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How Startups Compete with Friction in Product Design

Startups need Traction. A startup which doesn’t get discovered doesn’t go anywhere. This is all the more critical for platform businesses which rely on their users to create value and network effects. In the specific case of platform businesses, Traction dictates the value that is created. A social network without enough users or a marketplace without enough activity isn’t going anywhere. Traction essentially refers to the additional value that is created on these businesses by the users using it, value created through interactions between users.

Often, one of the core principles of building for Traction is removing Friction from the product experience. Friction comes in the way of users using the product and, hence, in the way of value creation. Friction may result from anything that acts as a barrier to a user for using the product. Friction may be created by design (e.g. users are curated before they get access) or by accident (e.g. poor product navigability).

Traction and Friction don’t go well together. We’re living in an age where frictionless is increasingly synonymous with desirable design.

But Friction continues to have an important place in the world of platform businesses. Getting Friction right is critical to the success of an internet startup. Through this essay, I’d like to explore some of the top design considerations while building for friction.

As with all design considerations, the ultimate goal of a platform startup (marketplace, community, social network, UGC platform etc.) is to facilitate interactions.

Hence, as a rule of thumb:

Friction is a good thing if it facilitates the interaction instead of coming in the way of it.

Let’s dig further!

The Traction-Friction Matrix

This is pretty much how the traction-friction trade-off works out:

Traction 1

High Friction-Low Traction: There are two reasons your startup may be in this quadrant: by design or by accident. You’re either curating who gets access or you’re suffering from really bad design.

Low Friction-High Traction: Again, a startup hits this quadrant for one of two reasons: frictionless experiences by design or lack of checks and balances.

High Friction-High Traction: This is a great place to be and ultimately successful startups migrate to this quadrant after starting off in one of the quadrants above.

Low Friction-Low Traction: This is clearly the worst quadrant to get stuck in for too long.

 

Movements in the Matrix

1. Pivoting around Friction:

 

2. Avoiding friction altogether: CraigsList pretty much allows anyone to do anything, except for a few categories that it polices and a few categories where listing are paid.

 

3. Embracing friction with scale: Quora has been increasing friction as it scales. Anyone could ask a question in the early days but asking a question now requires the user to pay forward in points.

4. Relaxation of norms:  App.net started off with high friction with a $50 subscription fee. However, it has gradually reduced friction to allow for traction.

5. Scaling the country club: Several invite-only platforms have successfully scaled with this model.

 

 

Design Considerations For Friction

As mentioned earlier, Friction, like every other design consideration, should lead to smoother and better interactions between users on the platform. With that as a guiding principle, let’s look at a few case studies where Friction works well.

Interestingly, two platforms in the same vertical and category often compete and co-exist by being in two different boxes in this matrix, as the examples below demonstrate.

Friction as a Source of Quality

Some platforms risk losing activity (interactions) when there is a lot of noise on the platform. Women tend to avoid dating websites which attract stalkers and men with poor online etiquette. Clearly, noise leads to lower probability of interactions.

Some dating websites invest in incentivizing women to join the network. An alternate model is to increase friction on the other side and curate the men that get access to the network. Sites like CupidCurated have taken this approach as a way to differentiate themselves from existing dating sites which relied on incentivizing women.

High Friction-Low Traction: CupidCurated

Low Friction-High Traction: Match.com

Friction to Create Trust

Some interactions may require a minimum guarantee and an environment of trust. Hiring a babysitter is different from asking a question online. False positives can cause much greater damage in the former case.

In such scenarios, Friction in the form of curation of babysitters provides a critical source of value. In contrast, the Friction-less Craigslist is hardly the destination for finding babysitters online.

High Friction-Low Traction: SitterCity

Low Friction-High Traction:  Craigslist

Friction as Signal

In both examples above, Friction not only controls who gets access to the platform, it also creates some form of signal about those getting access. Curation of babysitters yields exact parameters which would be used by parents for making a decision. Hence, Friction also helps with signaling.

Interestingly, financial markets work with signaling too. VCs, in private markets, are responsible for due diligence and determining whether a startup is worth investing in.

Crowdfunding tries to disrupt venture capital but most current models (like Kickstarter) merely unlock new sources of funds, they don’t necessarily provide the expertise curation and signaling that a VC fund would. Startups like RockThePost are working on the Country Club model and allowing only heavily curated startups to raise money through their platform. In this way, the platform is placing a bet on the fact that signaling and curation need to be part of the platform, to credibly provide an alternative to venture funds.

High Friction-Low Traction: RockThePost

Low Friction-High Traction: KickStarter

Friction on One or Both Roles

Most platforms support two distinct roles: consumers and producers. In all the examples above, Friction was being applied to only one side. This is the model used in most cases. However, where there is  high overlap between the two roles i.e. the same user produces as well as consumes, Friction can be applied to both roles. Quibb is an example of a network that applies Friction across the board. It works for Quibb because users want to be part of an exclusive community, to benefit from superior quality interactions. But more often than not, applying Friction on both sides comes in the way of creation of network effects, as demonstrated in the next example.

High Friction-Low Traction: Quibb

Low Friction-High Traction: Reddit

Friction as a Barrier

For all the hype and fanfare surrounding App.net’s launch, the platform has never quite lived up to its initial stand of providing an alternative to Twitter. There were two design considerations that were fundamentally flawed in this case:

1) Applying Friction to both producer and consumer roles. The core value of Twitter is the ability to build a following. By restricting who could access App.net, the platform limited its ability to deliver that value to producers.

