Did you know Nir Eyal, the author of this piece, is speaking atTNW2020this year?
Check out his session on Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Lifehere.
Lets say youve built the next big thing.
Youre ready to take on the world and make billions.
Your product is amazing and youre convinced youve bested the competition.
As a point of fact, you know you offer the very best solution in your market.
But heres the rub.
If your competition has established stronger customer habits than you have, youre in trouble.
The cold truth is that the better product does not necessarily win.
However, theres hope.
The right strategy can crowbar the competitions users habits, giving you a chance to win them over.
Consider just about any product you find yourself using without thinking and youll finda hook.
Do you sometimes check your phone without really knowing why?
Have you ever found yourself unable to stop playing a game like Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds?
Hook, hook, and more hooks.
[Read:Are EVs too expensive?
First, Hauptly states, understand the reason people use a product or service.
Next, lay out the steps the customer must take to get the job done.
Though its excruciatingly simple, understanding Hauptlys first principles yield big results.
For example, take the corporate collapse of Blockbuster at the hands of Netflix.
Customers could watch the same movies at relatively similar prices from either movie rental company.
The ease of satiating the need and passing through the hook more quickly made all the difference.
Movie enthusiasts migrated their habits to Netflix and Blockbuster subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
Our brains crave stimulation.
Whenever an experience is more satisfying, more interesting, or more rewarding, we want more of it.
Sometimes products establish new habits just because using them feels better.
But why do so many users impulsively open Snapchat instead of Facebook?
For many people, Snapchat is more rewarding.
In arecent survey, 14% of users admitted to sexting on Snapchat.
Every few years, a new way of engaging customers becomes possible.
In many households, dropping an item into their Amazon cart is something done nearly every day.
A characteristic of many habit-forming products is that they are easy to start and hard to stop.
When Google Docs first launched, it provided a fraction of the functionality offered by Office.
But at the time using Office required downloading and paying for the software while Google Docs provided immediate entry.
The more the product was used, the more the habit took hold.
The Monopoly in the mind
Habit-forming products utilize four strategies to get inside users heads.
Thisarticleoriginally appeared onNir & Far.
Get a complimentary Indistractable workbookhere.
