Colchester Borough Council

Based on the research in the book ‘Hooked – How to build habit forming products’ by Nir Eyal, we would like to be able to map all of the residents with accounts on our website against their Mosaic demographic data. We would then like to be able to present offers and services to them via their website portal that they are likely to need based on their Mosaic profile. This would encourage them to return to the website to see what offers we have available and would allow us to provide services proactively rather than reactively.  We would like to integrate Mosaic data into our website to see if this increases the number of return visits to our website and see if it also results in an increase in service take up now the services being displayed are relevant to the user. This model and our pilot findings could be rolled out as an example of best practice and as a way to drive transactions online.

Discovery evidence

The Hooked model helps build habit-forming products, that prompt users to return and use those products over and over again, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. 

The basic idea is that, to create habit-forming products, you must move a user through a loop that over time to help them develop the habit of returning and using that product. 

The loop consists of four components: 

(1) Triggers: 

• External — What gets the user to the product? 
• Internal — What does the user really want? 

(2) Action — What is the simplest behaviour in anticipation of reword? 

(3) Variable Reward — Is the reward fulfilling, yet leaves the user wanting more? 

(4) Investment — What is the ‘bit of work’ done to increase the likelihood of returning? 

It’s important to note that a behaviour only happens when there is motivation, ability and a trigger. If you’re missing one — it won’t happen. We want to reward customers with offers relevant to them based on their Mosaic profiling data.  This will help with channel shift from costly face to face and phone interactions to cheaper online interactions.