How To Teach HOW TO CREATE AN ADDICTIVE APPLICATION THAT GOES VIRAL Better Than Anyone Else

How to create an addictive application that goes viral

Despite the combination of 5 million applications currently available for download in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, smartphone users allocate approximately 85% of their total usage time to 5 applications or less.

In addition, almost 4 out of 5 users never use an application again 72 hours after the first installation. Clearly, the vast majority of mobile application companies fail to retain their users.

In contrast, successful mobile application companies create compelling applications that create habits that spread virally, whether through social networks, the app store, or word of mouth and help create communities of new and engaged users. massive

But how, exactly, can you create an addictive viral application? In this article, I will discuss the psychological science behind the construction of truly addictive mobile applications.

Today's article will focus mainly on the ways in which new companies can use the psychological science behind the formation of habits to develop addictive applications that users will love and voluntarily share with others.

When analyzing these various ideas and tactics, I assume that you have already become familiar with the following basic principles: if you are not yet familiar with these key ideas, be sure to click on the links below and read the corresponding points. Appster articles:

Addictive mobile applications effectively solve users' urgent problems (for example, the need for an interpersonal connection) and respond to significant market demands (for example, the demand for an easy-to-use mobile dating service based on the location) (1, 2, 3);

Viral applications are fundamentally rooted in minimum viable products that have been "subjected to stress tests" in the real world (1, 2, 3);

Successful applications are launched and marketed to the right populations at the right times, that is, the companies behind these applications intentionally target specific users (early adopters) at the beginning and only then "cross the chasm" (in the mainstream) when appropriate (1, 2, 3);

Viral applications are generally based on one or more effective monetization strategies (such as purchases within the application); Y

New companies behind addictive applications analyze (and respond to) several financial and specific metrics for mobile devices.

Once these preliminaries are solved, let's explore the meaning of "virality" from the point of view of the popularity of the application.

Then we will delve into the details of the psychology (and neurobiology) of habit formation, using this understanding to then guide a discussion about the creation and commercialization of addictive applications.

What is "virality"?

What do we mean when we talk about something that is "going viral" or that achieves "viral growth", or in fact, an application is becoming a "viral application"?

It is easy to assume that this is limited to an application that is briefly displayed on social media platforms, but in reality, it is much more than that.

"Virality", which is a key driver of a company's ability to scale operations, can be considered in two ways:

As a general term applied to the Internet: "The tendency for an image, video or information to circulate rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another; the quality or fact of being viral "(source); Y

As a specific term applied to the acquisition of customers: "A phenomenon in which users acquire other users, usually through some reference mechanism incorporated in the product on offer" (source).

We can understand the essence of virality when it comes to customer acquisition by examining conventional marketing funnels versus unconventional ones.

The conventional marketing funnel: companies pay a lot of money (for example, through advertising) to drive traffic to their products (websites, applications, etc.) in an effort to convert a small fraction of that traffic into customers assets and payment.

The viral marketing funnel: instead of a large number of potential customers transforming into a small number of real customers, a small number of real customers help attract exponentially more customers through organic use and product sharing or service (for example, the application).

Viral marketing works in such a way that each new user brings one or more new users, who then bring one or more new users, and so on:

In general, viral growth is derived from the organic use of a product (for example, a new user of Facebook who naturally suggests that his friends try the social networking site) and / or the operation of a reference system (for example , a Lyft user who circulates a reference code that allows her and the person who applies their code to each exchange on a free trip.

More technically, viral growth is often identified with a "viral coefficient" above 1.0.

Its viral coefficient represents the number of new users that each existing user brings to your company.

For example, a viral coefficient of 3.0 (which, by the way, is quite high) means that on average:

100 users refer to 300 additional users;

Those 300 users bring more than 900 more users, and so on.

Why is a viral coefficient above 1.0 so important?

Because, as I've pointed out in the past, "if your startup can maintain a viral coefficient above 1.0, then you do not need any kind of substantial marketing budget to keep growing."

