Triggers are anything that sparks us to complete a particular action. They tell us what to do next, and come in the form of internal and external triggers.
External triggers are all around us. They target our senses and remind us to take a particular action. It can be something obvious like a “Click here” button, but also something like the delicious smell of fresh coffee and cake while you’re walking down the street.
Internal triggers, on the other hand, are impulses that come from within us. Memories, emotions, or situations provide information for what to do next. For example, the fear of losing out on a moment triggers some people to take a photo and post it on Instagram. Internal triggers are a major factor for building habit-forming products, and are the drivers for the growth of billion dollar companies.
Ivan Pavlov demonstrated that dogs could be conditioned to salivate at the sound of a bell (Pavlov, 1927). He trained the dogs to respond in that way by ringing a bell before feeding them. This learning procedure came to be known as classical conditioning.
According to BJ Fogg’s behavior model, three elements must be present for the desired behavior to occur: motivation, ability, and trigger. In other words, it has to bring value, be simple to complete and should draw attention. If one or more is missing, the desired action will not happen (Fogg, 2009).
Every CTA, like a button or some other form of graphic or text, which guides your users and tells them what to do next, is an external trigger. Even the smallest tweaks in copy, color, position, or size can lead to huge lifts in conversion rate: Black and Decker, for example, saw a 17% increase in click-through rate by using “Buy now” instead of “Shop now.” Even two words on a button can have a huge impact on essential metrics.
We touch our phone 2,617 times a day and unlock it 76 times. Whenever we see the grid of apps, we’re confronted with potential triggers. Red badges, which signal what we’ve missed, increase the sense of urgency even more. Remind your mobile visitors with an install banner that they can add your website to their home screen and launch it in the full-screen mode, like a real native app.
According to Localytics, 52% of all mobile users enable push notifications on their phone. If done right, they can have open-rates of up to 80% and are, therefore, effective external triggers to persuade people to complete certain tasks. Good push notifications are well-timed, explicit, and spark curiosity.
Have you ever been reminded through app updates that you have an app installed that you’ve forgotten is even on your phone? Releasing updates strategically can be a part of your marketing to retain existing users. Mobile systems like iOS and Android have update notifications built in. In addition to that, or for other platforms like web and desktop, you can send product update emails to inform your users about new features.
