When users invest themselves, they're more likely to come back.
<aside> ℹ️ People invest time, money, information, or effort into a product in anticipation of future benefits. It makes them more likely to return because of the increase in perceived value. When executed properly, user investments load the next trigger to use your product.
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Putting users to work is critical in creating products people love. This will be referred to as “user investment”, or “investment”.
Several studies have shown that expending effort on a task seems to commit us to it. For example, when buying a lottery ticket, players are able to either choose their own numbers or play a set of digits generated randomly. Certainly, choosing either option has no effect on the odds of winning. Traditional thinking would predict that the less effortful path would be the one users prefer.
However, the opposite is true. Despite the considerable effort required to pick the lottery numbers, a process reminiscent of filling out multiple choice questions on the spent the time and effort picking.
Examples of how escalations of commitment makes our brain do funny things abound. Its power makes some people play video games until they keel over and die. It’s used to influence people to give more to charity. It has even been used to coerce prisoners of war to switch allegiances. Commitment is powerful stuff and it plays an important role in the things we do, the products we buy, and our perception of who we are.
User Investment: Make Your Users Do the Work
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products