1.HOOKED: How to build Habit Forming Products

Here is a book with wonderful insights that wowed me and scared me at the same time. Nir Eyal, its principal author aims to educate people about how tech companies cleverly use consumer psychology tactics to get people hooked to their digital products. Considering the fact that our world today is increasingly muddled with data privacy concerns and mistrust towards big tech-companies, I feel the topics discussed in this book is a must-read educational document for not just the tech-savvy folks trying to market their digital products but the Average joe oblivious of the intricate workings of the interwebs.

I thought it would be wonderful to share its summary to all my time-crunched friends who may not be able to read the book. For ease of reading, I’ve broken the content into a series of posts, out of which this is the first.

In the olden days, finding customers and making money with a product meant creating the product first and then spending a great deal of money on advertising to attract customers. This was the tried and tested way to success for any entrepreneur. But in the digital age, the dynamic has changed. The vastly successful companies of this era like Facebook, Airbnb or Uber have proved that they don’t need to spend billions on advertising and marketing to amass millions of customers (or users as they like to call their customers). So, what is the trick here?

It’s true that in all these cases, the products are entirely digital and freely available via the web. Once customers are hooked to the product, they sell targeted digital ads through which they make money. But how do they accumulate users in the first place? This is where the Hook model comes in. It is a 4-phase step-by-step action that companies use to lure in customers at the end of which a typical user will be ‘hooked’ to the product.

How do you make people hooked to a product? Simply, make the product a habit. Does that sound crazy? Habits are mostly actions that people do without much thought with high frequency, like a routine. When you do something frequently enough, they become etched in your brain that you no longer require a conscious effort to do them. Also another peculiar characteristic of habits are that they’re very easy to perform actions. And people perceive them as having high utility. You wouldn’t keep doing the same thing everyday if it weren’t useful, would you?

These are the minimum requirements for an action to be considered as worthy of becoming a habit — utility that demands a high frequency of occurrence in one’s day-to-day life and ease of doing.

For most people, Facebook scrolling first thing in the morning is a habit. They don’t even realize. It just happens. For Zuck, that must’ve been the ultimate victory.

So, let’s see how Hook model can be used to achieve rapid habit formation for a product.

Below is the synapsis of the model:

Nir Eyal, who co-wrote the book, Hooked: How to build habit forming products with Ryan Hoover and the main proponent behind the idea, talks about Hook model like this:

“Through consecutive Hook cycles, successful products reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.”

Next part : A closer look at human triggers.

Stay tuned !

Hello reader! I’m Meera Vinod, an aspiring product manager. I write blogs about Product Management and product stories that I find interesting. You can find more about me here :)

Happy reading!