Rituals

About a month ago, I attended a lecture presented by one of my running colleagues. The lecture was not about running at all. It was about something called Rituals and it was very interesting so I decided to share me learning with you.

A ritual is defined as a “series of actions that transform from one emotional state to another.”  A ritual is different from both a habit and a routine (which do not change the emotional state of the person)

Researchers identified 5 main rituals for almost any person during the day

1. Preparing for battle - what we do in the morning before going to work, including cleaning, fueling with food, getting intel (reading papers), etc.
2. Sexing up - preparing for a date
3. Social gathering - typically lunch or dinner together. Each person brings something to the table, such as food, or conversation or news.
4. Returning to Camp - coming home after work, slipping to something more comfortable, relaxing
5. Locking down - closing the house, putting the alarm on, covering the kids.

You can see a nice video of how a New Zealand Rugby team war dance of preparing for game ritual at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnimvUMCAk

The interesting thing is that if you have a consumer product which fits into a ritual, it has a better chance to work. If it conflicts with a ritual, it stands a very little chance.

Example: When the provider of Aspirin found out that during closing down, people tend to take a glass of water near the bed it was easy to build a campaign of taking the pill with it. It was much more effective than convincing people to take it in the morning.

One of my business mistakes about my latest product, was to try and convince parents to invest time and writing a story with their kid after going back home. Naturally it conflicts with their need of returning to camp. However, we twisted our message and our product to fit this ritual. Now are tell  parents how to have fun with their kid while they are literally investing almost zero time, the kid is off their neck, and they get quality time - This fits the ritual much better.

Think about it,
Amir

Cursing and annoying users - Who wants them anyway?

Consider this situation - A user writes you a short email saying:

"you mother f....., your system has just crashed. What the hell are you thinking to yourselves? who is the idiot that built this product and where is your support when I need them? Are they out for lunch or something?"

Most people I know will be very annoyed by this users. Some will not even bother to answer. Who wants to have such users? It is clear that they hate us. Why invest time in them besides the minimum?

Now consider another email:

"Dear support,

I love your product very much. Unfortunately, today at 1:00PM your website crashed and I could not save my work which greatly affected my doings. I appreciate very much if you could tell me when you fix it, what was the problem and how you are going to prevent it in the future to allow me to continue my work.

Regards,

Danny"

You love this kind of response, don't you? This is clearly a user that needs you and your product. He reports pretty much accurately of the problem and wishes to continue using the product. You are very likely to answer him in length, apologize. Hey you will probably offer him a compensation.

Why do we tend to like so much the second user and be disgusted with the first one?

The only major difference between these two emails is the attitude of the users. Clearly the first user is very negative while the second user isn't. So, we react to a user's negativity with our own negativity. Is this the right way for a company? YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THAT

Try to think of it from a different angle and put your feelings aside -

• Is it possible that the first user is much more passionate about your product?
• Could it be that he was so immersed in his work that actually his suffer is a great one?
• If the user did not care at all, would he invest any time in sending you email and cursing your mother?

What we should understand is that we got a a great response.We have a user that cares enough to contact us. We should do our best to try understanding this user, his need, and keep him happy.

Do not let your feelings and people's negativity affect the way you are doing business and remember

Complaining users are good ones!

Another good moral from this is to understand that when you are a user of a system, and you wish to report a problem, you better do so in such a way that will not block mentally the other side. If you curse, you are much less likely to get a response - The other party is less likely to understand your emotional state. Therefore, breath, count to 10, and write positively, yet accurately to provoke the positive response you wish for.

Now, I shall finish, but I do not know whether to say a nice good bye or start cursing because I do value my readers :)

Have a great week
Amir

Google and Facebook - a new approach to market research

Everyone knows that market research is a necessary step before launching a new product. Otherwise you are simply guessing whether your market really needs your product or not

Today conducting a research is not that difficult nor very expensive; you do not have to be a professional in performing a survey to identify a go/no go signal. You simply have to follow some basic guidelines such as "do not try to bias the answers to where you want them to be", etc. You can see how much traction Survey Monkey receives to see how mainstream market research has become.

However, when you are building something new, something that your target consumer has never seen before, the questions you are asking are not likely to get the right answer. How can we expect someone to answer something h/she cannot visualize or experiment?

Alternatively, when you are coping with a need that has both physical barriers as well as  psychological ones. If you ask "suppose I take all the physical barriers, will you use my product?" You are likely to get a very positive response (if not, do not build the product!). But even if you do, the survey will not address the psychological barriers, only reality will reveal them.

So what can you do?

• Should you build a product without doing a research?
• Should you do a research with the artificial thinking you are safe?

I suggest a somewhat different approach. You use Google or Facebook. These are platforms that allow you to put an ad and target it to a very segmented target groups.

What you do is:

1. Mock up website that offers your product
2. Apologize in the end of the text for not being ready, or say "coming soon"
3. Put an ad to this product and choose your target market
4. Allocate a small budget that allows you to see in reality if people are clicking your ad. Since a cost per click is on average between 1-3 dollars and 50 people forms a nice sample, this is a very small budget
5. Monitor like a hawk the ad impressions to actual click conversion and time spent on your home page. Now you know if people wish at least to see what you offer. This is a real signal.

You might want that this mock-up website will be under a totally different name than the real one you will build, in order not to harm your brand when you build it

Bottom line,
Try to check reality as much as you can. Checking actual behavior is much better than asking hypothetical questions, and it does not cost that much.

This is probably not what Google and Facebook have in mind, but hey, this is a great use to their platform

Amir