How to use user habits for precision marketing?

User habits can provide powerful strategies for product design and product operation , especially in APP operation . The cultivation and application of user habits can affect the life cycle of APP and the life cycle of users. User behavior habits are always an eternal topic of concern to product managers and product operations...

1. Understanding people’s subconsciousness and habits

1. Subconscious

The subconscious is a psychological term that refers to the part of human psychological activities that cannot be recognized or not recognized. It is the "psychological activity process that has occurred but has not reached the conscious state." Freud divided the subconscious into two parts: the preconscious and the unconscious. People's behavior is often controlled by the brain's consciousness. When you get up in the morning, you need to brush your teeth, when you are hungry, you need to eat, and when you go out on a date, you need to decide what to wear... These are all behaviors guided by consciousness. But many times, people's behavior is more controlled by their subconscious mind. For example, when I see the menu bar of a WeChat public account, I want to click on it; when I leave home, I always want to check whether the door is locked; when I feel embarrassed, I will scratch my head involuntarily...

The subconscious mind sometimes affects our behavior and even our instinctive reactions. The famous "iceberg theory" is not unrelated to the subconscious mind. Human consciousness is like a huge iceberg floating on the water. The behaviors or responses that can be seen by the outside world are only the tip of the iceberg, about one-eighth, while the other seven-eighths are hidden under the water. These seven-eighths of the mountain are our hidden subconscious. Many apps (or products) use people’s subconsciousness to help them adapt to new situations when cultivating user habits.

2. What is a habit?

Habit is a behavior that does not require consciousness and is a reaction that has become a convention in the subconscious mind. When a person performs an action, it is actually a response to the problems and situations he encounters after thinking about them for a period of time. Because problems occur frequently and the responses after they occur bring people a sense of satisfaction, this behavior gradually turns into a habit.

①The same problem or situation occurs frequently

When we are faced with the same problem as before, we will more or less repeat the thinking process of the problem, resulting in the same or similar initial reaction behavior. When this situation occurs more and more times, you will learn how to deal with it. Now that we already know how to deal with the situation, the thinking process will be shortened or even omitted. As long as the thinking process is omitted, the habit will be formed.

② The response after the problem occurs brings satisfaction

The frequent occurrence of the same situation will make people develop habits, but what if the situation is not frequent? In fact, it is possible, because if the reaction after a problem occurs gives people a sense of satisfaction, a habit will be formed. For example, take a deep breath when you feel nervous. This way you associate deep breathing with relieving tension.

2. What should we pay attention to when cultivating user habits?

Based on the above explanation of subconsciousness and habit formation, we can cultivate user habits in this way by acquiring seed users after launching new products.

1. Adapt to user habits

Some user habits that have become commonplace should not be easily overturned, otherwise it will increase the cost of use, and in serious cases it will cause users to abandon your product (unless it is a particularly innovative case). However, the so-called compliance with user habits is based on respecting users, not licking users.

When it comes to new products, many users have already developed usage habits. For example, the return button of many APPs is in the upper left corner of the screen. When users want to go back, they don’t need to think at all, their fingers will consciously click the upper left corner of the screen. For example, when opening a chat interface on WeChat , there is no need to mark “Return”, and users know that they can return to the home page by clicking here. There are also the little finger icon for likes, the star icon for collections, the envelope icon for messages, the upper right arrow for sharing, the upper arrow for returning to the top, etc. These usage habits that users have subconsciously established cannot be easily broken.

As shown in the picture above, both Weibo APP and Taobao mobile APP use star icons to represent the collection function.

Conforming to user habits is the easiest approach, and respecting user habits is the most correct approach, but there are also cases of great success by subverting and changing user habits, which will be mentioned below. Regardless of whether conforming to user habits is a lazy behavior, it can at least make it easier for the product to acquire users, which is a way to open the door.

2. Continuous repetition helps to cultivate user habits

Aristotle said: By always doing things in a certain fixed way, people can develop habits. The frequency with which users use a product is one of the important factors in developing user habits.

