Chapter one: Why companies that can instill a habit in their constumers have a leading edge over the others.
Let's start this with explaining what a habit really is: it is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously or you are partialy aware of.
It's like brushing your teeths everyday not much thought is given by this action.You can call it a automated behaviour that is activated by the stimuli in the environment.
for example the stimuli could be the time of the day , you are associatiaing the time of the day with brushing your teeths.Each habits will naturaly have a different stimuli.
How benificial would it be for a company to let you form a habit of using their products.
Imagine this they let you form a habit that you are only partialy aware of like brushing your teeths everyday , you don't question that habit at all it just becomes a daily routine of yours.The companies who can manage that they will be far more resilent against competitors and they will be able to link their products and services with their users daily routines and emotions.
Letting your users form a habits it's quite benificial for example look at Candy Crush they made it really work well for them but the question now remains how can you form habits?
There is something hook model who can point us in the right direction.It has four components.
- Trigger
A triggers purpose is letting you do a certain action.There are two kind of triggers the internal and external.
Usually habit forming products make use of the external triggers first for example it can be an email or a link from site to a certain app.
after a while when the users is accustomed to this certain action the users will rely less on external triggers and will take the initiative to do this action.
2.Action
In order to make it more likely a certain action is completed is dependened how easy was this to use.
3.changing rewards
Open your fridge you will`see the light inside pop on not that captivating but imagine this what if everytime you open the fridge you see a different light inside but on top of that a delicious food appears.
That keeps you attention and you want to keep opening the fridge.In fact companies use this principal.Varations is key.Some studies have showed that the amount of neurotransmitters dopamine in your brains increases enormly when variation is introduced into the mix.So the rewards are every changing keeping you engaged.
4.investment
it's users adding time ,effort and information for the product.By doing this their next visit will be more pleasant.There is a reason why some platform
ask for that of information.It will be easier for them to hook you next time when they know what you like.
Last but not least , this was a quick summary I made from the first chapter of the book called Hooked author Nir Eyal
I highly recommend it.Once you see the general mechanics behind the popular platform you will look at them very differently.
I want to cover more of the chapters of that book to enlarge my understanding of the chapters and to provide interesting read.
Habits turned into big business that companies nicely profit of but not necessarily benificial for you and me.
So know your habits be actively aware of is the first step.
there is a nice vid that convey this message very well
