User habits can provide powerful strategies for product design and product operation, especially in APP operation, the cultivation and application of user habits can affect the APP life cycle and user life cycle.

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User habits can provide powerful strategies for product design and product operation, especially in APP operation, the cultivation and application of user habits can affect the APP life cycle and user life cycle. User behavior habits, is always a common concern of product managers and product operations of the old topic……

First, understand people’s subconscious and habits

1. Subconscious mind

Subconscious, is a psychological term, refers to people’s psychological activities, can not be recognized or not recognized part, is people “have occurred but did not reach the state of consciousness of the psychological activity process”. Freud divided the unconscious into pre-conscious and unconscious parts. People’s behavior a lot of time is dominated by the consciousness of the brain, get up in the morning to brush your teeth, hungry to eat, go out to date what to wear….. These are all consciousness-directed behaviors. But a lot of times, people’s behavior is more controlled by the subconscious mind. For example, when you see the menu bar of wechat public account, you want to click it; Always want to check that the door is locked when you leave the house; When embarrassed, unable to scratch the head……

Our subconscious mind sometimes influences our behavior, even our instinctive responses. The famous iceberg theory has something to do with the subconscious mind. Human consciousness is like a huge iceberg floating on the water. The visible behavior or response is only the tip of the iceberg exposed, about one-eighth, while the other seven-eighth is hidden under the water, and seven-eighth of the mountain is our hidden subconscious. Many apps (or products) use a person’s subconscious mind to adapt to new situations when they are building habits.

2, What is a habit

A habit, an action that requires no conscious action, is a response that has been conditioned subconsciously. A certain behavior is actually a response to a problem or situation that a person encounters after a period of reflection. And because the problem is so frequent and the reaction is so satisfying, it becomes a habit.

① The same problem or situation often arises

When we are faced with the same problem as before, we will more or less repeat the thinking process of the problem, thus initially the same or similar reaction behavior. And as this happens more and more, you learn what the behavior is. Now that you know what to do, the thinking process can be shortened, or even omitted. As long as the thought process is omitted, habits are formed.

② The response to the problem brings satisfaction

The frequent occurrence of phase can make a person become a habit, but what about the lack of frequent occurrence? And it can, because if the response to a problem is satisfying, the habit will be formed. For example, when you’re nervous, take deep breaths. This will associate deep breathing with relieving the tension.

2. What should we pay attention to when developing user habits

Based on the above discussion of subconscious and habit formation, we can cultivate user habits by acquiring seed users after the launch of a new product.

1. Adapt to user habits

You can’t easily reverse habits that you’ve taken for granted, which will increase the cost of using your product and, in some cases, cause users to abandon your product (unless it’s particularly innovative). But conforming to user habits is based on respecting users, not licking them.

For new products, many users have formed the habit of using them before. For example, the back button of many apps is on the upper left of the screen. When users want to return, they click the upper left of the screen consciously without thinking. For example, the chat interface opened by wechat does not need to be marked “back”, and users also know that clicking here can return to the home page. There are thumbprint punctuation praise, star icon collection, envelope icon message, sharing of the top right arrow, top arrow back to the top, etc., these users subconsciously identified the use of habits, can not be easily broken.

 

For example, both Weibo APP and Mobile Taobao APP use star ICONS to indicate the collection function

Following user habits is the easiest thing to do, respecting user habits is the right thing to do, but there are also great success stories by subverting user habits and changing user habits, which will be mentioned below. Whether it’s lazy or not, at least it opens the door by making it easier to acquire users.

2. Constant repetition is conducive to the cultivation of user habits

Aristotle said: by acting in a certain way, a man becomes a habit. How often users use a product is one of the most important factors to cultivate user habits.

As mentioned above, the reason for habit formation is the response to the same problems over and over again, the learned experience behavior. Therefore, when designing products, it is necessary to consider how to combine operation methods and product design to stimulate users to open and use apps.