The type of viral growth that we are discussing here, that is, a situation in which "word of mouth" exponentially brings more and more users to the growing user base, is captured by the notion of "viral loop".

This term describes the process through which a user advances from the first time he finds his product until he is then encouraged to recommend it to others (sources: 1, 2, 3).

Here is a simple illustration of the Sam Hutchings viral loop process from Tapdaq:

As the following diagram demonstrates, viral growth implies:

Buying some initial traffic to access your application and, therefore, acquire some initial users;

Building an application to create habit (more on this soon!) That convinces the initial users to start using it (ie, "activation");

Encouraging your initial users to send additional traffic to your company at no cost to you; Y

Repeating the process again.

The key to establishing an effective viral loop is to offer one or more features or rewards that incentivize users to share their application with others.

Instead of relying on annoying ads and other forms of intrusive spam, you should offer your users something of value.

Valuable incentives are tangible and immediate; They make their users willing to bring their friends, family and / or colleagues to their application.

It is vital that you speed up the process of awarding rewards by making it as easy to understand and as easy to complete as possible.

Absolutely you will lose opportunities to increase your user base if you make the activations of your reward too confusing to carry them out.

Dropbox and Uber are two examples of new companies that have successfully used viral marketing to significantly increase the size of their user bases and the popularity of their products / services.

When Dropbox was launched for the first time, the file-sharing website offered free additional storage space for all users who referred others to the platform, which helped the company acquire 1 million users in the first 7 months of its operations.

Uber's double-sided referral code system, whereby person A receives a free $ 10 credit when person B, who also earns a $ 10 credit, enrolls in Uber using the exclusive referral code of The person, is so successful that approximately 50% of the new Customers arrive through referral.

Everything I have discussed so far is based on the assumption that, in fact, you have created an application that people really want to use.

If your users do not want to use your application, much less spread it among your friends, then it does not matter how attractive your reward offers are because no one will care and your application will fail.

For example, what would be the use of a free $ 10 Uber coupon if the Uber application was constantly blocked on your phone? It does not help, obviously.

We can think of efforts to encourage users to share their application with others as analogous to the final decorations of a dessert: no amount of glaze, however beautiful or tempting it may be, will lead someone to bite a cake horrible taste.

In the same way, you must create a completely "tasty" application, that is, one that your users simply can not do without, before trying to encourage their users to recruit others for their application.

Only then should you focus on implementing marketing efforts that can help you achieve viral loops.

Therefore, we must explore the psychology of addiction to develop an understanding of how to create applications to create habits that your users will really love.

The psychology of habit formation.

Your number one objective when designing and developing your application should be to create an application that your users use regularly.

This may seem obvious, but it's worth saying directly: you must develop an application that users will return to again and again.

Think of Facebook, Instagram and Spotify: are these single-use applications? Or do people spend hours in them every day?

When you post a status update on Facebook, share a new photo on Instagram or listen to a single song on Spotify, do you close the app forever and refuse to return for several months?

It is very unlikely that you will do it.

Instead, browse through your friends' status updates, comment and / or like other people's photos, listen to songs or albums similar to the current track, etc.

Do you know how people take their phones as soon as they get up in the morning and immediately open their news, social, financial applications, etc. preferred?

That is precisely the type of habitual use, the type of "addiction", to which you should aim.

It is not about trying to deceive or manipulate people to behave against their wills or their best interests.

Rather, it is about understanding human psychology (and neurobiology) to create a product that at the same time offers its users genuine value and makes it possible for their startup to operate and grow as a business.

The English Oxford Living Dictionary defines "habit" as an "established or regular trend or practice, especially one that is difficult to abandon".

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, argues that "a simple neurological loop lies at the core of each habit, a loop that consists of three parts: a key, a routine and a reward."

The signal, that is, trigger, incite or stimulate the behavior in question; the routine represents the habitual action in itself; and the reward is "how our neurology learns to codify this pattern for the future" (source).

