Improving consumer engagement in healthcare products that drive behavior change

Influx of tech startups has brought in innovation and redefined consumer experience in healthcare industry that has not given the consumer his due importance for a long time. New age digital companies are employing novel approaches for managing health conditions and building platforms that nudge people to make healthier choices and lead better lives.

Business case for these platforms (in the case of US healthcare industry) is made due to the evidence that healthy behaviors lead to positive health outcomes and lower costs. In this context, consumer engagement on these platforms becomes an important metric to consider.

There are tens of thousands of apps that let the consumer count his steps, track his calories, book appointments, connect him to a community etc., But, the DAU/MAU statistics for most of these apps dwindle with every passing day. The average app loses 77% of users after three days and 90+% within a month.

When consumers are flooded with scores of notifications from every app on their phones, it is not easy to grab their attention and rise above the noise. So, how can Product Managers craft experiences that break the clutter and get the consumers hooked to their products?

In this article, I have described a couple of use cases that these platforms can consider to take the experience to the next level.

Perfectly timed notifications:

Let us take an example of a patient who has to take medication every morning. There are medication adherence apps that just send a reminder to the patient at a specific time every day and then there are apps that go to the extreme end of asking the patient to upload a picture of him taking the medication. A better approach would be to understand his schedule by analyzing the wake-up time data from a wearable, and send a reminder an hour after he wakes up (which might not be the same every day). That would be the time which maximizes the chance of the patient responding to the reminder. As an extension, the app can adapt to his behavior, predict the time periods which result in higher engagement and send reminders during those times.

Contextual content:

When it comes to sharing educational content, instead of having a one-size fits all approach, sharing content relevant to the user’s context and recent activity can boost engagement. For example, based on the food log data of a user, if it is seen that he is consuming lot of milk based products that have high fat content, articles that educate him about the effects these products have on his health might resonate with him. Capturing user preferences and interests in terms of food, sport, entertainment will also help platforms tailor the experiences.

Incentivizing healthy behaviors:

In my opinion, the approach of rewarding healthy behaviors with financial incentives is not very sustainable. People do not want to sign up for a health program just because they would earn a $50 gift voucher. Banking on intrinsic motivational factors would prove to be far more effective. Wanting to be in good shape, leading an active life, being there for kids, a compliment from loved one are some reasons why people want to be healthy in the first place. Understanding and capturing data on what makes users tick, motivating them with those messages might lead to better engagement rates. As an example, if a user is trying to lose weight, showing a picture of how they would look like if they shed few kilos, a message from spouse on how much they wish to see them healthy would surely keep them going.

Designing ‘hooks’ that make users want to come back:

Nir Eyal, author of the book ‘Hooked’ says products that help users get into a habit enjoy higher engagement rates than the rest.

‘Once a habit is formed, the user is no longer considering whether they should open an app — they check the app every day, automatically, without thinking much about it,” says Eyal.

Checking out Facebook and Instagram became our ‘habits’ and the reason we are drawn to these platforms is that every time we login, they offer us some new content and the sheer variety of content generated keeps us hooked.

While same levels of engagement in the context of healthcare may not be easy to achieve, building pilots, testing out hypotheses and iterating would be the way forward.

Rather than making users part of a larger community, features facilitating interaction in a smaller focused group of 3–4 people that let users share their experiences and compete with each other on health goals would be effective. Intelligent algorithms that match people based on their interests, motivation levels etc., would have to be built to achieve this.

Features that let the family members/friends participate in a user’s health journey — being able to share progress, report health status, communicate concerns and get meaningful support would also improve engagement levels.

While these are just some examples, an important point to consider is that engagement tactics have to differ based on user’s stage in health journey and responsiveness to the product.

In this context, Product Manager’s success lies in building products that meaningfully integrate with users lives and make them healthier along the way.