Make Thy Service Sticky
September 19, 2007 – 16:18There’s a baby inside each adult. And every baby likes to play games.
How this matters to a startup? Well, if you give a potential user a toy – he’ll stick to it. And if playing games with this toy would also do something useful to him (e.g. pay his checks or do his job 
he’ll even pay you.
Just came across wonderful post “Using Psychology to Create a Killer Sticky Website” by Laura Alter (via Chytach via Hackers News). She describes it in much more details and gives a bunch of references for further reading.
Just an excerpt from her post so you’ll have the idea:
By developing concepts around these 5 components, you can shape the way your site/app is used.
- Collecting things.
- Earning Points.
- Getting/giving feedback.
- Exchanges/Gifting.
- User Customization.
How many sites do you know that incorporate these features? The ones that do are pretty darn sticky. Ebay, MySpace, Facebook, etc. That’s not to say that any app with these 5 things will work – it’s far more complex than that – but it does mean that these features matter.Now, back to my own startup to implement new features, while you’re just reading