There are PUSH messages in APP almost every day, or PUSH messages at different times in a day to stimulate users to open, such as various news apps.

After users open the APP for the first time every day, there will be a reminder to collect coupons. For example, MI Xing APP(a food delivery APP) I used reminds me that XX yuan of coupons can be collected when I open the APP for the first time on that day.

For example, after users order food through a food delivery APP, a large icon will appear to split the red packets. By repeatedly prompting users to act accordingly each time, these food delivery apps have gradually cultivated the habit of users sharing red envelopes on social platforms. I have a wechat group dedicated to giving and receiving takeaway red envelopes, so as not to cause harassment to other communities, but also to make takeaway red envelopes no longer awkward and useful, which is another topic.

Recommended operation means: PUSH, check-in, PUSH tasks after completion of specific behaviors, etc.

3. Meet the needs of users and give psychological hints

According to Maslow’s five levels of needs, user needs are divided into physiological needs, safety needs, emotional and belonging needs (social needs), respect needs and self-actualization needs.

Some psychological hints are integrated into the product to cause users’ anxiety, and then soothe users’ anxious hearts. For example, the numerical changes of the progress bar when downloading, the top-down scanning line when scanning the TWO-DIMENSIONAL code, the animation design when buffering the page, etc., can quickly give users some soothing effects, and users no longer feel anxious under such psychological hints.

It is even more common in APP activities, and operators are always successful. Such copywriting as “Once a year, wait another year if you miss it” can be seen everywhere, in order to create a sense of tension among users and make them make immediate judgments.

Operation means recommended: prompt, activity copy display, buffer GIF, progress bar dynamic, etc.

Third, through user data analysis to learn user habits, do targeted marketing

When we acquire users, we will analyze the relevant data of users to learn user behaviors and habits, which will be used for product operation. By analyzing the data obtained from user behavior monitoring, APP developers can have a more detailed and clear understanding of user behavior and habits, so as to find out the problems existing in APP operation, which helps APP to explore pages with high conversion rate, make APP marketing more accurate and effective, and improve user conversion rate.

The picture shows the SaaS background of the active box. The user analysis column in the picture includes user behavior analysis, user portrait, user label, etc. APP operators can use user tags to set the characteristics of user groups and push the most suitable marketing campaigns for this user group.

For example, in what time period are users most active, push activities in this time period, the participation will be more active, user acceptance will be greater. For example, it is analyzed that between 22:00 and 24:00, women aged 20-30 are the most active, so the APP can select more valuable activities for female users to do targeted push at this time, and set the push activities, time points and user groups, so as to enhance user vitality and prolong user life cycle.

Fourth, to overturn user habits requires innovation

Taobao has changed people’s habits from physical shopping to online shopping, directly subverted the traditional Chinese business culture, and now has become a way of life. Thirteen years ago, when Taobao was launched, many people sniffed at it, saying that only fools would buy clothes if they couldn’t try them on online. Today, sales on Singles’ Day have doubled year on year. Now people are used to taobao to buy things, all say that there is no big Taobao can not buy things.

Apple, the great company, has changed the way people use their phones. The iPhone came with a number of major changes: no battery replacement, no multitasking, no Bluetooth support for other systems, and no keyboard…… Everything is contrary to the original mainstream, but through the process of adaptation, guidance, change, relying on subversive innovation has been the strong support of fanatical fans around the world. After the continuous innovation of technology, innovative human-machine dialogue interaction, Siri was made into an omnipotent all-around artificial intelligence products.

It doesn’t take much effort to adapt to user habits, but to subvert and change user habits, it needs to guide users to adapt to the new product form, give psychological comfort hints after causing psychological anxiety, and gradually cultivate users’ use habits of new products. It is a topic worthy of attention for APP operators to make good use of user behavior habits to serve product operation.

Author: Activity Box (Huodonghezi.com), APP activity operation tool, provides a full range of APP operation solutions;

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