The most successful products and effective business ideas are the ones that spread. These “Viral” products are unique, different, and often, controversial. They are remarkable.
Building unproven (and potentially contentious) offerings can feel like an unnecessary risk -- but in fact, not taking that risk is often more dangerous. In a crowded market, “fitting in” is failing, and companies who only play it safe won’t be in the game for long. Just like great camouflage, blend in with everyone else and soon no one will notice you are there.
Differentiation is the first step towards being remarkable. Products and services that stand out get talked about -- but being “a little cheaper”, “a little better”, or “a little easier” earns no one’s praise. If Uber rides were a little less expensive than yellow cabs, but still had to be hailed from the side of the road, few would have noticed.
Instead of trying to make a better product for users’ standard behavior, experiment with features that require behavioral changes but that make the product work dramatically better. (i.e. hailing a “cab” in two taps from a phone).
Further, the most successful companies have a laser focus on a specific market niche -- they do not try to make a product for everyone - at least not at first. After all, if everything is important, nothing is. The worst thing to offer is an array of “good” features or offerings. Customers don’t want good. Good is boring. Good is not engaging. Good doesn’t encourage sharing. Good doesn’t produce results.
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Case Study: AMAZON
The global online behemoth did not start out as a one stop shop for just about everything money can buy. Amazon sold books. Period. Only after becoming beloved as the greatest bookstore of all time did the company branch out. Had Amazon started off trying to sell everything under the sun, the likelihood is high that no one reading this report would have ever heard of Amazon, as the company probably gone bankrupt trying to be everything for everyone before the market demanded they do. ---------------- Customers want great. A product or service must be remarkable enough to attract early adopters, but flexible enough for them to spread it others. Get customers to love you for one thing - one primary feature, one core competency, one service, etc. Once you do, they’ll beg for additional features. Then expand.
So how do you build a remarkable product?
Naturally, being remarkable is far easier said than done -- companies try and fail every day. To increase your odds, drive these three principles into your core product development strategy:
prioritize great design & incredible UI/UX that drives action
create compellingly unique offerings that no one else has
inject powerful habit formation loops into these offerings
1. Prioritize Great Design & Exceptional UI/UX
The best features, ideas and concepts mean little without a compelling UI (design) and exceptional UX (experience). From the moment a user downloads and opens the app, the colors, designs, animations, progression of the app must excite and intrigue them. The best apps will literally limit the thinking required by a user to complete the actions they want to do.
A great UX handholds users through every step, with eye-catching animations between screens, simple language, and a fast and seamless experience. In today’s hyper-distracted world, any confusion or frustration can be a dealbreaker for new users.
Fogg’s Behavior Model
Renowned author, professor and scientist B.J. Fogg’s Behavior Model established a model that helps visualize what drives user behavior. The model is based on a simple premise → that any action is taken or not taken based on (1) motivation (2) ability and (3) triggers.
Motivation - the desire to take a specific action or accomplish a certain goal. Products can increase motivation through the right messaging, content and education. Gamification, the application of typical elements found in game playing, is a popular motivation driver used in modern apps. Ability - the ease or difficulty of taking a specific action or accomplishing a certain goal. Design can have a tremendous impact on ability. Great products like Uber identify the least possible amount of steps required to complete the desired action. Uber has dramatically simplified requesting a taxi, reducing the process to entering an address, tapping “Request” and confirming your current location. Triggers - external or internal reminders that encourage a person to act. Common examples include push notifications, emails, announcements and news. Triggers occur at the intersection of motivation and ability, and only those that fall above the action line will succeed. For example, a person may be incredibly motivated to visit Mars, but without any ability to do so, the intersection of motivation and ability falls below the action line and triggers will not succeed. While motivation, ability and triggers intersect in ways that are difficult to quantify, Fogg’s model demonstrates that (1) the best way to drive action is to increase motivation and ability and (2) all three components must be present for an action to be taken. An avid golfer who loves competing may be highly motivated and very able to compete in a local tournament, but if she is unaware of the event (no trigger), she will not compete.
2. Create Unique Offerings
Are you considering building functionality similar to what your competition already has? Unless the feature is mission critical, stop. Remember - being “a little better” won’t generate good results. Instead of pondering, “what does our competition do that we don’t?” ask “what doesn’t our competition do that we could?”.
