3.15. Aha-Moment

Once upon a time, around 250 BC, there lived a king by the name of Gireon II, who wanted to be known for something. He ordered a goldsmith to create the most beautiful and the biggest crown in the world. When the crown was developed, the king was suddenly assailed by doubts and ordered an ancient Greek scholar Archimedes to check the honesty of the goldsmith, who had been given pure gold but was suspected of removing gold and using silver instead. Archimedes thought over the problem day and night and one day a decision came to him when he plunged into the bath. Shouting “Eureka!” the scholar rushed to the king to solve the problem. Speaking in nowadays terms, Archimedes’s moment of realisation can be compared to the aha-moment that customers (might) experience when getting familiar with your product or services.

What Is the Aha-Moment?

There just comes a moment when a regular customer or a regular user realises that he didn’t come to your product by chance, but that he needs your products or services because they provide him with real value. The moment of realisation, understanding or discovering the value of your product or services is called the “aha-moment”. Having experienced the aha-moment, also called the wow-moment, the customer has understood the benefits and advantages of your product and is likely to cooperate with you, use your product and even recommend it to one’s friends or acquaintances.

Find Your Aha-Moment!

Aha-moment is the moment of the activation of users, the moment of retention of users. It is actually for such moments that entrepreneurs run their businesses and develop their products, because the more user or clients will realise the true value of their products or services, the higher the company’s profit will be.
It is believed that with Facebook, a person achieves the aha-moment when he connects with 7 friends in 10 days. But the following numbers should not be understood directly: some people might achieve the aha-moment having found only 5 friends in 20 days, while others having “friended” 10 people in 2 hours. The numbers indicated is not a regularity or a law, but rather a focus tied to a certain principle: in order to achieve the aha-moment and stay with Facebook, you need to connect to friends.
Like Facebook, LinkedIn indicated that for the achievement of the aha-moment, there should be X connections in Y days. Accordingly, you’ve probably noticed that both platforms constantly provide you with friend suggestions for you to stay with them for as long as possible.

Another example is Dropbox. What is its main value? The main value is sync between devices, right? Thus, it is assumed that with Dropbox once you create a folder on a device and download 1 file to that folder, you will get the value. Moreover, the mentioned company went even further and recorder and advertised the aha-moment for people to see! Dropbox team filmed how a person uploaded files to the cloud and those files appeared on other devices. Seeing the joy on one’s face and how a person solved his problem resulted in more than 50 000 registrations.
Finally, mobile games also have their own ways of how to make you experience the aha-moment. What you can't find is long and boring tutorials, but what you will is — limited number of lives, daily rewards, intrigues (like, ‘if you play this game 5 days in a row, you will get a super bonus!’), etc. Everything is done for the user to feel the value of the product and return to it as often as possible.

How to Find the Aha-Moment?

For your customers to experience the aha-moment, you need to find it first and know where it is within your product. So, how to find the aha-moment? You can start by discussing it with your team as sharing ideas and insights really help. You can even try to go through the onboarding process yourself to see everything from the eyes of your customers.
The importance of talking to your customers has been mentioned more than once throughout the whole course, thus it is not surprising that another option of finding the aha-moment is by communicating with your users, who have been recently activated. Get in touch with the customer, who have just made payments and ask them why they decided to pay, what was the last thing they were doing when they decided to pay, and/or what they were reading or clicking on when they decided to become your customers. What is more, don’t forget to interview those users, who decided to drop, because negative experience is also of great value! Ask them why they decided to drop out in order to get some important insights and choose the right ways for improving.
Finally, explore and conduct data analysis. Create a list of key actions that your customers do with your product, pay attention to what those actions are and how often they are carried out, analyse those actions, and determine which ones are best associated with the aha-moment. Data will show at what point users decide to become your clients and use the product on a regular basis, i. e. when the aha-moment is achieved.
Remember that the use of only 1 method will not provide the same amount of information as when using all 3 methods of analysis. Accordingly, combine the mentioned methods and it’s more likely that you’ll find the aha-moment faster and with ease.

In Conclusion...

There is a specific moment when a regular customer becomes a dedicated one, when a regular user becomes an active one. The customer/user got familiar with your product, evaluated its benefits and advantages, understood its true value, carried out key actions, and experienced the aha-moment. Nevertheless, the aha-moment is not only the moment of realisation of the value, but also the moment of the customer’s trust in you, your product, and your company, and, accordingly, you, your product, and your company have to motivate, keep up the good job, and justify that trust.