For a habit to take hold, all three elements must be present.

This is a very rudimentary description of the formation of habits; Let's be a little more technical.

Throughout the millennia, human beings have developed a variety of systems in the brain that work to motivate us to do certain things, such as eating, sleeping, and procreating.

Specifically, our ape brains are prepared to encourage us to look for activities that (hypothetically) contribute to our abilities to live and thrive, with various neurological (ie, chemical) rewards to compensate us when we do such things.

In summary, this is the reason why activities such as sex and eating are pleasurable experiences (that is, this is the way nature rewards us for keeping us alive and transmitting our genes) (source).

Now, to truly understand the dynamics of habit formation and addiction, we must analyze the basic concepts of two key neurotransmitters.

(A "neurotransmitter" is a brain chemical that communicates information between neuronal synapses, essentially, it helps different parts of the brain communicate with each other).

The second important class of neurotransmitters are the "opiates," which are the "good feelings" your brain produces when you experience something pleasurable (like eating a bowl of tasty ice cream).

Opioids have to do with taste and achievement: they are the product of experiencing pleasure, that is, the state resulting from the euphoria that arises when something is achieved (sources: 1, 2).

Both dopamine and opiates are involved in habit-forming behaviors:

The first, the "want" system, represents the impulse to look for something (for example, driving to the bank, taking out money and then visiting a convenience store to buy a pack of cigarettes or uploading a web browser, writing a sentence) or ask in a search engine, and trying to locate a specific piece of information); Y

The second, the "taste" system, represents the satisfaction of desire (for example, the pleasurable sensations experienced after inhaling cigarette smoke or finding the information you need).

When it comes to creating addictive applications, it is important to recognize that the dopaminergic system is stronger, that is, it generates a greater influence on our behavior than the opium system.

In other words, people are driven more by the pursuit of pleasure than by the actual experience of pleasure itself.

Evolution is such that human beings have a greater obligation to search for things (to solve riddles, discover new information, plan courses of action, compile patterns, etc.) than to achieve objectives (source).

There is a final question of psychology / neurobiology that we must address before we can explore the implications of all this science to create addictive applications that become viral.

Dopamine exerts the most influential effect on our actions when we engage in activities that are full of unpredictability and anticipation.

In simple terms, our brains release greater amounts of dopamine, that is, they motivate us more feverishly, when we try to reach objectives with unclear possibilities of success than when we have a solid understanding of the probability of the result:

"Because excitement decreases with frequent and predictable exposure, scientists now understand that the anticipation of reward is a much more powerful mediator of strong addictions than the evaluation of the outcome of the stimulus itself" (source).

In other words, the more times you do something, the less exciting the process will be precisely because you can accurately anticipate the result.

The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky performed experiments on monkeys that confirm it.

Sapolsky trained his monkeys to recognize that if they pressed a lever, that is, the "work", many times after a nearby light was lit, that is, the "signal", then a food treat, that is, the "reward", would be dispensed following the tenth lever pressing.

That is: see the light à pressing the lever ten times the treatment is treated.

Sapolsky then measured the dopamine levels of the monkeys and found the following pattern:

This graph shows that the monkeys began to release dopamine immediately after the signal appeared (ie, light) and then stopped abruptly releasing the dopamine after they started to press the level (ie, work).

This shows that dopamine is primarily concerned with search, not winning or achieving.

What is even more interesting, however, is what happened when Sapolsky modified the experiment, so monkeys received prizes only 50% of the time after pressing the lever:

Surprisingly, this reveals that monkeys' dopamine levels skyrocketed when they were not sure if they would receive treatment after the work was done.

These results show that apes (even us, humans!) And ape-like creatures respond much more strongly to new and unpredictable stimuli than to family and expected events.

Just consider the excitement and nervousness you feel the first time you have a date with a new romantic partner and compare those feelings with what it is to be in a one year relationship to recognize the validity of this idea.

