Mastering User Activation: A Step-by-Step Guide

How do you move activation?

Break it down in to simple steps — setup, aha, and habit:

Here’s what those mean.

• Setup: Users setup the feature so they can use it
• Aha: Users achieve the magic moment
• Habit: Users make the magic moment a habit

Let’s contextualize that with the Facebook example.

• Setup: Upload contacts
• Aha: 1 friend in 7 days
• Habit: 7 friends in 10 days

Activation is then the the measurement of the rate of users the product team can get to these setup, aha, and habit metrics over a certain timeframe.

Activation is Hard!

Activation is one of the hardest things to move in product. Numerous product teams have floundered in moving the metric.

If we could all suddenly just get users to do what we want, we wouldn’t really need activation teams.

There are 3 factors that make activation harder than many other product problems:

1. Your typical constraint is the core product functionality remaining the same
2. Its role in retention means that it has an outsized “Eye of Sauron”
3. As more people use a technique, its effectiveness is diminished; and, most the techniques are not rocket science

That’s why breaking it into steps and moving those steps is generally the preferred approach.

So how do you optimize activation?

Learn through this ultimate deep dive.