Draw inspiration from products and companies outside of your industry. What innovative features are the leaders in other markets offering? Are there parallels that can be applied to your products? Download and meticulously study as many apps as possible. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel -- millions of dollars in R&D have already been spent optimizing features that can apply to your products.
Take The Purple Cow Test: If you were driving down a country road and passed by a herd of cows, would you stop? Likely not. Nothing is out of the ordinary. But what if, when passing the next field, standing there in the middle, was a purple cow? Not only would most people stop - they’d get out, take pictures and tell all their friends about it. Why? Because a purple cow is unbelieveable, it’s one-of-a-kind, it’s strange... it’s remarkable. Be the purple cow (credit to Seth Godin’s compelling book on the topic). When considering new products & features for development, ask yourself - is this feature a purple cow? If not, can we turn it into one?
3. Develop Habit Formation Loops
Both good and bad, habits impact all of us - and they are often hard to break. In 2016, Facebook reported that uses spend an average of 50 minutes per day on their platforms! What would the impact be if habits of even a fraction of that amount of time could be cultivated in your users? If you haven’t invested time in studying the science behind building habit-forming products, dig into a copy of Nir Eyal’s Hooked. His blueprint for building habit-forming loops is surprisingly simple. Triggers inspire action, actions generate rewards, rewards encourage investment, investment spurs response to future triggers. Here’s how it works:
Trigger → something that prompts a person to take action. A red light is an external trigger to stop at an intersection. A painful burning sensation is an external trigger to take your hand off the hot stovetop. The urge to check your phone for new messages is an internal trigger. Every single action any person takes is based on a trigger. Remarkable products (like Facebook) are able to move users from external to internal triggers over time. A great app must make exceptional use of well-timed, compelling triggers. Common examples include:
1-800-FLOWERS: email reminders of important dates to order flowers
Calendars: pop-up reminders of upcoming meetings
LinkedIn: email notifications that people have been viewing your profile
Lumosity: push-notifications to keep a streak of daily practice sessions going
Action → the user behavior that happens when a trigger is successful. Actions can be anything - whether that’s downloading the app, completing the profile, connecting with other users, completing a survey, viewing the calendar, responding to a message, or anything else you’d like the user to do.
Variable Reward → the positive result following completion of the desired action. The reward serves to give the user satisfaction and provide positive reinforcement for the behavior. Rewards can range widely, encompassing everything from badges, level upgrades, or new unlocked features to monetary prizes, new connections with other users or simply a catchy animations or videos that induce a smile.
Most importantly, the reward cannot be predictable. If the user knows exactly what will happen every time they take an action, the intrigue factor is lost (imagine if gamblers knew exactly how much they would win or lose before they pulled the slot machine lever).
Investment → anything of value (typically time or money) the user “invests” into the app. Adding details to a profile or making an in-app purchase are common examples. Positioning investment requests after a variable reward leverages user’s elated state to increase willingness to invest. Correspondingly, investment increases future app usage. If a user made an in-app purchase but then never used the app again, that money (investment) would have gone to waste. Investments “trigger” users to self-justify the decision, providing further reinforcement for increased action in the future. Remarkable products are able to propagate a continuous loop to drives more engagement. Prodigious examples of remarkable habit formation loops include those found in the famously addictive games Candy Crush, Farmville & Clash of Clans.
Avoid Being Good
Many app companies try to be too many things for too many people. Rapidly adding features just to check off functionality boxes is a recipe for poor engagement and low satisfaction. Products that have one or two great features and a fantastic user experience will almost always succeed over products with many good features and a less than stellar user experience. Identify the niche of the market your core competencies are best suited for and focus efforts on building great features that will stand out from the crowd. In this hyper-competitive world, being good just isn't good enough. The key to being successful? Be a game changer, not just a player in the game.
Andy Fine
Andy helps emerging freelancers gain more clients in a predictable way. He is an expert at helping people find new leads using online methods and making things simple to understand. If you're interested in starting your own freelancing business or scaling up and getting more clients then definitely reach out and request a free strategy session today.
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