Does Adding Friction in the Product Usage Makes Your Product More Sticky ?
During the initial days of my startup journey, I read the book “Hooked” by Nir Eyal. The book speaks about how to influence consumer habit formation. One such effect that is touched upon is the IKEA effect.
What is the IKEA effect ?
“The IKEA effect describes how people tend to value an object more if they make (or assemble) it themselves. More broadly, the IKEA effect speaks to how we tend to like things more if we’ve expended effort to create them.” [1]
My thoughts and experiences on IKEA effect
Do founders suffer from the IKEA effect ?
I did and I am sure a lot of us founders do suffer from it. We build something and then find it hard to evaluate it objectively. Assuming you can be your first customer, the first test you can do as a founder is to ask yourself if you would use the product yourself and what would the product need to be for you to use it. As you spend more time on building and thinking about the product, the harder it gets to objectively evaluate the product and its consequent appeal to the customers.
Do users suffer from the IKEA effect ??
IKEA effect comes into play once the users have expended some effort into creating an experience for themselves on the product. But this effect has to be used wisely and it’s hard to get it right.
Customers who are pulled into exploring your product, by reading about your product on say hacker news, are never sure what to expect of the product. On top of that if your product is hard to experience, they simply drop off. The product experience should be crisp and the user should reach the aha moment quickly.?
An important aspect to consider is that the product description should be closely aligned to what the customer experiences the moment the user starts using the product. If your product has become a feature factory, you might need to cut features or embed irrelevant features somewhere, so that the user doesn’t use too many ‘brain cycles’ to identify the value the product has for him/her. Trying to use the IKEA effect hurts you if you make it too hard for the customer to emerge victorious in identifying its utility.?
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How can you use the IKEA effect to your advantage ?
I believe the right way to use IKEA effect is to implement it not at the start of the product exploration journey, but at the later stages, so that the user knows what to expect of the product. By enabling the user to emerge victorious on using the product and spending their social currency on speaking about the product, the bond between user and product is strengthened. This bond enables the user to ignore some bumps on the way and gives the product team/founder a chance to introduce the IKEA effect to their advantage.
There is a chain of thought that says, if the user has to expend some ‘brain cycles’ in using or experiencing the product then the product’s stickiness increases for them. A way to subtly use this effect to your advantage is to gamify the interface such that the user finds it fun to answer and fill in the information. Additionally, make the user aware that he has invested time to update the product according to his likes and dislikes. When the user experiences personalization as a byproduct of his efforts, he is likely to stay and use the product longer. LinkedIn uses this effect when it makes users fill the profile by gamification. Since Users have spent effort into filling the profile, the utility as well as emotional attachment to the product increases. There is a consequent increase in stickiness of the product.
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Originally published by me on Substack
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