How to Find an Aha Moment for a Product
Most of the fastest-growing companies share one common thing among themselves. Regardless of the product they make, customers they serve, and the business model they follow they all have a product that most of their existing customers love and consider a must-have for fulfilling their needs.
The must-have characteristic of a product does not guarantee success but it sure is the base requirements for any product to carry out the growth marketing tactics for its rapid growth. So pouring money into marketing and advertising without determining the must-have characteristic that makes users fall in love with your product results in wastage of important resources.
Some of the examples of the product that were well designed as well as critically acclaimed but didn’t have that must-have characteristic so failed are
· Google Glass
Google Glass is a smart glass that users can use to operate their smartphone hands-free, letting users access mobile internet browsers, cameras, maps, calendars, and other apps by voice commands.
Google Glass failed miserably because the creators didn’t think it is important enough to determine the must-have characteristics.
· Microsoft Zune
Microsoft Zune is a media player that was launched in competition to Apple iPods in 2006 and if many critics are to be believed it was way better than iPods at that time.
Zune failed miserably as it couldn’t find the reason why existing users loved it and why it’s a must-have to make it stand apart from Apple iPods.
As the growth team at Airbnb says “Love creates growth, not the other way around”. And for your product to be loved it must have an ‘Aha moment’.
What is AHA Moment?
The moment when the utility of the product clicks in for the user or when the user really gets what the product is for, why they need it, and what benefits they derive from using it.
In other words “aha moment” is the moment when a user feels that the product is a must-have for them.
This “aha moment” is what turns early users of the product into power users and loyal advocates for the product.
Aha Moment for Uber
You push a button and a black car arrives at your door in under 8 minutes
Aha Moment for Facebook
Instantly seeing photos and updates from friends and family and sharing what you were up to.
An Aha experience is a necessary ingredient for the sustainable growth of any product as it is simply too remarkable not to value and to share.
The question that might arise here for some of the readers is does the “aha moment” work only for Mobile Apps?
The answer is NO,
It can be used for any products in any industry as long as you have a data collection mechanism to find your user’s behaviors and then leverage it to find the feature or experience that delivers the ‘aha moment”. Sometimes there might be a good chance that your product is not yet delivering the aha moment but there can be one feature if further developed can achieve it. So you should work on further improving that feature until the “aha moment” is delivered.
Often users have to use a product a certain number of times before they can experience the “aha moment” of the product or should use a specific feature that delivers the full aha experience. The job of the product developer here is to develop the product in such a way that the user experiences the “aha moment” in the least amount of time possible.
I hope you have understood what aha moment is, so now let us come to our most important question of how to find the “aha moment” for my product?
How to find the “aha moment” for a product?
Identifying products “aha moment” is tricky as it depends on the user behavior data and if the right data is not tracked or the data received is not accurate then there is a good chance you won’t be able to find that “aha moment” or worse you will find a wrong “aha moment”.
An important step in determining the aha potential of your product is to seek out a truly loyal existing customer base and then to find out a similar pattern in their usage of the product that made them experience the aha moment that the not so loyal existing customers have not experienced yet.
Sometimes it will surface a pattern like Twitter found out from this experiment that their loyal user base was following at least 30 people to experience the aha potential of the product that the other not-so-loyal users weren’t. So they tweaked the steps after the signup page to help the user quickly find that 30 users or celebrities to follow based on the interest they have selected.
Also, Sometimes this experiment will guide you towards further product development required in the product. The important thing to remember here is that discovering how to make a product deliver an aha moment is difficult than determining whether your product meets the baseline requirements.
So the two-part survey designed by Sean Ellis founder of growthhackers.com to determine whether a product fulfills the baseline requirements for a product to deliver the “aha moment” can be referred below
Find Aha Moment Survey Part-1
Q.1 How disappointed would you be if this product no longer existed tomorrow?
a) Very Disappointed
b) Somewhat Disappointed
c) Not Disappointed (it really isn’t that useful)
d) N/A — I no longer use it
How to interpret the results to the above question
· If 40% or more of responses are very disappointed then the product has achieved the must-have potential. In other words, your product is delivering the aha experience.
