How to use your users’ habits for better onboarding

Nearly 40% of our everyday human activity is habits (Duke University Study, 2006). It’s a brain’s way to cope with decision making. Habits are a type of automation.

Among other things, habits also influence how we interact with websites and web-based applications. Understanding your users’ habits will help you harness their power to accelerate product adoption.

Habits form and operate in a loop (more on this in The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg):

1. Cue is a trigger that initates us to respond in a certain way;
2. Routine is an emotional, physical or mental response action that follows;
3. Finally, Reward is the result of the actions taken during Routine, it creates a positive memory, forcing brain to repeat the loop in the future.

Simple example of a habit loop is signing into an account, where:

Cue = Seeing a Login button or link;
Routine = Click the button, enter username & password,
and Reward = Loading your account page.

Frequently dealing with similar tasks makes completing them almost mechanic. We can use this in designing user onboarding flows to help new users glide over certain tasks and make the entire process feel snappier, more natural.

As you begin to design your onboarding experience (read my post on How to build a user onboarding experience from scratch), observe what other web appications your users often use. Another good place to look is products that are used by almost everyone — Facebook, Twitter, etc.

You’ll be able to spot and replicate familiar experiences by introducing well known cues, which in turn require familiar routines and rewards in your application.