We’ve all had our experiences with apps where we either go ‘Oh wow!’ or ‘Uh, What?!’
The latter is mostly associated with users being disappointed with an app and not much likely to use it any further. Take any mobile gaming app as an example. In the initial interactions, users aren’t always aware of every feature/all types of game. And fishing through every specific feature is a time-consuming and rather overwhelming experience that users want to avoid at all costs. This is the ‘ah’ moment that drives users away from the app.
Now, the moments that make users go ‘Oh wow!’ are what we call the ‘aha moment’ – a moment of insight. It’s that exact moment when users realize the value proposition of your product, and the problem it is solving. And these are the apps, users are most likely to stick to – a notion well tested and put to use by Facebook. They found out that users who can find 7 friends during the first 10 days of use are the ones who are most likely to keep coming back to the app.
Here are a few more notable aha moments:
Identifying these aha moments is no easy job! Here are 2 golden rules we swear by to understand what qualifies as an aha moment for users:
1. Understand user pain points and how your app addresses it
2. Analyze user behavior on the app – at which point are users churning out and after what action do users tend to stick to the app. In other words, get to know what churned users and power users are doing on the app.
Why are these aha moments critical? you ask. Here’s why:
- Retaining first-time users – When users easily click with your app and are convinced of the benefits the app offers, they are more likely to come back for more. This helps uplift Day 0 retention rates that otherwise remain low for most of the apps.
- Improved FTUX (First-Time User Experience) – Aha moments help in increasing an app’s value from a user’s standpoint. Crossing paths with the aha moment in the initial interactions with the app leads to better first-time user experiences and reduces the time-to-value.
- Faster user activation – Multiple apps are waiting to grab your users’ attention. Delivering the aha moment to users quickly, makes users get started on your app faster and keeps them fully engaged. With this, you can successfully convert users to paying customers/premium users.
- Turn users to brand advocates – Satisfied users are less likely to churn out and highly likely to become brand advocates that eventually would get you more users and boost overall app growth.
By now, we’ve established the importance of taking users from the ‘ah’ to the ‘aha’ moment.
This brings us to the next segment of the blog – How do you traverse the ah to aha path?
Well, as growth and product owners, you know your app’s core value like the back of your hand. But this value may not be very obvious to your users. This is why you need to guide users in a direction that helps them understand your app value right from the get-go.
It’s important to understand the occurrence of the ‘aha!’ moment varies from user to user. So you need to find out a user’s ‘aha’ moment based on the specific user persona, value a user is looking for on the app, and identify the jobs-to-be-done or what a user is trying to accomplish using the app.
Here’s where nudges help apps deliver the aha moment to the right users, at the right time!
Nudging users from the ‘ah’ to ‘aha’ moment
Let’s take a real-life example to understand the concept of nudges:
Suppose you are at a food joint. The person behind the counter suggests that you top up your meal with a large pack of fries on placing your order. You might not have thought of the fries, but this suggestion could lead you to order them.
Simple, isn’t it?
By guiding users to take some action depending upon their context, you’re able to help users uncover your product’s value, drive more usage and create positive experiences.
Reading Tip: You can check out this blog to dive into details on nudges: https://netcorecloud.com/blog/roadmap-to-delightful-user-experience/
Now, let’s get on with understanding how nudges are helping users move from a disgruntled (AH!) state to an excited (AHA!) state –
- Help users easily navigate the app – Apps have multiple functionalities which may not always be relevant to every user. And, overburdening a new user with a huge load of information is not viable. Especially, during the early app experience.
Nudges help in seamlessly guiding users to those parts/functionalities of the app that are most relevant at the given stage of the user journey. This helps users perform key actions with utmost ease and thus brings to them the aha moment.
Google uses nudges across its apps to highlight critical app features that would deliver a sense of elation to users who can easily find their way through the app and use it successfully.
- Contextual, relevant, and timely guidance – Nudges are a winning strategy when it comes to delivering exceptional user experience because of their context and relevance at any given point.
Even for each user, there may be multiple aha moment occurrences. Nudges ensure that users experience these and here’s how! Nudges are deployed based on individual user persona. They appear for the right user, at the right time, and at the right stage of the user journey – when a user is most likely to perform some action. By being relevant, nudges are able to deliver the meaningful value = aha moment to users and keep users coming back time and again.
- Non-intrusive nature of nudges – Flashy in-app messages, huge pop-ups blocking the app screen – rings a bell, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s the ‘ah’ or moment of sheer annoyance you experience and you’re bound to either leave the app or uninstall it once and for all.
But with nudges, the story is different. Nudges are non-intrusive, informative, action-enabling in-app guides that subtly grab the user’s attention without blocking their flow on the app.
The tiny red circle you see blinking on Twitter’s menu bar is a nudge. A spotlight on the recharge pack on the Airtel app is again a subtle nudge. Similarly, there are multiple examples of leading brands deploying nudges to engage users without being obtrusive.
P.S Here’s a 1-minute video highlighting the difference between in-app messages and nudges
- Create engaging walkthroughs – Let’s look at the onboarding journey which is one of the most critical stages in the entire user lifecycle. We talked about the importance of making users realize a product’s value at the very beginning, and defining walkthroughs for different user segments helps in achieving that. You can choose to introduce features depending on the set of actions a user takes, or you introduce only the crucial features of the app that users need to know to get started.
More on app user onboarding strategies:
- Adopt a product-led growth strategy – To put it in a nutshell, product-led growth strategy is all about driving user acquisition, engagement, and retention through the product itself. It’s about creating power users who are your product’s biggest fans and are willing to say that out loud to the larger audience. Adopting a product-led approach helps brands create a pipeline of active users who can then be converted into paying customers.
Here’s the next question – How do you implement a product-led strategy? In the simplest form implementing a product-led strategy entails offering key information about the product to your users in a way that lets them experience the true value of your product quickly. This helps you successfully deliver the aha moment to your app users.
Nudges are one of the best ways of getting your product-led strategy into action. By giving just the right amount of guidance to app users, nudges empower users to take meaningful actions and use the product successfully.
Find more insights on product-led growth here:
Wrapping Up!
So, if you were to stitch all these points together and build the larger narrative on this, that narrative will be about nudges making an app user’s journey flawless.
They take users from the ‘ah’ to the ‘aha’ moment giving them the value they came looking for and in doing so improve the overall product experience for every user.
If this has stirred up some excitement in you, wait till you experience your next aha moment.
For creating these valuable aha moments with nudges you no longer need to be dependent on your developers/engineers. We will take the no-code road! You can now deliver compelling product experiences without writing a single line of code, deploy nudges in as less as 15 minutes and keep users away from the ‘ah’ moment.
If you’re looking to kickstart your app users’ journey from the ah to aha, we’ve got you covered!
Talk to us to know more about contextual nudges.
