What does it take to get customers addicted to your stuff?

07 May What does it take to get customers addicted to your stuff?

Nir Eyal can show you how to design habit-forming apps.

Not habit in the classical sense, of a quality that develops the powers of the body or mind. No.
Habit as in drug habit.

The supercomputer in our pockets, with its dings, buzzes, haptics, likes, and so on, acts on our brains like crack. A dopamine rush every time we use it. Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, says that a company’s economic value is increasingly the “function of the strength of the habits they create.” It’s getting customers addicted to your stuff.

The idea is to make your app/site part of a user’s daily routine. And emotions. “A cemented habit is when users subconsciously think, ‘I’m bored,” and instantly Facebook comes to mind,” says Eyal. “They think, ‘I wonder what’s going on in the world?’ and before rational thought occurs, Twitter is the answer.”

If you want to make your customers junkies—or “hook” them as Eyal says, consider the trigger-action-reward-investment sequence for habit design:
•    The degree to which a company can utilize habit-forming technologies will increasingly decide which products and services succeed or fail.
•    Habit-forming technology creates associations with “internal triggers” which cue users without the need for marketing, messaging or other external stimuli.
•    Creating associations with internal triggers comes from building the four components of a “Hook” — a trigger, action, variable reward, and investment.
•    Consumers must understand how habit-forming technology works to prevent unwanted manipulation while still enjoying the benefits of these innovations.
•    Companies must understand the mechanics of habit-formation to increase engagement with their products and services and ultimately help users create beneficial routines.

“If used for good,” writes Eyal, “habits can enhance people’s lives with entertaining and even healthful routines. If used to exploit, habits can turn into wasteful addictions. But, like it or not, habit-forming technology is already here.”

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