ConnectionPoint: Habit Reinforcement Loops

Summary/Intro:

This is a growth initiative I ran as Director of Growth at ConnectionPoint Systems. The purpose here, and my role generally, was to connect users to value. This work focused on the product experience.

I used Growth design principles to engineer key moments in the product experience where habits can be formed. The moments chosen correspond to competitive differentiators and/or user benefits (product meet marketing).

The Opportunity

Prior state, the product was highly functional. Users often don’t realize the full capabilities and benefits. When they do realize capabilities and benefits, it’s without a trigger.

Users were left to discover capabilities on their own and do the mental work of consciously realizing the benefits of those capabilities.

I identified 3 measurements this negatively impacts, each were either trending negatively or down YoY. comes out in the wash.

Net Revenue Retention rate (NRR) - retention was not keeping pace with revenue growth.
Returning Supporter Tip Rate - repeat donors participation rate, median and average tip amount were lower than new donors.
WOM referrals - I used branded organic search as a proxy, which had been in remission for 6 months in a row.

Taking all 3 of those to 'flat' represented a ~ $250K opportunity. Which for a seed stage startup, was substantial.

The hypothesis was if users’ attention is called to the benefit of an action and they are shown this benefit clearly, they will be more likely to repeat the behavior and appreciate the benefit.

The Solution(s)

There are two opportunities here; triggers and habit reinforcements. This focuses on habit reinforcement. I targeted key moments in the user journey where users have taken an action where there is a demonstrable benefit.

These are actions we want more of. If you want more of a behavior, either reduce friction or increase motivation. These solutions do the latter - where the product does the mental work for the user of realizing the benefit they experienced.

This concept is an old one called operant conditioning (Pavlov’s dogs):

The solution I proposed is to create the reward part of this loop for various behaviors beneficial to the users and the company.

In the near future, as we accumulated behavioral data and knowledge about users, we’ll be better positioned to place cues that trigger positive behaviors in the customer journey (story and details on the growth stack here).

Examples in the Wild

Zapier's plan upgrade flow

At the point of upgrade, the user gets confetti to celebrate their decision. This is an example of the Peak-End Rule in action.

**Peak-End Rule: People judge an experience by its peak and how it ends.**

Tesla Charging Interface (fictional)

Tesla just shows the total charge, like most electronic devices do. But they could go farther and highlight how much was recharged just now and how much money you have saved on gas.

Companies speak in features, customers speak in value.

Scientific Basis

The product design changes I proposed relied primarily on these 7 principles:

Availability bias - mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision.

Peak-End Rule - People judge an experience by its peak and how it ends.

Social proof - When users are unsure or when the situation is ambiguous, they are most likely to look and accept the actions of others as correct.
- The greater the number of people, the more appropriate the action seems.

Hyperbolic discounting - Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later.
- Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward, by a factor that increases with the length of the delay.

Zero-risk bias - people feel better if a risk is eliminated instead of being merely mitigated.

Bizarreness effect - the tendency of bizarre material to be better remembered than common material.

The self-reference effect - the tendency for people to encode information differently depending on whether they are implicated in the information.
- When people are asked to remember information when it is related in some way to themselves, the recall rate can be improved.

The Implementation

Value: Time (I can do it)

Cloning a campaign - Estimate the amount of time saved by cloning instead of creating from scratch and show a green +___ minutes “you saved ___minutes”. If they clone ___ times, we give them the title of ‘Master of Clones’. At the beginning of creating a campaign, tell users the average time it takes to create a campaign and launch Creating a campaign - If the time taken to complete is favourable (to be defined), show the user the exact amount of time taken - campaign created in _minutes and _seconds with a large green checkmark. Show how much time is saved upon completion of a campaign when we automatically create the mobile version for them Show user how many steps it takes to create a campaign and which step they are in.

