Fogg Behavior Model

There’s a big difference between making a simple product & making a product simple. - Des Traynor

What Is the BJ Fogg Behavior Model?

The BJ Fogg Behavior Model is the key to unlocking model behavior change and product adoption for new users. Dr. BJ Fogg, behavioral scientist and founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University, created this model to facilitate behavior changes by adopting positive habits and letting go of unfavorable ones. According to the model, three elements are vital to human behavior: 

• Motivation: The desire or willingness to do the new behavior.

• Ability: The ease in doing the new behavior.

• Prompt: The cue or trigger to do the new behavior.

Together, these elements form the BJ Fogg Behavior Model.

---

The 3 Elements of B.J. Fogg’s Behavior Model

Fogg’s behavior model is made up of three elements that predict behavior: motivation, ability, and triggers (also called prompts). We’ll get into each one of these in a lot more detail soon. However, it’s important to understand that, according to Fogg, all these 3 elements need to align in the right way in order to influence someone’s behavior. 

Fogg breaks his behavior chart into a simple formula:

Behavior = motivation x ability x prompts

Motivation

When he talks about motivation, Fogg is referring to the underlying drives that motivate you. He divides motivation into three separate drives: sensation, anticipation, and belonging. These drives can also be described as physical, emotional, and social.

• Sensation represents the physical level of motivation. It’s normal for people to want to participate in things that bring them pleasure and stay away from things that don’t. Games work really effectively here since there are usually built-in risk and reward systems. From a marketing perspective, if you offer consumers incentives to complete their desired behavior, then this increases their motivation.

• Anticipation This is the more emotional element of motivation and relies on feelings such as fear and hope. Hope is one of the strongest motivators since it helps provide a person with a sense of meaning.

  If we think of this in an actionable way, then it would look something like a company offering a product or service that makes consumers feel hopeful that they can achieve their desire or goal by using what you’re offering. Take a 30-day fitness course, for example. By showing your audience they can hope to achieve their goal, suddenly their motivation to sign up increases.

• Belonging represents the social factor in motivation. People naturally want to feel like they belong. By having a community where no one is rejected, they’re more likely to feel motivated to continue engaging with your content. This is why social media marketing works so well.

  Consumers find groups of like-minded individuals on social platforms and regularly engage with their content. So, if companies are in the same space, it works to motivate an audience to interact with that company since they both belong to a specific group of people.

Ability

If a person is unable to perform the desired behavior because of a lack of ability, then all other elements don’t matter. That’s why it’s important to understand the factors that stand in the way of a person’s ability.

When it comes to creating a website, campaign, or any sort of marketing content, you want to keep these ability blockers in mind so that you can avoid them. Not addressing these ability blockers can lead to lower conversion rates, so it’s important to ensure that users can still have the ability to perform the desired behavior. 

• Time These days, no one wants to spend a lot of time sifting through a website to find the information they’re looking for. Therefore, it’s so important to make sure that a task can be completed in a short amount of time. This might look like short lead capture forms, so instead of asking for all kinds of information like an address, phone number, or date of birth, simply ask for a name and email.

• Money If people aren’t willing to spend a lot of time, then they’re definitely not likely to spend a lot of money at the beginning of a process. Something that costs nothing is more likely to lead to the desired behavior than if the cost is prohibitive.
  
  For example, you’re likely to get more users to sign up to a loyalty or rewards program if there are no initial start-up costs rather than making someone pay upfront to join.

• Physical Effort When we talk about the physical effort in digital marketing, it refers mostly to the number of clicks a person has to make before getting to the desired location. Of course, the fewer clicks, the higher the chance the consumer will perform the goal behavior.

  If your website has one-click checkout, as Amazon does, then you’re eliminating the effort needed to achieve the desired behavior, which for the consumer is completing a purchase and for you is increasing your conversion rate.

• Mental Cycles Though clicks aren’t quite physically exerting, what’s more, likely to lose motivated users is if you’re exhausting them. That’s why you should always write out directions succinctly and be clear about what people can expect from the outcome. There should be no guesswork involved
  

  For example, if your goal is to have clients open an account, guide them through a brief step-by-step sign-up process and then provide them with a quick account tour once they’re signed up.

• Social Deviance This one is very simple. Don’t ask your audience to go against the norm or perform actions that are not socially acceptable. Sure, some people like it when brands play into individual differences or are unique, but you shouldn’t go too far in that you’re promoting actions that alienate or offend people.

• Non-routine People are comfortable with actions they’re already familiar with, so in order to get users to complete your intended behavior, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Look at what competitors are doing in terms of web design, campaigns, or products they offer, and ask yourself if your products are in-line with theirs. This doesn’t mean they should be the same, but there should be a basic degree of familiarity and routine.
  

  For example, if you’re designing a website for your company, don’t design the menu and search bar in places where users wouldn’t expect them to be. This will make them frustrated and confused and might motivate them to give up.