To appreciate the significance of this crucial scientific discovery, that is, that human beings seem to be more motivated to seek, search and plan activities and experience novelty and unpredictability than when doing activities and finding predictability and familiarity, let's see now in the influential ideas of the psychologist and businessman Nir Eyal on the construction of products that create habits.

The "hook model" of the habit forming products

Applying the scientific principles and findings we have been discussing so far in the business world, Nir Eyal describes a model for the "desire to manufacture by guiding users through a series of experiences designed to create habits".

Eyal calls these habits "hooks," and they are designed to produce self-generated feedback loops in which users are increasingly likely to use products or services "automatically" (ie, similar to a reflex).

How applications with the Hook model become viral

The Hook model contains four key elements, each of which contributes to the development of a user's "addiction" to a product or service, and makes it viral in the process:

Trigger: that which stimulates the action. Triggers come in two forms. External triggers, which arise in the environment of a person. Examples: advertisements, emails and Internet links. Internal triggers, which emerge from within a person. Examples: feelings of hunger, boredom and curiosity. Eyal argues that the objective, from a business perspective, is to use external triggers (for example, advertisements) to train internal triggers in a natural and progressive way within users (for example, the "instant" desire to eat a certain type of food whenever he is hungry).

Action: the expected behavior. Examples: click on an online ad or open a newly received email. Users must be motivated and be able to take the desired action. Motivation is driven by one or more incentives, for example, the desire to solve a problem, satisfy curiosity or receive a reward. The ability is determined by how easy or difficult it is to complete the given action, for example, completing three instead of twelve steps before you can use a downloaded application.

Variable reward: the unpredictable / random compensation for taking the action. Based explicitly on research showing that dopamine increases more dramatically when new and unexpected circumstances arise (see above), Eyal insists that "[v] reliable reward schedules are one of the most powerful tools companies use to engage to the users. " Examples: music streaming applications that offer endless varieties of songs, artists and albums, suggested fan links automatically generated by Twitter, or the ever-changing "pin" display on Pinterest.

Investment: additional behaviors that encourage a deeper and more lasting commitment to the product or service. It's about convincing users to do something that increases the likelihood that they will continue to use their product, share it with others, and constantly go through the entire hook process over and over again. The objective is to eliminate as many frictions as possible to encourage users to "follow" their company. Eyal: "Inviting friends, declaring preferences, creating virtual assets and learning to use new functions are commitments that improve the service for the user". Examples: create a collection of photos, comments and like on Instagram or join Facebook groups and contribute to the discussions (source).

Putting everything together: Practical guidelines

Now that we have traced the theoretical principles that underlie addiction and the key business models behind the creation of applications to create habits, let's finish this article by analyzing some practical strategies that you can use to develop the next truly "addictive" application.

First, include as much novelty, unpredictability and puzzle solving elements in your application as reasonably possible.

As we have discussed, human beings are especially motivated by the activities of search, search and planning, by the desire to solve something, especially when an unexpected challenge or confusion arises.

Its application, therefore, must capitalize on the fact that "[we] are the most implacably curious species on the planet" (source).

If you are building a mobile game, there are many different ways to introduce new and surprising elements in the experience, including users discovering special elements, encountering unexpected bosses and receiving unanticipated rewards for completing tasks.

Non-gaming applications can also capitalize on novelty and problem solving.

In fact, "killing new messages in your inbox stimulates neurons similar to those stimulated by playing StarCraft" (source).

Uber, for example, provides real-time GPS tracking of its drivers, and this feature attracts passengers' curiosity and planning faculties as they wait for their cars to arrive:

"Is she going to take this route or that?"

"Would I get there faster if I turned on that street?"

"Why is not your car moving? Is there some kind of accident at that intersection?" Etc.

Finally, you absolutely must make use (careful) of the triggers, that is, push notifications, within your application.

Automatic notifications allow an application to send a notification to a user's smartphone without requiring the user to take any action to generate the message.

Once again, it is the predominance of dopamine and the powerful role it plays when we engage in the search and anticipation of activities that make insertion notifications so attractive and distracted.

