The Aha Moment Guide

Have you ever tried out a product and thought “wow”?

If you have chances, you are still using the product. This is what is called an AHA moment. It is a moment of discovery or insight. 

This is the exact moment when your users understand the value of your product and how it benefits them.

This is an emotional moment for the user and most of the time, this has a huge impact on the buyer decision making process. 

Oprah Winfrey says, “you can’t have an Aha! moment unless you already knew it. The Aha is a remembering of what you already knew, articulated in a way to resonate with your own truth”.

This is quite true. Inorder to benefit from this, as an organization you need to help your users find this moment by eliminating all the possible distractions that get in their way.

Let us look into a scenario:

In this example, the user might experience multiple Aha moments. If as a product marketer, you understand what could be the Aha moment for your users, you have cracked a great sales strategy. 

How to achieve the aha moment

It is best to always think like a user. Because, this way, you can never go wrong. When a user starts evaluating your product, the first thing that they seek are ways by which your product can address the shortcomings that they face. This is an immediate need. When this is done, and they realize the true benefit of your app, things click and that’s their aha moment. 

Now, as a product manager, you need to identify the set of actions that correlate to this discovery. This will nudge users towards the aha inducing behaviours. 

Start identifying patterns using analytics

Analytics is a life saver when it comes to getting insights on your user’s aha moment. It is the single version of truth. To get the best from your analytics platform, you need to identify a certain pattern. 

Here are a few things to consider:

• Did your users complete the onboarding experience?
• What are the features that they interacted with?
• On which day of the trial did they interact with the core feature?
• When did they start paying?

To identify the pattern put together 15-20 behaviours that you think correlates with the users. Here we are looking at the behaviours that helped retention. 

So, you need to look at the below subset:

• Most retained users AND most churned users = no correlation

• Few retained users AND few churned users = no correlation
• Most retained users AND few churned users = correlation.

Supplement using user feedback

Once you understand the information, you need to supplement the data by getting feedback from your users. 

This is as important as identifying the pattern. Because, this might expose the loopholes in the pattern. For example, users who retain might be using the video conferencing and calender feature. But the ultimate reason why they use these two might be because of the ease of scheduling. So, rather than pitching these two features, you will have to redirect your users towards the scheduling feature. 

By talking to users, you will identify different stories on when users felt the Aha moment and these stories will help you drive your current set of users towards it.

Learn from churned users

Churned users are just as useful as your retained users. These users will be able to tell you what they are looking for and why your product did not meet their expectations. Users leave a product for different reasons. But if you have to broadly classify them under an umbrella, there are two reasons. 

1. They did not find your product to match their requirements
2. There was a friction in their experience

You need to target users who left you because of the friction. These are the people who can give you insights on the pain points that they faced while using your product.

Segment your new users

Segmenting users allows you to create personalized buyer profiles. Why do we need buyer profiles, you may ask? 

Creating a buyer profile enables you to tweak the onboarding experience for your users. You can either use a tool that allows you to automatically group your users based on the company, demographics etc. or you can allow them to select their own grouping by providing a wide range of options while they sign up.

Start with user preferences

Asking users for their preference can be excruciating. Sending out long forms can be a tier 1 friction point. But, it is crucial that you know your user’s preference. These preferences increases the chance of reaching the aha moment faster.

Try aha-first onboarding

To achieve the Aha moment, you need to scrutinize your onboarding. You need to bring the product right in front of your users.

This allows the users to see the value of the product and creates an Aha moment even before they use the product. 

Let us look into an example:

Buzzsumo is a platform that allows the users to find engaging content and discover new outreach opportunities. It allows you to search for content that has most engagements like shares, links and comments. It gives an overview of the influencers, helps monitor brand engagements, backlinks etc.

How did Buzzsumo do Aha Onboarding?

Buzzsumo lets their users try out their product even before they sign up. When a user lands on their webpage, they can directly test the product. They have embedded a section of the app in their webpage. They can directly test the product without even having to sign in.

Once they enter the search term, the app shows them the results with a CTA to start the trial.

Here the users start their journey with the aha moment. It sets a realistic expectation on the product and once you have achieved this, you can use your onboarding experience and ensure that they get the best value. 

Let the app guide the user

SaaS products become more valuable as you use them. But the truth is, it is not possible for your users to try out all your features the moment they join. This is where you need to think smartly in designing your onboarding experience. You need to club features that work together and then use app cues for other features that drive value.

Here is an example from Grammarly. The app allows the users to learn more about their product by working in it.

Examples of Aha moment

Trainual.com

Trainual is an app that allows you to bring every onboarding, training, processes, policies, SOPs, wiki, playbooks, and more into one place. This makes it easier for the teams to onboard users easily. Teams mostly use trianual to store the study materials of their company.

Source – Trainual.com

Aha moment: Trainual’s aha moment is when the users of the product onboard a new employee. As a company they have all the resources that the person might need to learn about the company. This allows the person to speed up on the learning and be productive. 

Usersnap.com

Usersnap is a visual feedback tool that allows users to annotate the screenshots/images.

“While the ease and accuracy of the feedback were what we thought added the most value. Our customers love and praise the product for its integrations to project management, help desk, and CMS tools even more!” said co-founder and CEO of Usersnap Josef Trauner.

Their Aha moment was when their users could streamline their workflow by collecting feedback from Usersnap and then receive the items related to it using their integration with 30+ applications.

OmniConvert

Omniconvert is a conversion rate optimization platform that allows marketers to run A/B tests, surveys with minimum to zero IT help.

Aha moment for OmniConvert: When Omniconvert was launched, it had a high churn rate. They tried different onboarding strategies and all of them failed. They then tried to get their customer feedback, which helped them segment their users. They segmented their users based on the amount of support that they needed from Omniconvert, their lifetime value and the features that they were using. Identifying the ideal customer profile allowed them to customize their marketing campaigns, the features that went into the roadmap etc. 

Bottom line

You need to deliver the Aha moment as soon as possible. This enables them to see the value that your product brings to the table. Customizing your onboarding experience is the where most companies begin their aha journey. That said, there is no right or wrong way to design your onboarding experience around your aha moment. But here are a few steps that will expedite this process. Identify these strategies and use them in your product.