How Pinterest and Alarmy Attract Users
Exploring Pinterest and Alarmy through the Hook Model
The Hook Model
The Hook Model was created by Nir Eyal after researching habit-forming products and identifying their commonalities. The model's structure consists of 계기 → 행동 → 보상 → 투자 and is a design pattern that continuously encourages voluntary engagement to connect users' pain points with the product designer's solutions.
A brief explanation of the structure is as follows.
Trigger
The actuator that sets a behavior in motion.
It is divided into internal and external triggers; you start with external triggers and eventually need to create internal triggers.
Action
The behavior done in anticipation of a reward, or to relieve desire (stress).
Reward (Variable Reward)
The Hook Model specifically refers to variable rewards.
ex) Different kinds of food appearing every time you open the fridge door.
Investment
Actions that improve the level of service a user will experience.
By investing their own resources into the product, users increase the likelihood of returning to it.
3 Advantages of the Hook Model
Low reliance on ads
You can drive repeat purchases and voluntary engagement from users
without depending on advertising.Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Because the product becomes a user habit, the duration and frequency of use for a specific product increase, which drives up customer lifetime value.
(Customer Lifetime Value means the total amount of money you can expect to earn from a single customer. You can easily understand this concept if you consider that credit cards have one of the highest CLVs of any product.)Flexible pricing.
Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, discovered that when a product becomes part of everyday life, customers grow increasingly dependent on it and become far less sensitive to its price. Products applying the Hook Model naturally integrate into user habits, allowing for flexible pricing strategies.
For more on pricing methods, check out the link below.
App Subscription Pricing 101
The Hook Model Applied in Pinterest
So, what products use the Hook Model well? Knowing the method is one thing, but applying it effectively is another story. Pinterest effectively uses the 4 steps of the Hook Model,
"계기 → 행동 → 보상 → 투자" to attract users.
Trigger
Boredom
Action
Continuously scrolling the screen to find a reward (the desired image).
Reward
Providing Variable Rewards
It adds variability by serving desired images through the act of scrolling. Users end up scrolling until an image they want appears.
The last row of the image list is intentionally partially cut off to encourage scrolling.
Providing Rewards of the Tribe
It provides a means of communication with others so users can earn rewards of the tribe.
Rewards of the tribe literally mean rewards gained through the "tribe," signifying a sense of belonging and the satisfaction derived from interacting with others.
ex) Image likes, follows, and messaging features.
Investment
Users invest their time in the product by saving or uploading images. As users repeat these investment activities, the site is optimized and improved to fit their tastes based on data. Consequently, users get a better experience the next time they use the product.
Setting up External Triggers
The communication features Pinterest provides offer not just rewards but also a trigger for the next use. After a user uploads or saves an image, other users' reactions will trigger a notification, and the notified user will return to the product to receive tribal rewards.
Applying the Hook Model to Our Product
Now that we've looked at a product that does this well, it's time to examine our own.
How is our product utilizing the Hook Model? Nir Eyal's book Hooked provides a checklist to evaluate whether the model is applied. Using this, we checked how well Alarmy is utilizing the Hook Model.
What do users really want? What user pain will your product alleviate? (Internal Trigger)
What users want : To wake up dependably.
The user pain Alarmy will alleviate : The pain of turning off the alarm, falling back asleep, and failing to wake up at the desired time.
Alarmy provides various missions and features to ensure users can turn off the alarm and wake up completely. Among these, the "Wake Up Check" feature, which can be used alongside a mission, verifies whether the user has fallen back asleep, thus preventing them from snoozing off again.
What makes users seek out your service? (External Trigger)
The alarm ringing at the set time.
What is the simplest action users take in anticipation of a reward, and how can you simplify your product to make this easier? (Action)
User action :
Setting an alarm before bed. The specific process is as follows:
"알람리스트 → 하단의 + 버튼으로 알람 생성 → 알람에디터에서 세부 설정 → 저장"Making it quick and easy for users to save their desired specific settings in the alarm editor. Recently, Alarmy has been actively improving and experimenting with the alarm editor to make this possible. For instance, we improved the alarm editor to guide users on which missions are widely used, making it easier to select a mission, which resulted in a 5.6% increase in mission usage.
Are users satisfied with the reward you provide, or are they left wanting more? (Variable Reward)
Alarmy boasts the highest ratings among top alarm apps on both the Play Store and App Store. However, we believe we can further increase user satisfaction by providing an even better experience. That's why the Alarmy team dedicates time every week to review user feedback one by one. Through this process, we identify what improvements users want and refine our product accordingly.
What "bit of work" do users put into your product? Does it load the next trigger? And what is the stored value that makes your product better the more it is used? (Investment)
The work put into Alarmy : Creating an alarm for the time they want to wake up.
The next trigger loaded by the investment : Users naturally use the product because they have to turn off the alarm they previously created. In a way, Alarmy inherently contains the next trigger without any separate design efforts.
The stored value that makes Alarmy a better product with more use :
Every time a user uses an alarm, their wake-up time is logged in "Alarm History," allowing them to check their wake-up records after getting out of bed. These logs can be exceptionally handy for the trendy "Miracle Morning" routines. This feature will be improved in the future to encourage even more active utilization.
Additionally, the Alarmy team continually improves the product based on the accumulated usage data of users' alarms to help users have a more successful morning.
Becoming a Better Product for Users
The biggest advantage of the Hook Model is that it can naturally blend into a user's life. But if you look at it from the user's perspective, this can also be seen as a major drawback. Social media products are a prime example. Users often experience situations where they don't want to use the product but feel compelled to anyway. The iPhone tried to help with this through its Screen Time feature, but the problem still seems to persist.
If you've examined your product using the checklist, you've likely realized what's well-implemented and what needs further improvement.
I hope your product leverages the Hook Model well to become something that positively contributes to users' habits, rather than fueling uncontrollable addiction.
Want to learn more about how we improve our product? 👀
The Formula That Helped Alarmy Guide User Behavior (feat. HCI)
Alarmy's A/B Testing Log #1
Curious about the Alarmy team? 👀
Go take a peek at the Alarmy team