How to create a habit-forming product that drives user retention

What is it:

Yestr connects you with your sibling to answer one question per day to help you explore and unlock old memories together.

Maker Inspiration:

Learning just how powerful Bubble really is. I feel like I fully understand the platform and how I could build just about anything. The possibilities are endless!

Where to get more about Jeff's experience building Yestr: https://bubble.io/blog/bubble-app-yestr/

What did I learn?

Bubble can do just about anything. If you had told me this was a no-code app with Bubble before I knew about no-code I would have never believed you. Very smooth onboarding experience.

1. Let's talk ACTIVATION: Great app concept and the thing I would recommend is getting the user to experience value as fast as possible. When onboarding, before I could use the app I needed to link with a sibling. This would create a big delay in experiencing the value and ultimately a let down. This could easily be remedied. When a user first enters, allow them to pick a memory that they most love about that they experienced with their family. Allow them to write about it in a short amount of words describing it asking a question for the other family member to answer. Then integrate with email or allow the user to copy a link that serves as the invite to experience that memory which essentially onboards your next user to the platform. Now you have accomplished two things. The user is excited because they have just written down their favorite memory, and done a little bit of work so they will want to get the reward, they then send it to the second user. Now the user has an incentive to join because there is already something waiting for them. there is a reward for going through and signing up for another app.

The way I like to think about it is the principle B=MAT by BJ Fogg. Behavior change (second user going through the work to sign up for something new) = will only happen if M (motivation) of the second user is high enough * A (Access) by sending a sign up link its easy to have access * T (Trigger) the email or text link sent by user one. The more motivation both sides have, the easier it is to send the invite code, the easier it is to receive the invite code will all help to increase the chances that the users experience immediate value and then are activated. The image of this concept really helps illustrate the point: https://instapage.com/blog/bj-fogg-behavior-model

2. Product Experience - It's really impressive what Jeff has created in Bubble once you are able to activate. Bubble has a really smooth chat like experience that is near instant communication. I tested the experience on desktop and mobile. What's helpful to see is how he created the chat and ability to react to messages within the experience just like you would on a social media app If you are looking to implement a chat like experience this would be a good product to model off of.

3. Notifications integration - Another aspect that I thought was well done, is the product prompts you to answer a question first before you can see the other persons response. It worked like this. I answered a question about a vacation experience. Once I submitted it, Bubble sent a notification to the other user to let them know that it was answered, prompting them to answer a question to be able to see the response. I received the notification via email. That was really well done because the email was sent immediately. I could also elect to receive web browser notifications when logged in my desktop. To implement this Jeff provided some insights: "I used a service called OneSignal which has a Bubble plugin. Here is a link that talks about the integration: https://onesignal.com/blog/onesignal-notifications-seamlessly-integrate-with-bubble-io/

I will say there seemed to be one kind of confusing or tricky part to getting it working. It took some trial and error but I really like the addition of those browser push notifications as opposed to relying solely on email."

Overall, this product demonstrates a purpose of tech. to facilitate and reduce friction in real world events. Really well done here with the entire experience.