My brother hasn’t always been the biggest iPhone fan. Don’t get me wrong, he has always believed the iPhone was a great product, but at the price point the average iPhone is pushed at, compared to other Android alternatives on the market, he felt the whole iPhone rave was just hype. In fact I can clearly remember him saying on various occasions that the only thing the iPhone has is a great camera.
Then the unfathomable happened; he got an iPhone. With the way my brother has fallen in love with his new device, I am not sure hell like to use any other non-Apple smartphone again.
The iPhone is popularly referred to as a status symbol and it is, as a girl, carrying an iPhone is one of the easiest ways to ward off all those unserious guys who don’t have any real money to put on the table. But more than that, the iPhone is a clear example of the power of a superior user experience — the iPhone (both software and hardware) is so well designed that I have — no Joke — never met anyone who has once used an iPhone that desires to switch back to an Android device.
Your User Experience is a core part of your competitive moat as a business.
User Experience as a Competitive Advantage
All human beings love ease. The reason we have all unanimously agreed as human beings to adopt cars and trains as an acceptable source of land transportation as against horses or trekking is primarily because of a better user experience. Our early ancestors lived in caves, but considering the fact that sitting down on the sofa in an air conditioned apartment with a 65 inch OLED TV, sipping a bottle of fine wine is a much better experience, it takes a healthy dose of insanity for a human being in our present dispensation to want to live in a cave.
The better the user experience of your product is, the more likely people are to come back to use it again. Your user experience is your competitive moat.
I don’t know about you, but any mobile application, website, or platform that mentally stresses me, and requires a good number of hopping around before I can find the ideal solution to the problem I came to that platform to solve, will not have my full loyalty and will only live on my phone or dwell in my browser till I can find a better alternative.
Stickiness
The true sign of a great product is stickiness — the tendency for users to not just use your product once, but to use it again and go ahead to even refer it to others for free. A sticky product will usually have hockey stick trajectory product growth and adoption compared to usually flat marketing costs. In other words, if your product is a sticky product (whether a mobile app, an ecommerce site etc.), chances are, you will spend less money or a stable amount of money on product marketing when compared to product growth and adoption. In clearer terms, product growth will be way more than marketing spend (which is a good thing).
The goal of every ideal product is to create some degree of stickiness. The ideal scenario is that as your product becomes sticky, the less money (and time) you will spend on both marketing and worrying about what your competition is up to.
All sticky products are products with a phenomenal user experience that keeps users consistently referring to your product as the base point and the most preferred way to solve a specific market friction they face.
How to Build a Sticky Product
The most practical way to build a sticky product is to build a solution and smear it with super glue, but since that will (clearly) not work; there are four key metrics to measure and monitor when building sticky products and solutions:
Discoverability
One of the games I enjoyed as a kid was hide and seek. It was always fun when I was the one people were searching for, however, when the tables eventually flipped (and they did), and I became the one going around looking for people, the game didn’t really feel all that fun anymore.
One of the most important things you must consider while building your product and solution is ease of discoverability [sic]. How easy is it for the average user or visitor to find what they’re looking for in your product? Are there clear (and short) roadmaps leading to the discovery of certain features and parts of your site, or is your website and/or product a never ending maze leading to nowhere.
The easier it is for users to discover what they’re looking for in your product, the better it is for them.
Click to Goal Ratio
The longer the click to goal ratio of your product, the more uncomfortable (and less sticky) your user experience is. Amazon pioneered the one click buy now button on their ecommerce site as a way to reduce and shorten their customer journey steps from intent to purchase, and consequently reduce their click to goal ratio.
Your goal with all product development is to reduce as much as possible the number of clicks a user has to take to get to the specific product feature they intend to interact with. The lesser those clicks, the better your user experience.
Loading Speeds
Another key thing to consider is loading speeds. If your product is a website, the weight of your site if not properly optimized will have a large effect on how quickly it takes to load your site, and switch from page to page.
Ideally you don’t want to be the product that burns users data and loads slowly. You may want to properly optimize your site to make it lighter, easier and quicker to load.
Today, the world is addicted to speed; fast cars, fast internet, fast food, even fast and furious, you definitely don’t want to be the product or site trying to teach people patience.
Brand and Design Consistency
Embracing brand and design consistency is key to building an exceptional and sticky product. What colors best resonate with the brand and image you’re trying to portray of your product?
You shouldnt ignore these things, because different colors speak different things to different people, and also achieve different goals.
Red is an attractive color that speaks its own language, a good number of premium products will usually come in some degree of black, and white as a color signifies peace and approachability. Your goal should be to use the right colors, designs, and fonts that best depict the image you want your brand to convey, and to consistently stick to that image.
Conclusion
Building an exceptional and sticky solution that keeps users glued to your product, always coming back, and turning them into unpaid marketers is never a product or function of luck, but the deliberate effect of removing all the inhibitions to an exceptional product experience, and building a product and/or solution that resonates strongly with your users.
