shovell.com

I watched some focus groups a couple of months ago and I was taken aback by the level of inertia people showed in their activity.

Users tended to set up accounts with the Bookmaker that they visited shops of or even who their Dads used.

Once they had an account a large group were unlikely to switch accounts, even in the face of a better sign up offer or better odds with a rival firm.

So what does this mean with usability?

Well from a usability point of view it makes it all the more important to make sure your conversion funnel is easy and simple, and not just the registration process. Get people in and get them transacting as quickly as possible.

Once you have them then it should be much much easier to keep them there than it is to get new customers in.

This isn’t a new concept, there is a traditional belief that it costs 5 times as much to convert a new customer than it is to retain one.

So from a User experience point of view, to get people to drag themselves away from the familiar its important to go that extra mile, be it in enthralling content, simple learning curves, adopting industry standard practices and languages, having a great customer service team, enhancing the product so you have a real competitive advantage or just simply giving the customer more value.

Inertia is a really strong force, think about how you can beat it or utilize it the next time you start a project.