As mentioned earlier, the formation of habits is due to the reactions made after repeatedly encountering the same problem, which is the learned experience and behavior. Therefore, when designing a product, it is necessary to consider how to combine operational methods and product design to stimulate users to open and use the APP.

PUSH messages are sent almost every day in apps, or at different times of the day to stimulate users to open apps, such as various news apps.

After users open the APP for the first time every day, there will be a reminder to collect coupons. For example, a food delivery APP I used reminded me that there was a coupon worth XX yuan available when I opened it for the first time that day.

For example, after users order takeout using a food delivery app, a large icon for splitting the red envelope will appear. These food delivery apps constantly repeat reminders to users, stimulating them to take corresponding actions each time, and gradually cultivate the habit of users sharing red envelopes on social platforms. I have a WeChat group specifically for distributing and receiving takeaway red envelopes. This way, I won’t cause harassment to other communities , and it also makes takeaway red envelopes no longer embarrassing and gives them a place to be used. But this is off topic.

Recommended operation methods: PUSH push, sign-in, push tasks after completing specific behaviors, etc.

3. Satisfy users’ needs and provide psychological hints

According to Maslow's five levels of needs, user needs are divided into physiological needs, safety needs, emotional and belonging needs (social needs), respect needs, and self-actualization needs.

Incorporate some psychological cues into the product to cause users to be anxious, and then soothe their anxious minds. For example, the numerical changes in the progress bar during downloading, the scanning line from top to bottom when scanning a QR code, the animation design when buffering the page, etc., can quickly give users some comfort, and users no longer feel anxious under such psychological cues.

It is even more common in APP activities, and operators have tried it time and time again and it has worked well. Copywriting like "Only once a year for Double Eleven , wait another year if you miss it" can be seen everywhere, in order to create a sense of tension among users and make them make immediate judgments.

Recommended operation methods: prompts, activity copy display, buffering GIF images, progress bar dynamics, etc.

3. Learn about user habits through user data analysis and carry out targeted marketing

After we acquire users, we will analyze their relevant data to understand their behavior habits for use in product operations. By analyzing the data obtained from user behavior monitoring, APP developers can understand user behavior habits in more detail and clearly, thereby identifying problems in APP operations, helping APP to discover high- conversion rate pages, making APP marketing more accurate and effective, and improving user conversion rates.

For example, during what time period are users most active? If you push activities during this time period, participation will be more positive and users will be more receptive. For example, if analysis shows that women between the ages of 20 and 30 are the most active between 22:00 and 24:00, then the APP can choose activities that are more valuable to female users for targeted push at this time, set the push activities, time points and user groups, so as to enhance user vitality and extend the user life cycle.

4. Subverting user habits requires innovation

Taobao has changed people's shopping habits from physical stores to online shopping, directly subverting the traditional Chinese merchant culture and now has become a lifestyle. Thirteen years ago, when Taobao was launched, many people scoffed at it, saying that only fools would buy clothes if you couldn’t try them on online . But now, sales on Singles’ Day are doubling year by year. Nowadays, people are accustomed to using Taobao to buy things, and they say that there is nothing that cannot be bought on Taobao.

Apple, this great company, has revolutionized users' mobile phone usage habits. The emergence of the iPhone brought about a series of major changes, including the inability to replace the phone battery, no multitasking, no support for Bluetooth transmission of other systems, and no keyboard... everything was contrary to the original mainstream. However, after a process of adaptation, guidance, and change, it relied on disruptive innovation to gain strong support from fanatical fans around the world. With the continuous technological innovation and the innovative interaction mode of human-computer dialogue, Siri has been built into an all-powerful and all-round artificial intelligence product.

It is effortless to conform to user habits, but to subvert and change user habits, it is necessary to guide users to adapt to the new product form, give them psychological comfort hints after causing psychological anxiety, and gradually cultivate users' habits of using new products. Making good use of user behavior habits to serve product operations is a topic worthy of attention for APP operators.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @犀利姐 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!