Consumer product 101: triggers, mechanics, frequency, value, sessions, and habits

Impact = value x frequency

A consumer’s journey with a product can be broken out into a series of sessions. Each session creates some amount of value for the consumer. Even for great products, not all sessions are created equal.

• High-value, low-frequency products: An Airbnb session may only happen a few times per year, but each one creates enormous value for the user.
• Low-value, high-frequency products: A TikTok session may happen every day, with relatively little value created per session, but the accumulated value created over a user-year is huge.
• And then there are products in between like Pinterest. They tend to be WAU products. Medium value, medium frequency.

In order to have a huge impact on consumers, you need the product of value-per-session and frequency of sessions to be very high.

Mechanics

A session consists of a user engaging in some kind of behavior with your product. The throughlines of that behavior across sessions are the product’s mechanics. If a product has lots of mechanics or very complicated ones, it is unlikely to be used. Users will get frustrated and quit out. Or they won’t remember what your app is for. Or they won’t trust it to reliably create value for them.

While not exhaustive of all great consumer products, one useful way to think about building product mechanics is the 1/9/90 rule. The 1/9/90 rule is a characterization of online UGC platforms that claims 90% of usage is passive consumption, 9% is light interactivity like comments, and 1% is creation. The core takeaway from it is that expecting high degrees of interactivity as part of your core mechanic is very expensive.

Triggers

Every session starts with a trigger in the user’s life that makes them intuitively reach for your product. The most common trigger is what we call “idle moments”: basically a few free moments you have in one of the many in-between moments of life, whether it be on the toilet or the bus or procrastinating at work. Many of the great consumer internet products are triggered by idle moments, such as TikTok, Pinterest, and Instagram.

There are many kinds of other triggers, though. Uber’s trigger is needing to get somewhere and lacking other suitable transportation. One of YouTube’s main ones is a desire for background entertainment while using a desktop and doing other work. One of Spotify’s main ones is a desire for background entertainment while on the go.

There are niche triggers too, like planning a trip, deciding what to eat for dinner, or picking a movie for a Friday night.

One last interesting trigger I’ll mention is logging. Products like Beli, Strava, and Letterboxd have discovered that a subset of consumers love logging different parts of their day. Strava is triggered by a user going for a run. Letterboxd is triggered by a user watching a movie.

Every product theory needs to start with a trigger theory.

Habits

A user builds a habit with your product if it becomes intuitive for them to reach for your product when a trigger occurs.

Building a habit becomes harder the less frequent the trigger is, as people are liable to forget about products they don’t use very often. This is one of the reasons why travel companies spend huge budgets on marketing each year to remind you they exist.

Building a habit also becomes harder if there are many products competing for a user’s attention. If you want to win over some portion of a user’s idle moments, you are competing with TikTok, a fearsome foe.

Finally, building a habit also becomes harder if your app’s core mechanic(s) are too numerous or too complicated. Extremely sticky consumer products tend to have a single predominant mechanic.