· If 25%-40% of the respondents answer very disappointed then often what’s needed is some tweaks to the product or the language used to describe it and how to use it.
· If less than 25% of respondents answer very disappointed, it’s likely either the audience you have attracted might be wrong or your product needs substantial development
If you need a more clear answer to the above response then the second part of the survey is for that
Find Aha Moment Survey Part-2
Q.2 What would you likely use as an alternative to [name of product] if it were no longer available?
a) I probably wouldn’t use an alternative
b) I would Use ______________________
This question will help you find your chief competition for that customer and often point towards features or an aspect of the product that leads them to prefer those in comparison to others. This feedback can be used to know about the features you should be adding, refining, touting, or making more prominent in order to win more such customers.
Q.3 What is the primary benefit that you have received from [name of product]?
The feedback to the above question will help you find the feature you should add to deliver these benefits or if you already do have that feature then it will guide you to experimenting with the marketing message that will better communicate it.
Q.4 Have you recommended [name of product] to anyone?
a) No
b) Yes (Please explain how you described it)
The feedback to this question will help the marketing team to gauge whether the product has the word of mouth marketing potential and if so what can you do to make the most of it. Most importantly the answer to this feedback will help you unearth the language, benefits, and features customers use to describe your product, and then the same can be used in your own marketing message.
Q.5 What type of person do you think would benefit most from [name of product]
The answer to this feedback can help the marketing team with a better-defined customer niche to target with your product promotions.
Q.6 How can we improve to better meet your needs?
The feedback can help you find the glaring issues with the product that has resulted in customers yet to achieve broad adoption and an opportunity to enhance the product that the company might not have thought of on its own
Q.7 Would it be okay if we followed up by email/call to request a clarification to one or more of your responses?
The important thing to remember here is that not all of the customers you have shared the survey with will respond. So it would be beneficial if you entice them to respond to this survey with a reward that suits your product’s application.
Whom to Survey to find the products aha moment?
You might be well aware that the larger the user base on which you conduct the survey the more reliable and informative the results will be. If you do not have a large enough user base to conduct the survey on then you should rely more on customer interviews instead because a small survey response number can lead to false signals.
Important Note: The survey should be carried out individually for each product by a business and not a combination of multiple products by the same business.
Also, targeting only the present customers would be a good idea as the customer who has already stopped using your product might not be able to give you useful information if they respond at all. The common answers to those who have stopped using your product would be that they did not benefit from your product at all and have not recommended it to anyone.
Who should find the products aha moment?
The product or business that is yet to see massive growth in comparison to the competitors should only conduct this survey. If you are already an established player in the market it would not be a good idea to ask your customers, how they would feel if your product was no longer available. It would create unnecessary panic among your customers.
Imagine Instagram asking its users how they would feel if their product was no longer available from tomorrow?
Conclusion on Finding Aha Moment for Product
If your products pass the survey, it is a clear indication that a significant number of customers have experienced the aha moment. Finding a similarity among the customer who has experienced this “aha moment” and which particular feature or benefit led to this is the job of a marketing or growth team.
If your product doesn’t pass the survey then the next thing to do is stop the guesswork of the elusive features that you think make your product more appealing to your customers. It is essential that you instead talk to the customers on a deeper level than achieved through the above survey to understand what the true objections and barriers are to your product growth.
In most cases, the addition of features might seem the most obvious way to improving the product but it isn’t as adding more features only creates more confusion related to your product’s use. Focus on removing the feature instead of adding it as this is the sure-shot way to improve.
All of this experimentation and analysis should be focused on discovering the “aha moment” you are offering with your product and once you have found the aha moment your focus should be on making more customers experience that aha moment as fast as possible.
The article is developed in reference from a book Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
Do buy the book and learn how to implement Growth Hacking methods for a breakout growth of your products just like Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb, Pinterest, and many more did.