2) More importantly, the source of Friction did not guarantee any form  of quality, trust or signal. Friction was created by charging an access fee. That didn’t help make interactions on the platform better in any way. If any thing, it just came in the way of these interactions. App.net realized it wasn’t getting anywhere and subsequently brought down the access fee, through a series of revisions, by 90%.

High Friction-Low Traction: App.net

Low Friction-High Traction: Twitter 

In summary, the following is a non-exhaustive list of design questions to consider while introducing Friction onto a platform.

A. Do you add Friction to one side or both sides?

B. What criteria are used to create Friction? Does it improve quality and add value?

C. Does Friction lead to higher likelihood of interactions?

D. Is the interaction high-value or high-risk? In other words, how important is trust, signal or quality as a source of value?

Tweetable Takeaways

Friction in design is helpful if it facilitates the interaction instead of coming in the way of it. Tweet

Two competing platforms can co-exist by varying the levels of friction in their design. Tweet

If you’re restricting access, it better provide additional value. Think SitterCity, not App.net. Tweet

Every element of platform design should be aimed at incentivizing interactions. Tweet

This article was originally published on Sangeet Paul Choudary’s personal blog Platform Thinking – A blog about building early stage ventures from an idea to a business, and mitigating execution risk.

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Growth = Engagement: A product design principle you can’t ignore

Newly launched startups love to see their traffic and sign-up stats grow. Growth, after all, is opium for a startup fresh out of the door, and frequent refreshes of the sign-up logs are the happiest pastime for entrepreneurs.

Startups often tend to think of growth and engagement as two unrelated divorced concepts. In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Startups that focus on growth, completely divorced of engagement, are often the invite-spam startups. With number of signed up users as the only metric for success, these startups pursue growth single-mindedly, get their k-factor and viral cycle time in order and hit the desired user numbers.

However, they often fail to focus adequately on engagement and in an age where there is no dearth of choice, lose all (or most of) the users that they acquired in the first place.

A PLATFORM THINKING APPROACH TO GROWTH

In the age of social products, every engaged user is a potential distributor of the product.

Growth and engagement feed each other. Startups that focus on engagement, invariably, realize that good engagement leads to good growth.

Every time a user engages with your platform, she is offering to be an evangelist for it. The onus is on the startup to leverage the user’s engagement on the platform for its growth needs.

In this context, I’ve written earlier about how producers/creators drive organic growth for user-contribution platforms. I’ve also written about how users are your new SEO team.

A SIMPLE HACK AS AN EXAMPLE A.K.A. GROWTH = ENGAGEMENT (Tweet This)

Here’s a screenshot of the answer creation box on Quora. Notice anything interesting?

In case you didn’t, the one after it offers another clue, a much easier one this time around.

It’s a screenshot from Quibb, an invite-only social network.

 

Well, here’s the thing, and the Quibb screenshot demonstrates this well. Every time a user clicks on Save, she creates something and that potentially starts off an engagement loop on the product.

But if the user also checks the ‘Tweet’ box, she’s potentially starting a growth loop as well.

If you just post, you’re feeding engagement. If you click that box, you’re entering the growth loop as well.

There, that was simple enough! Growth can, in many ways, be just one click away from engagement.

The power of platform thinking is in the fact that users are now the new product marketers. The more you engage them, the more growth opportunities they present you with.The more you con them into sending out ‘frictionless’ invites, the less likely are they to bring you any sustainable growth.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR GROWTH = ENGAGEMENT

(Tweet This)

Here’s a quick and dirty framework to think through growth in the context of building engagement.

1. FOR EVERY USER ACTION, IS THERE A MOTIVATION TO SPREAD THE WORD ON EXTERNAL NETWORKS?

In the case of Quora and Quibb above, the user is likely to want a broader audience (and especially her immediate network) for the content she created. Motivation is key here. Motivation works especially well for self-promotion platforms like KickStarter and Change.Org. But even platforms that are not solely for self-promotion can play on a user’s interest in getting the word out.

2. HOW CAN WE PROVIDE USERS WITH THE TOOLS TO MAKE THIS A ONE-CLICK EXPERIENCE?

One-click is key here. The engagement to growth transition should be as seamless as possible. The user should be required to invest minimum effort. This is exactly the reason I showcase the examples above. The user doesn’t have to go through a new follow, it is not an afterthought to the content creation, there is no additional pitch to the user to get the word out. It is all incorporated seamlessly in one action. One-click is a very powerful design principle in general.

3. HOW CAN WE ENCOURAGE SUCH BEHAVIOR FOR USERS?

For all the motivation that users may have, they may not start doing this right away. It is unto the platform owner to encourage the user to start doing this. Quibb ‘encourages’ users by often retweeting the tweets that users send from Quibb and giving them a bigger audience. Slideshare actually ties the success of your uploaded presentation to your ability to have it be shared on different networks.

4. IF GROWTH IS A PRIORITY, REMOVE THE CLUTTER!

This is where Quibb, in the screenshot above, does a better job than Quora. The interface on Quora is too cluttered and one is likely to miss the checkboxes in the middle of everything else. On Quibb, it’s fairly simple: You can feed engagement, but we also give you the option of feeding growth! Up and center!

Engagement is the most sustainable growth strategy. Creating real engagement and creating opportunities for engaged users to get the word out is the best way to sustainable growth.

This blog was first published at Plaformed.info