The ‘Hook Framework’ for Product Management — GooglePay Example
I recently came across the ‘Hook Framework’ conceptualized by Nir Eyal .
It is an interesting framework that I think will be quite useful for a product manager when building a new product or when improving an existing product. There are a lot of frameworks that we chance upon every day so when reading up on any new framework, I tend to analyse if it has been/could have been used already in an existing product to gauge its effectiveness. While I do understand that teams may not have followed the framework to the ‘T’ but what I am interested is in knowing if the core principles were used.
And regarding the ‘Hook framework’ I believe the principles are already being used by successful products in the market to influence user habit.
To read more on the framework you could hop over here.
Now let us see how we can apply it to the ‘GooglePay’ app. GooglePay is one of the many UPI based payment apps in India. The competition is heavy with incumbents like PayTM, Mobikwik, Phone Pe etc.
However Google seems to have done quite well since launch. Using the Hook framework we can see what they differently to keep their audience ‘Hooked’.
Hook Framework is structured around four primary themes — Trigger (Internal/External), Action,Variable Rewards and Investment).
- Trigger: The first thing that would have been on the product managers mind would be the trigger. Why would any user want to use my App?
I would want to use GooglePay because I want to make a quick payment to my friend using only his mobile number. That is the primary motivator — which is to make easy payments. This is the internal trigger why I would want to use this app. Which I think most companies would do by default. However, this does not make it stand out from the crowd. We need something more. Which is where ‘External Triggers’ come into play.
What GooglePay does differently is on how it uses ‘External Triggers’ to encourage users to use their app more often. For example in case of an upcoming electricity bill, the app notifies the user. It enables the user to know that a bill is pending and that he can quickly pay it using the app. This is an external trigger for using the app. There are other similar external triggers. This particular feature however caught my attention, because this also needs a certain level of user investment. More on that later when we discuss item 4.
2. Action: The next item is the action that the user takes based on these triggers. It is in our case, the act of making a payment. So the focus here should be on making the act as simple and intuitive as possible. GooglePay is perhaps one of the simplest to use payment apps. To achieve this there are other techniques that must be used like usability testing, intuitive UX design etc. But this is still a critical aspect for cultivating a habit around the app. Because without good design no matter what triggers or rewards we may have we can not get our users hooked to the product.
3. Variable Rewards: Now that we have a trigger and an action taken by the user, how do we ensure habits are formed and they have enough incentive to come back to use this app always. This is particularly important given the competition in the market which also offers 1 and 2 above.
So Google has come up with rewarding the user with cashbacks. Cashbacks have existed for a long time but GooglePay sweetens it with a surprise element through virtual scratch cards. You never know how much you get until you scratch the card. What’s more the reward you get varies each time. The anticipation and surprise element makes it interesting.
To make this more interesting they also have a variation of a scratch card that can only be opened at a particular time in the future. So this ensures the app stays in relevance in user's mind even after making the payment.
4. Investment: Now, can we get the user to invest something in the app so that this truly becomes a part of his life. GooglePay did this by rewarding the user to input their bill details as part of the App. For example, the user can input and link his ‘Electricity Consumer Number’ to the app as he would be rewarded with cashbacks every time he made a bill payment.
So I have ensured the user has invested into the app. With this added information, I can provide more meaningful triggers and fulfill users needs. And the cycle continues.
Now, I don’t think the Google Product Managers consciously adopted the Hook Framework but I do think that they have used somewhat similar methods to ensure their users are hooked to their product.
This framework in my opinion is definitely a useful tool for product managers and would provide a means to look at building habits for their customers around their product.