Triggers

Fogg’s behavior model triggers can be compared to a call to action. Once users pass the motivation and ability stages, the final behavior needs to be triggered by an enticing prompt. The following three types of triggers, or calls to action, use a combination of both motivation and ability to result in a prompt that works best with each user.

• Facilitator You’ll need a facilitating prompt when there is a lot of motivation, but a lack of ability. You’ll need to sort of take the user by the hand and guide them through a process very carefully by using very clear prompts. These prompts can be clear instructions, flashing arrows, or pop-ups with vital information. 

• Spark On the flip side, some users lack a decent amount of motivation but they have the complete ability. In this case, a spark is meant to increase motivation, often by playing into a person’s emotion by making them care. In this step, you’ll need to be able to show your value and then continue with clear and functional next steps.

  Basically, it should focus on playing up the value and accessibility of a first step, and then later steps can help further a user’s motivation.
  
  For example, getting a user to sign up for your newsletter by offering an incentive like a discount code will make them more motivated to give you their email address.

---

How to Improve User Onboarding Using the Fogg Behavior Model

The Fogg Behavior Model is founded on the idea that change takes place when motivation, ability, and prompts come together at the same time. This is a universal model that applies to various industries, people of all ages, different cultures, etc. 

Below we break down motivation, ability, and prompts relevant to SaaS user engagement and improve onboarding. 

1. Increase Motivation 

Motivation is a driving force of the Fogg Model that changes human behavior. 

A powerful motivator can change the behavior of even your most critical user, right? Actually, no. The art of motivation isn’t that simple. 

Sometimes rewards like money, fame, and praise work against people completing a task. Since they’re only interested in the reward, they won’t complete the task on their own initiative if it isn’t there.

Incentives typically don’t encourage users to complete the onboarding process. Trial extensions, badges, or branded stickers might encourage users to complete the onboarding, but those users have no product loyalty and may never log in again because they might not be interested in the product. 

Use content to increase a user’s intrinsic motivations. There are a few ways to do this.

Often, onboarding teams approach the content of signup screens and onboarding elements like tooltips and product tours as a low priority – and it shows. Even if it’s well-written, it’s usually focused on product features rather than communicating the benefits of these features. 

This is a mistake.

The ultimate motivation is to show users how the product can help improve their lives. Every word in the user onboarding experience is an opportunity to speak to users’ needs and desires. Use content to amplify the solution to their current pain points, calm their anxieties, and remind them they can overcome their existing habits. 

For example, the third step in the signup process with Wave reminds new users of the value of their invoicing software. The copy reads, “Send professional invoices. Designed to get you paid 3x faster, with over $24 billion in invoices sent each year.” 

Wave’s team knows that new users are still skeptical, so they use social proof to convince them Wave is the right tool. After all, who doesn’t want to get paid three times faster? 

2. Make Behavior Change Easy

According to the BJ Fogg Behavior Model, if you want to change the type of behavior and habit of users, make the model behavior as easy as possible to do. 

Cognitive load, or the mental effort required to learn new information, is used to measure how easy (or hard) user onboarding is for new users. Think of cognitive load as the mental processing power needed to learn how to use and interact with a product. If the input exceeds the user’s ability to handle the product, cognitive overload results.

Most user onboarding overwhelms new users with signup fields, product tours, pop-ups, in-app messages, checklists, tooltips, etc. If users feel overwhelmed, they’ll experience cognitive overload and likely never login again.

So, how do you avoid overloading users?

With straight-line onboarding in place, you’re already halfway there. By now, you should have:

• Removed or delayed any unnecessary steps that don’t lead to the First Strike.

• Reorganized the onboarding steps from easiest to hardest.

• Simplified the onboarding by showing fewer options while breaking down complex signup and setup processes into multiple steps.

3. Add Prompts

Prompts (or triggers) shape our lives. You’ve encountered hundreds of types of triggers today and probably barely noticed them. For example:

• Your alarm goes off, so you wake up, brush your teeth, and make coffee in the same order every day.

• Your phone buzzes, so you check for new notifications.

• You’re hungry, so you eat lunch. 

Whether you realize it or not, most habits start with a prompt. Another way to put it – no prompt, no action. 

In the user onboarding experience, prompts are critical during two moments:

1. To help users achieve their desired outcome and experience the value of a product soon after signing up.

1. To help users continue using a product until they adopt it into their life and workflow.

During the user onboarding journey, prompts can occur inside the app (product tours, checklists, tooltips, and other Product Bumpers) or outside of it (emails, SMS, phone notifications, and old-school direct mail). They’re critical in creating an engaging environment for new users to learn how a product works and to decide if it’s the right fit for them.

When onboarding is an afterthought, triggers become a crutch to mask poor UX design. Remember, the BJ Fogg Behavior Model states that triggers only work if users have the necessary level of motivation and ability above the Action Line. 

Start Using the BJ Fogg Behavior Model to Grow Your SaaS

---

🔥 Top three quotes from our Instagram page

• We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was. ― Apple

• Design is everywhere. From the dress you’re wearing to the smartphone you’re holding, its design.

• It’s not enough to be busy, and so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about? — Henry David Thoreau