Hooked How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover
A quick, simple, and decent read. If you are a marketer, designer, product manager, or entrepreneur, looking to build a product that customer love to engage, this is your book.
Can you think of any of the apps you open frequently? I would say mine are Email, Youtube, Bible app, Netflix, Words with Friends, Skimm, and Camera. This book shares the secrets into why you are hooked to those apps. I really like this short succinct book (only 200 pages). He gives very clear frameworks and examples without going too deep into psychological theory. This book could have been a one-sitting reading, as long as time permits. Very engaging and interesting book.
Nir Eyal started this book by introducing Hook Model. Based on Hook Model, Habit Zone is reached when users access the app with enough frequency and its perceived utility is also high enough. He then moved onto the four stages to create habitual products: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment. Users should have external and internal Trigger. With enough motivation, users then can make an Action. When they engage with the product, it provides Variable Reward. Once user experience the reward, they will Invest their time with the product, which then companies can accumulate Storing Value to further enhance the feature.
The first five chapters and the Bible app example were really worth reading, however the part I feel could be better is the last chapter. The author tried to guide the entrepreneurs with frameworks ( Identify, Codify, Modify) on how to build habit-forming products in one chapter. However I think he can do a far better job if he gives more in dept analysis and guidance via multiple chapters at least.
One key takeaway for me is the discovery on the importance of the product usage when it comes to building a truly successful products. My work scope has been to drive customers' purchase on the web. It ended there. However, true customer success starts after they pay. Our job as a true marketers should look above and beyond Conversion. How to remind me to think entire customer journey and find an optimization opportunity & success metrics for the customer success (after paying us money!)?
This is the first book in the series of marketing books. The next books are Contagious, Made to Stick and Tipping points. Please stay tuned.
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