Applying Behavior Design Principles To New Creator Products

This week we look at how behavior design principles can be applied to an onboarding experience - whether for a course or a product - in order to create a deeper sense of engagement and buy in!

Welcome Back!

I can’t believe January is almost over. I’ve had a mix of dread and genuine excitement about this year and all the process-based experiments I’m running. The newsletter, in particular, is on my list of “experiments” in that I’m trying to use the first two months of the year to create a more sustainable format and refine the topics I’m writing about. So this week, I’m gonna talk a little about applying behavior design principles to products (both informational, course-based, and software-based). My sincere hope is you’ll give me a little feedback about this direction as I keep working through the most valuable content that resonates!

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Why Applying Behavior Design to Info Products, Courses, & Software Matters For Creators

In the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to apply behavior design to creator products. I kicked off a chatbot that uses behavioral design to help people launch a newsletter and am leading two hybrid newsletter/ chatbot challenges in my favorite communities (100 Days of No Code & Founderkind).

The challenges of applying behavioral design aren’t unique to these experiences I’ve designed. They’re questions of how you get people to engage and stick with something. And if you’re a creator hoping to monetize, almost every product you launch —whether it’s informational, course-based, or eventually a software product—relies on creating a context people feel committed to.

I’m sure we’ve all been in a community or course kick-off that is so fundamentally magical and connected, that we feel deeply motivated to show up over and over again. Or maybe you’ve logged onto a new product and felt like, wow this is going to really be useful and each interaction feels additive.

I’m curious what principles these experiences have in common, and today I want to focus specifically on the first interaction - the first day of the cohort based class, the onboarding for your info or software product. What are the elements that set an audience member or user up for success? This list, I’m sure, will continue to evolve, but here’s a first stab at onboarding guiding principles.

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Elements of A Behaviorally Designed Onboarding Experience

The Basic Elements

These are the components of your course, app, content onboarding experience that are fundamentally context setting. In many cases, they are informational and uni-directional. You are telling the audience about the program or software you’ve designed, which means it’s not really where the buy in comes from.

☑ Welcome

☑ Goals / Promises (aka How This Will Help You)

☑ Who This Is For

☑ Who Am I (aka Why I’m Qualified)

☑ Expectation Setting (aka How Should Someone Show Up / What Are The Unwritten Rules)

☑ Logistics / Housekeeping

☑ Navigation

Commitment & Motivation Elements

These are the components of your course, app, content onboarding experience that fundamentally create engagement, buy in, and start the path of behavior change for an audience member. In many cases, these components are interactive. You are enabling your audience member to co-create a plan that works for him/her individually. I’ll go into more details below, but here are the questions and ideas that you’re co-creating at the outset.

☑ What are the mindset approaches that will help on this journey?

☑ Why am I here?

☑ Who am I/ Who will I become?

☑ What’s my plan for moving through this experience? (When will I make time, what kind of environment is required, etc.)

☑ What roadblocks do I anticipate?

☑ What are my commitment devices and other support mechanisms that will help me overcome these roadblocks? (aka Reducing Friction)

☑ How can incremental wins be celebrated?

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☑ What are the mindset approaches that will help on this journey?

There’s no way to ask someone to be engaged over the long haul, whether with your course or your product, without making it clear that it will not be a linear journey. A few helpful principles to bring up at the outset include:

• Change takes time and repetition; you may not be fully changed by the end of this program or product

• Failure is an expected part of the growing process

• Failure is also an important opportunity for self-knowledge, compassion, and problem solving

• Celebration is a key part of recognizing the progress you do make, and shouldn’t be skipped

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☑ Why am I here?

It’s easy to consider your own product’s aims and goals as exactly those of your audience member’s. But, more often than not, there’s something driving someone to participate and that something isn’t generic. Having someone define their own goal and their own motivation is a great tool for engagement.

Better yet, if you have a course or a product, how do you keep surfacing this personal goal over time?

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☑ Who am I/ Who will I become?

This helps further ground someone’s motivation. Instead of simply outlining an outcome or goal (which may or may not be easily attained during the course of your program), specify an identity to help ground an audience member in the process of taking small actions over the long run.

For example, if someone enters a weight-loss program to lose 20lbs and plateaus in the middle, it’s helpful to refer back to an identity-based goal, such as being a healthy and fit person to help celebrate an incremental win like choosing not to buy a box of cookies in the supermarket.

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☑ What’s my plan for moving through this experience? (When will I make time, what kind of environment is required, etc.)

This is an opportunity to help someone create a system for engaging with your experience. Most people are overcommitted. If you want them to complete your course, or log onto your product, there’s a higher likelihood they follow through if you discuss when and how this will happen at the outset.

For example, if you are asking people to write every day (like I am doing with the chatbot), it’s helpful to have them outline where and when they’ll be doing so. This is called an implementation plan and it often looks something like: “After I finish my morning coffee, at 8:15am, I will sit down at my desk, close my door, and spend 30 minutes working on my newsletter.”

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☑ What roadblocks do I anticipate?

Helping people anticipate roadblocks not only primes them for understanding that this won’t be a linear journey, it also is a great way to help build in additional supports and structures into your program.

For example, if someone knows that they often get distracted as their roadblock, your course might offer a weekly virtual co-working hour for people to focus. Or, in your software product, you might provide the option to set a reminder or notification after a certain amount of time engaging with your product (aka - still here and ready to continue?).

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☑ What are my commitment devices and other support mechanisms that will help me overcome these roadblocks? (aka Reducing Friction)

This is, of course, a follow up to the previous discussion of roadblocks. When you ask someone to strategize for themselves, you are helping them develop their own problem-solving abilities in a deliberate and probably much more effective way than you ever could.

For example, someone mentions that they would like to write at a specific time, but anticipate that their kids will barge into the room. They might offer to talk to their partner in advance about creating a temporary no-entry time in exchange for taking the kids later in the day. Whatever the specifics might be, creating space for someone to troubleshoot their own roadblocks allows them to see failures and challenges as opportunities and iterations.

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☑ How can incremental wins be celebrated?

Finally, if you’re asking someone to do something hard, something they’ll fail at over and over again, you should also be creating a sense of incremental progress. Simon Sinek, in his book Leaders Eat Last, talks about how dopamine (the pleasure and gratification chemical) is released when you complete a task or goal. The problem is, many people don’t even recognize small milestones of completion, and therefore don’t experience any reward tied to incremental progress. You want to build rewards into the experience both collectively, and on an individual basis.

For example, if this is a community or cohort-based course, you might set aside time at the beginning of each meeting to go over wins. If you are creating a product, you might implement a dose of gamification, whether in the form of streaks and badges, or perhaps something more personal, like a personal email of congratulations on progress. But I also like to ask each person, individually, what will they do to celebrate, because that is key to making sure they stick to the small steps.

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Next time, I hope to include more visual examples but hopefully this newsletter is helpful to those of you creators planning on onboarding audience members into your new experience. If you have any feedback on this direction as my newsletter “experiment” continues, feel free to heart or reply directly in the comments :)

Happy January!

Alina