A Guide to “Aha!” Moment
The Aha Moment is the exact point in time when a user understands the value proposition of your product
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What is The Aha Moment?
The Aha Moment is the exact point in time when a user understands the value proposition of a product or service.
When users come to understand something they previously didn’t recognize or know, they have a moment of epiphany, referred to interchangeably as the aha moment or eureka effect.
For an indicator to qualify as an Aha! moment, it must properly represent the tipping point for the majority of your users. This means that both:
Most users who took the action(s) retained AND Most users that retained took the action(s)
For Uber, it’s finding a ride within minutes. When Uber users first download the app, they first realized the convenience and value of the app when they hail their first rideshare.
For Zoom, it’s setting up, scheduling, and holding your first video meeting. Before the first call, a user is unable to experience what makes Zoom different from other web conferencing tools.
For Slack, it’s exchanging up to 2,000 messages with your team members. By the point of sending 2,000 messages in Slack, a user has fully realized the value of using the internal messaging application.
Why is the "aha!" moment so important?
Users will only continue to invest in a product if they find it useful. We all have a limited attention span and within this period, your product must deliver value to the user. People want quick results and refuse to waste time looking for what should be obvious in a product.
Since there are several options available to solve the same problems, your product needs to prove its value quickly after sign-up, before new users move on to the next option.
That's why focusing on user onboarding is of the utmost importance. You must onboard users in a delightful way to show them how successful they can be with your product. Then, you should continue to provide increased value to give users a reason to come back.
How to identify your aha moment
Now it’s time to get into the good stuff – identifying your aha moment.
One of the things we need to question is, are there ways to make innovation easier and occur more frequently?
Is there a way to take those aha moments that seem to happen randomly to have them intentionally?
Yes, there is!
1) Gathering data to work on
You can’t magically come up with your Aha moment. You need to work and find it. But first, you need to know where to look for it.
Start by digging into the analytics tools you use, and put all the data related to the user journey on the product. This won’t be easy if you are not collecting valuable data already, and if you don’t have it yet, set up product analytics.
If you are ready to go with the hard data I asked you to get, then let me tell you what to look for.
a ) Find out what retaining customers did in common
You are most likely to find your Aha moment during this step.
Go through the journeys of tens of users to see what they did in common during their initial experience with your product. You are looking for the points where your users were activated. One of these moments are going to be your Aha moment you just need a map of the journey of customers who liked your product
b) Find out what churned users didn’t do
Now that you have what the paying customers did in common, you have to repeat the same process for churned users. Avoid considering users who have used your product for a long time and then churned, the churn I talk about here must be in the first weeks, maybe even the first days.
Just go through the journeys of various churned users to establish a user journey for them. Now, compare it to the journey you have prepared in the previous step. You can go ahead and underline the moments that are present in successful customers and don’t exist for the churned users.
c) User feedback and usability testing – see what users have to say
Now hard data is important and reliable.
But getting the data straight from a user is usually more precise. So why not include it in your research?
There are 2 ways to do so:
User Feedback: to collect feedback that can pinpoint to the Aha moment, you can just ask for it. Send out a survey to your existing users and ask: “At what moment did you understand and embrace the value of our product?”. Not all users will be aware of experiencing their Aha moments, but the answers from the ones who do will be valuable.
Usability Testing: conducting usability testing with a few numbers of users will be sufficient for you to get a grasp of the possible Aha moments. Observe the user as they use their product for the first time and look out for changes in their emotions and the content of their comments. Take a note of the moments where they say stuff like “Now I understand”, “OH!”, “Aha!”, etc.
Usability testing is also helpful for finding the pain points of users, which can harm their path to the Aha moments if they come before it.
If you’ve gone through all the 3 steps successfully, you have an accurate list of Aha moment candidates. Let’s take action:
2) Come up with multiple aha moments
Remember the list we’ve created?
It’s time for you to gather your product team and go over the moments that could be the Aha moment of your business.
do not look for just one moment, if the list does not consist of only 1 moment already. You need to have a backup moment in case the first one you try doesn’t work!
There are 2 questions to ask to find the right ones:
Which of these moments could affect the users most?
Which of these moments is the easiest to push new users to?
I want you to think about this for a long period and thoroughly and select 2-3 moments that could be it.
3) Test it in your user onboarding
And here comes the final step. Testing what you have gathered.
What you need to do here is to create different user onboarding experiences for each Aha moment you’ll test that push users to that moment using interactive guides, in-app messages, and user onboarding checklists.
An "aha!" moment example from Trello
Trello is a project management platform whose value proposition is to enable users to quickly organize and prioritize everyday projects. Upon landing on their app, Trello helps users quickly grasp their core value with a templated example Welcome Board.
Trello uses the Welcome Board to quickly showcase how the product works by encouraging the user to interact with it. They recognized that the true value is gained when a user is able to add tasks and move them across lists. So the first item on the “Stuff to try” list is to drag a card to the “Tried It” list. In doing so, the user quickly understands how easy it is to organize their projects – part of Trello’s core value.
Trello is a great example of how you can use your own product to onboard new users, and guide your users quickly to discover your product's value.
Aha Moment Strategies
Although not all users are likely to have the aha moment you expect, use these strategies to ensure users gain a clear understanding of how your product is improving their lives.
Think of them as engagement strategies dedicated entirely to the core feature.
As more users reach their aha moment, they will spread the word about your app, leading to organic referrals and word-of-mouth growth.
1) Clarify the Value Proposition
Although the value proposition may appear a small and minor detail, it should have the most impact per word.
When a potential user arrives at your home page, app store listing, or physical location, it should be immediately clear what product or service you offer. It could be an ambitious mission statement or the core feature of your product, but either way, make it clear.
Respect the power of a succinct product description and clear imagery. The combination of a clear and concise value proposition with supporting imagery can bring the “time to aha” down to record-breaking speed.
2) Set The Stage With Supporting Materials
One thing that can actually prolong or even prevent an aha moment is a complicated onboarding process. Overwhelmed users might exit the onboarding flow and possibly the product entirely.
Instead of educating new users on every nuance, focus on the product’s core functionality and make sure it’s clear.
Evernote does a good job of this by guiding new users through the process of creating their first note, which is their core feature. Evernote also does this well by including an onboarding checklist for users to “use Evernote like a pro.” The checklist also provides instructions for each step of the way, including how to install their useful browser extension.
3) Give Hints, Not Homework
Providing new users with hints of the fastest route to their aha moment can be useful, but they should not complicate the situation further. The first hint is the most important because users will decide whether to receive more hints or to exit the onboarding process to learn on their own
When using tooltips and informative hints within your onboarding strategy, set expectations by outlining the number of hints and including a progress bar. Many users will opt-out of these tooltips which is another reason to make product education as clear and intuitive as possible.
If the tooltips feel forced or unnecessary, users will abandon onboarding entirely. This segues into our next strategy, dealing with new users who immediately become inactive.
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What do you think about aha! moment for ecommerce? They usually sell physical products and is difficult to track what they use it.