behind this action? That is, what internal triggers can be established.
4. What external factors are currently available to keep users active on the product?

The triggering link is used together as follows: when user X triggers a certain emotional need internally, the product pushes this solution through external triggers, which is the action you want the user to develop a habit of. After this method works many times, users will develop the habit of using the product when they have a need.

II. Action

The simpler an action is, the more likely it is to be repeated and the greater the chance of forming a habit, whether it is mental or physical. After triggering the guide, the next step is to get users to take action.

There are three essential elements to get people to take action. The first is the trigger that prompts people to act (external trigger), the second is sufficient motivation (internal trigger), and the third is the ability to complete this action. Skip the first two parts and move on to the interpretation ability questions.

ability

If the cost of user action is too high, no matter how well you trigger the process, it will be useless. Therefore, we need to clear the obstacles in the process of action, that is, reduce the difficulty of the task, and the resistance to action is mainly divided into the following 6 types.

• Time, the time required to complete the activity.
• Money, the financial investment required to complete the activity.
• Physical energy, the amount of physical energy required to complete the activity.
• Brain power, the amount of mental energy required to complete these activities.
• Social deviance, how acceptable the activity is to others.
• Unconventionality: whether this activity is commonly seen.

Your product is great, but I don't have any money to invest. For example, financial management .

I know that kind of life would be healthy, but it requires too much physical energy and is too tiring to do. For example, losing weight.

From the user's perspective, identify the six types of resistance mentioned above and remove obstacles to user action.

In addition to resistance, we also have some helpers that can guide users to act quickly.

Heuristics

There are some universal laws in human behavior that help us make decisions quickly and save mental and physical energy. Proper use of these laws can assist our actions, just like taking a back door.

• Scarcity effect, creating an atmosphere of scarcity. Special price only available on Double 11, limited quantity.
• Environmental effect: the environment in which one lives affects one’s judgment. Under the backdrop of Double 11, everyone is shopping. They feel they will be losing out if they don’t buy anything, so they will buy a little.
• Anchoring effect, influenced by previous impressions. Discounts are always more attractive than no discounts. When you buy something and someone offers 100 yuan, you are embarrassed to bargain down to 20 yuan, but in fact the cost of the item is only 10 yuan.
• The coupon effect, the closer you are to your goal, the stronger your motivation to complete the task. Get 100 off for purchases over 200. You have to spend at least 200 before placing the order, or get free shipping.

3. Variable rewards

Users enter the product through triggers, and with the help of action optimization, they reduce their usage costs and find the most appropriate reward type packaging to solve their needs. For example, when looking for a certain product on Taobao , Taobao will display more similar products and similar choices, giving users the pleasure of chasing prey.

The feeling of tension and excitement caused by the desire for reward increases the amount of dopamine transmission, making the nucleus accumbens excited and active, remembering the feedback of this behavior, and arousing a stronger desire for use.

Why should rewards be varied?

People will get used to the unchanging stimulation, just like when you just bought an iPhoneX, you will feel excited on the first day, but maybe within a week you will feel that it is just like that, just an iPhone. Variety means making the stimulation full of uncertainty. For example, when you post to Moments, you don’t know who will like it or what comments will be made. This makes us excited and we check it every once in a while. If the only thing you can do on Moments is like, and it’s anonymous, then that would be boring.

There are three main types of variable rewards: social rewards, prey rewards, and self-rewards.

• Social rewards, as the name suggests, are the sense of identity, group belonging, being liked and being valued gained in the social process. Express your opinions on WeChat Moments, expecting people to agree with you or show their concern.
• Prey reward is like the mentality of chasing prey, such as the pursuit of resources, money, and information, scrolling through Weibo, and expecting to discover interesting information.
• Self-reward, a sense of competence and finality of something, and a sense of accomplishment brought about by the completion of an event. For example, when playing a game , you must complete it and the progress bar must be fully loaded, so that you will feel comfortable. Perhaps this is what people with obsessive-compulsive disorder value most.

IV. Investment

After completing the action and receiving the reward, the user has completed the investment and received the reward. The final stage needs to encourage the user to continue investing, such as time and energy, to continue to cycle in this model, or to introduce the next model.

For example, when browsing Moments messages, the next message will be automatically loaded after reading one, encouraging users to continue reading.

Every bit of investment will create a silent cost, which will prevent users from giving up easily. And in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, we will default to being consistent with past behavior, which makes it easy to develop a habit of a certain behavior.

For example, in a failed relationship, the other person is obviously a scumbag, but I have given so much before and don’t want to give up easily, so I deceive myself that the other person may become a better person.

Or maybe it’s the songs collected in the music player, hundreds or thousands of songs in the collection, which makes people afraid to change platforms casually.

Investment needs to be gradual. Users cannot be given an extremely high level of investment all at once. It is like playing a game. The opponents encountered in the initial tasks are always simple, and then the difficulty is gradually increased to encourage users to make more investment.

The entire addiction model has been introduced here. Thank you for reading it patiently. I wonder if it is helpful to you? If so, please give it a thumbs up.

Finally, I have to say that knowing and doing are two completely different things, so take action now. I recommend two books: "Addicted" and "Practical Gamification". It is more interesting to read them together.

This article was compiled and published by @吾大幸 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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