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This is Part 1 in our series on the three main principles of user engagement we use to help clients reach their business and UX goals. Read Part 2.
For an overview of our general approach to the topic, watch my video conversation with our lead product strategist, Alicia Fremling.
How Do You Boost User Engagement?
The not-so-secret trick to improving user engagement is this: give people what they want, when they want it.
That sounds like common sense. But we've come across plenty of product teams who've lost their way in a dense fog of competing business priorities and urgent feature requests. If that sounds familiar, this post is for you.
What Does It Mean to Focus on Users' Top Priority?
When the word "priority" came into the English language in the 1400s, it was singular. It referred to the one thing that came first before all others. It wasn't until 500 years later that we started talking about "priorities" as a plural concept. Now, everything feels like a priority, which often means that nothing is a priority.
Most users have a maximum of about three key tasks they consistently want any single product or service to help them accomplish. The problem is, most products and services try to do way more than that.
Why? Because the product team either hasn't identified, or has lost sight of, the things that are most important to their users. They've expanded too far beyond the core job that users "hired" the product to do in the first place.
Why Do Products Lose Sight of Their Core Purpose?
The longer a product is around, the more likely it is to become a hodgepodge of feature requests from all parts of the business.
Over time, those added features can:
- Water down the core purpose of the product
- Turn it into a copy of whatever the competition is doing
- Distract from the original goal
- Block you from seeing real opportunities for innovation
Sound familiar? This is exactly where Jobs-To-Be-Done thinking comes in.
What Is Jobs-To-Be-Done and Why Does It Matter for Engagement?
Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) is a framework for understanding what users are actually trying to accomplish when they use your product. Instead of focusing on features or personas, you focus on the job the user "hired" your product to do.
When you look at your product through a JTBD lens, you lock in on the core needs of your users that will never go away. That gives you permission to look past status quo techniques or fleeting fads and respond to your current environment instead.
The result? People will want to use your product for one simple reason: it works better than the rest.
How Does the Fosbury Flop Illustrate Jobs-To-Be-Done?
Take the story of how one man changed the Olympic high jump forever.
Dick Fosbury, a 21-year-old civil engineering student from Oregon, won a gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City games by thinking outside the box.
Dick was initially trained in the traditional techniques of the time. Jumpers would go over the bar with a scissor kick, straddle, or sideways roll so they could land on their feet and avoid injury in the sand or sawdust landing pits. But Dick wasn't very good at those techniques.
So he put his engineering skills to work and focused on what his body naturally wanted to do as he approached the bar. He learned that by jumping backward and arching his back, he could mechanically get over the bar more efficiently and clear greater heights.
The new technique looked weird. People dismissed it as a strange curiosity. But when Dick walked away with the gold medal after setting an Olympic record, the "Fosbury Flop" became all the rage. It's still the dominant high jump technique to this day. Talk about user engagement.
How Did Fosbury Find a Fresh Perspective and Innovate?
Dick found success by:
- Focusing on the core job to be done
- Blocking out popular opinion
- Finding a new and better way
But his approach also relied on one more key factor: changes in the environment. As foam pits and landing mats were introduced, it became practical to experiment with new approaches that made it possible for jumpers to land on their back without injury.
Your product environment is always changing too. New technology, new user behaviors, new competitive pressures. When you stay anchored to the core job your users need done, you can adapt to that environment and deliver extraordinary results instead of just chasing the next feature request.
FAQ
What is the fastest way to boost user engagement? Start by identifying the two or three core tasks your users consistently want your product to help them accomplish. Everything else is secondary. Engagement improves when users can do those core jobs quickly, easily, and reliably.
What is Jobs-To-Be-Done in product design? Jobs-To-Be-Done is a framework that focuses on the underlying goal a user is trying to achieve, rather than the features of a product. The idea is that users "hire" a product to do a specific job. When the product does that job well, engagement follows naturally.
Why do users stop engaging with a product? Usually because the product has drifted too far from what they actually need. Feature bloat, confusing navigation, and misaligned priorities all push users away. When a product stops feeling useful for the thing they came to do, they stop showing up.
How do I know what jobs my users are hiring my product to do? User research. That means talking to your users, watching how they actually use your product, and looking at behavioral data. A structured Jobs-To-Be-Done research process can surface the core needs that users themselves might not even be able to articulate.
How is Jobs-To-Be-Done different from building features users ask for? Feature requests tell you what users think they want. JTBD digs into why they want it and what underlying need they're trying to meet. That distinction matters because the best solution to a user's core job is sometimes nothing like the feature they asked for.
Need help figuring out your users' core needs and jobs to be done? We have proven methods and techniques that will help you discover them. Start a conversation and see how we can help.
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