Every time a user receives an unexpected notification, the chemicals that produce desires in the brain go crazy as the user takes action to find out what special message he expects.

Be sure to incorporate such triggers in your mobile application.

At the same time, however, it is imperative that you do not frighten your users by "exaggerating".

In this context, follow these guidelines for success:

Use an opt-in / opt-out system instead of arbitrarily forcing notifications on users' phones;

Design your triggers around the most common and rewarding digital events instead of using them for every action you take;

Do not add vibration to automatic notifications, it is annoying and ineffective; Y

Customize your notifications to make them less intrusive (for example, "Kevin liked your photo, Mark!")

A second key strategy is to use the power of gamification.

"Gamification", an increasingly popular tactic used by mobile application developers, implies the incorporation of elements similar to games at the end of a set of tasks with the intention of capitalizing on the human impulse to overcome obstacles, accumulate achievements and receive recognition for our triumphs.

We are a kind of riddle and conquest solution, which means that people are naturally attracted to tasks if they require us to go through several stages to achieve an objective that offers the potential for reward.

The 250 MB gift offer from Dropbox is a great example of gamification.

It offers users the possibility to claim additional free storage if they "conquer" several tasks that, in fact, encourage a greater investment of users in the Dropbox service (which therefore works as a "win-win" for both parties ):

The awarding of different "insignias" of FourSquare / Swarm based on the number and types of user registers represents another popular and successful use of gamification by a mobile application.

Third, make your application incorporation experience as agile, attractive and friction-free as possible.

The incorporation of applications refers to the process of presenting users with their application, familiarizing them with their operation and convincing them to become long-term users (or, better still, "application ambassadors" who actively promote their application to others. ) (sources: 1, 2, 3).

The main objective of the built-in application is to guide users in the path of using their application until they reach their "Aha! Moment", that is, the moment in which they are convinced of the value that their application provides to their users. lives and then they become dedicated users.

In a previous article, I described six specific strategies that startups can use to maximize the application integration experience for their users:

Reduce friction by eliminating unnecessary obstacles in the registration process;

Provide a clear indication of progress by showing users how many steps must be completed before the application can be used freely;

Use social records through Twitter, Facebook, etc. so that the process of registration and login is as simple as possible;

Offer incentives by presenting gifts (for example, free storage space or discount codes);

Provide use cases that clearly others successfully and easily using the application; Y

Use brief but useful tutorials that quickly resolve common problems or clear up confusion.

Finally, be sure to encourage (a lot of) user investment in your application.

As Nir Eyal emphasizes, convincing users to take specific actions that create ever deeper connections with their application serves to "make the trigger more attractive, the action easier, and the reward more exciting with each step through the Hook. "

How can you get your users to invest in your application?

This is where you need to capitalize on the notion of the trap of sunk costs.

The "trap of unrecoverable costs" refers to a phenomenon in which we become more prone to maintain (or terminate) some system, task or behavior as more resources sink into it.

In practice, we are all familiar with how this works:

He is much less likely to leave Instagram and join a rival mobile photo app if he has spent the past two years building his Instagram profile, using specific hashtags, following friends, etc. What if he joined 36 hours ago?

You are much more likely to leave Dropbox to join a competitor's online file storage service if you have used Dropbox for only a few days compared to, say, the last 10 months. It would be too complicated to move, rearrange and re-share on all your devices all the files that you have been storing in Dropbox for almost a year to make the change.

The examples are infinite.

The point, then, is that you should encourage investment on behalf of your users to increase user retention and thus increase the virality of your application.

And it does so by rewarding its users the more they use and share their application, for example, through reference systems, the concession of digital products to complete certain steps (for example, to share ten new photos within a certain period of time). , clear indications of progress (for example, progress to new levels of learning in an educational application), etc.

Once you have designed and developed addictive qualities in your application and released it to the public, it is time to launch a public relations and marketing campaign.

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