Value: Ability (I'm capable)

Using a template - ‘Great choice! You picked the template tried and tested by ____ fundraisers.’ When they customise something, we show a picture of a gumby character stretching ‘flexibility mode engaged’ Creating a custom theme When the user hits save, slow down the change and show a progress bar loading quickly. Then at completion - ‘poof!’ With a magic wand wave First campaign creation At completion, ‘Welcome and congratulations first name, you’re the #___ fundraiser in the Fundrazr community’ Opportunity to show resources to get started with Give an option to email me the get started resources Second campaign creation At completion, ‘celebration message to be figured out later (a second date!)’ ‘The first campaign is always the hardest’. Show 1st vs 2nd campaign deltas. Setting up an organisation Upon saving the last required details, slow down the refresh and show a progress bar loading quickly. Then, show a green done image. Or combine the progress bar concept into the green done image. Congratulate users after they complete the campaign creation and after launch. Show tips and tricks for post launch Celebratory gif when a campaign hits it’s goal, and I’ve had clients ask me how they even know when they hit their goal. They want some sort of celebration/acknowledgment. When a user goes to the campaign for the first time after hitting the goal, they see confetti on the screen? Dancing robot? Money falling from the sky? If didn’t hit their goal: Did you know that (Insert weird fact here, like how Harry Potter was rejected 12 times before being accepted by a publisher). Failure means there’s an opportunity to learn, and luckily you can try again (Start next campaign now) Put a ‘mark as done’ option in the Admin task list and every time a task is finished, SABBY does a dance, or you see a marker of “You have 5/10 tasks complete. View them all and check them off to ensure a top-tier, comprehensive campaign”.

Value: Money (I’m empowered)

Risk Free fundraising - When the campaign is launched using the free pricing model, we remind the user what this means (tip asks) and that they have nothing to lose. Immediate funds: For the first donation a user receives as a campaign owner, send a message congratulating them on the first donation and prompt them to check their paypal or stripe account to see the immediate availability. When they hit a certain % of their goal they get congratulated with some figures (Only X% of campaigns make it this far) At the end of a campaign, show the amount saved over using a competitive platform. If under $50, show %, over $50 show $s.

Value: Support (I matter)

When they submit a support email/request/etc., ‘humans have been notified and are on their way. You can expect a response within_____’. When they submit a support email/request/etc., show a superhero that says ‘help is on the way’ Throughout the signup process, have a button offering support to the user such as ‘Need help with anything?’, with options to get a demo, watch an explainer video or chat with support. In feature updates/newsletters, we can thank the people/organizations who gave us the suggestions Message from Founder/CEO at the end of their campaign, thanking them for trusting us with their project and inviting them to share their thoughts on the platform

Value: Growth (I will do it)

b/c you provided an update to your campaign, '##' supporters witnessed the impact of their contribution. (Putting the fun in fundraise!) b/c you added a photo/video to your campaign, you’re ___% more likely to hit your goal Enable a ‘notification’ for contributions showing the count of new contributions in the fundraiser console (gamified). B/c you shared your campaign in this dark social channel, you’re ___% more likely to reach more supporters “Post an update” -> change to update your supporters Campaigns with updates raise ____ more, each update increases your chance of success by ____ We could go further and add a need ideas? Pop out, where we fill in a few conceptual ideas (update on campaign progress, call for specific types of support, update on impact, etc.) Task completion: When the user completes a to-do (shown below), we could take the green pop up farther. A few thoughts: Create levels based on how many tasks have been completed, e.g. after 10 completed we bestow the rank of taskmeister, after 100 taskmaster, after 1066 the battle of hastings award We show an animation of a + or check mark sign, could include numerical points (e.g. +1 every task), something slightly silly and enjoyable. We could animate the to do pop up - e.g. have it pop up, then be swept into a box marked done.

Measurements of Success

The behaviors we are promoting
Customer satisfaction measures
User retention
User expansion
Qualitative feedback and assessment
Seeing the highlighted value come through in what reviewers choose to mention.