The fastest-growing companies leverage virality to accelerate their growth.
Lenny Rachitsky spoke about the different types of product virality.
Here's some simple tips to engineer virality into your product:
The earlier you ask for shares, the shorter your viral loop.
Ask for early in the onboarding flow.
Asana makes this one of the early steps for a new user.
Some users may want to see value first.
Many will be happy to refer.
Provide multiple ways for users to share their product.
The harder you make it to share your product, the less invites will be sent.
Miro knows their audience uses Slack and Gmail.
So they provide easy ways to share to that audience.
Robinhood lets users upload their contacts to reduce friction.
But they also assure users their contacts are safe.
Users won't share if it could lose them social capital.
Give them control. Let users edit the referral message.
The Athletic could give users unlimited invites to their product.
But by limiting it to 5, they create scarcity.
This creates pent up demand.
Those that don't get an invite suddenly want one.
And when they get one, they value it more.
Humans are wired to want rewards.
We especially appreciate novel ones.
Freetrade offers a random free share when you share.
This creates a powerful variable reward.
Users may be more inclined to share knowing they may get a nice surprise.
Amplitude tells the user "data crunching insights" are just a click away.
They show an illustration of a graph going up.
This is beautiful to any analyst.
Make a user want to accept the invite.
Keep persuading and outlining value.
What makes a great product?
It helps people consistently achieve their goals and solve their problems.
Speak to your potential customers.
Understand their problems, wants and needs.
Build your product accordingly.