Something strange happened at IKEA last weekend.
As I wandered through their famous maze-like showroom, I was reminded of a contrarian story I heard a while ago about making things more complicated for their customers, from the shopping journey to self-assembling the furniture.
You see, IKEA’s founder had discovered something counterintuitive: when people put effort into getting or creating something, they value it more. He was so convinced of this that he’d fire anyone who suggested making the IKEA experience more convenient.
This isn’t just an IKEA thing; here are a few ideas from other brands:
Betty Crocker discovered the idea decades ago when they found that adding an egg to their instant cake mix (instead of just requiring water) made customers feel more invested in the baking process – and they rated the exact same cake as tasting better.
NIKE leverages this idea with NIKE by you, where you can design your own shoes from the ground up. The more buyers invest in their design, the higher the perceived value of their purchase.
Blue Apron combines the convenience of ready-made meals with the effort of chopping, cooking and assembling so that dinner feels like a personal achievement.
Lastly, if you played Lego as a kid, you know how much more fun it was to build something than to receive it pre-assembled.
And so we come back to SaaS and eCommerce…
Next time you try to make things effortless for customers, think if there are parts of your product or service that could do with extra friction; you might be surprised by the result.
We tend to obsess over making everything instant and automated. One-click this, zero-friction that. But what if we were missing something crucial?
Here are some ideas to think about:
Instead of instant onboarding, what about guiding customers through a 15-minute personalized setup process? They invest time upfront, but they’re far more likely to stick around.
Rather than automate everything, deliberately keep some human touchpoints so that they own the experience.
No-fluff tactics & AI trends for solopreneurs and startups to 10X your impact.