Get your digital product into consumer’s habit zone

Posted On November 11th 2020

The global pandemic has made most of our time to be spent online than ever. Be it work, entertainment, and education or even just connecting with people; do it online from wherever you are, has become the new norm.

While this has increased usage of many digital products, the key challenge for digital businesses is to sustain this usage in the post-pandemic world. Once we are back into non-constrained neighborhood, many (if not all) of the digital consumers would be returning to their good old ways of doing things. This will lead to a steep fall in usage of digital products, making the current growth, just a bubble.

When it comes to retaining users and usage, the clear winner is going to be the digital product which delivers value that is aligned to customer’s interests. It can be convenience, utility or even pleasure, but for the value delivered by the digital product has to be well aligned with consumer’s personal interests.

Companies that have invested in understanding their end user behavior, choice patterns and interests, to align their service offerings, have successfully landed into their customer’s habit zone.

Quoting from Nir Eyal’s blog:

“Companies can begin to determine their product's potential for creating user habits by plotting two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (how rewarding the behavior is in the eyes of the user). "The Habit Zone," as I call it, is where an action occurs with enough frequency and perceived utility for it to become the default behavior.

Established companies like Google and Amazon, along with new entrants like Pinterest and Reddit, succeed by creating user habits. They help people find what they are looking for amid the ever-increasing online clutter. In return, users reward them with engagement and loyalty, turning to them as their go-to solutions in their respective categories. When a habit is formed, the script for what to do next is written, making the behavior more likely to occur in the future. These companies leverage habits to earn their places in users’ lives and minds.”

Customer engagement has a direct impact in nurturing the critical 3Rs (Repeat, Recency, Revenue) of customer – business relationship.

Technological advancements in the field of AI and ML, enable digital businesses in better understanding their customers and provide personalized engagement across user journey. What was once manual process of data crunching to derive business decisions, AI systems today automatically re-calibrate user experience based on customer behavioral pattern in real-time.

Right from the customer entry, catalogue discovery, to exit experience, AI systems help in adapting to change in individual customer behavior. They facilitate progressive engagement experience as a seamless real-time evolution. This in-turn drives better conversions, customer retention, repeat business and over a period of time, making the product usage a customer’s delightful habit.