Back in the day, reading newspapers online was considered a strange thing to do. However, we can now see how this industry is being disrupted. According to Statista research, the digital newspaper market in India is expected to generate a revenue of US $1,079.00m by 2024. This market is predicted to continue growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.64% from 2024 to 2029. Furthermore, it is expected that the user base for digital newspapers and magazines will reach a stunning 300 million users by the year 2030.
With a sizeable serviceable market and users, traditional news publishing houses are reinventing themselves and transforming into digital product companies.
Let’s take a closer look at how the Economic Times (ET), one of the most popular media outlets in India, is attempting to engage its readers online through its in-house news application in this case study.
The Economic Times is a daily business-focused newspaper that is published in English in India. It is owned by The Times Group and was first published in 1961. As of 2012, it is the world’s second-most widely read English-language business newspaper, after The Wall Street Journal, with a readership of over 800,000. The ET App has been downloaded over 10 million times on the Google Play Store, and a portion of its users are paid subscribers.
For any product especially in the content creation space, the secret sauce is to produce rich and engaging quality content and hook users for the longest time possible by turning the product into habit forming.
From our past experience, we know that newspaper reading becomes addictive once we turn that into a habit. Don’t believe it? Ask your grandparents or parents how frustrated they feel if the newspaper vendor doesn’t turn up. People often become so dependent on newspapers that they feel lost without them. However, how did the previous generation become so attached to newspapers? It was probably a habit they formed after years of reading physical newspapers, which were the only reliable news material available back then. Since there was no internet or social media, newspapers were the primary and trustworthy source of information, which made people crave it even more.
With Gen Z entering the scene and an abundance of digital and on-demand media available, how can ET create an addictive reading experience in this era?
Acquiring customers for a product can be a challenging task, but keeping them engaged and retaining their interest is equally difficult. In his book, “Hooked,” author Nir Eyal explains how to build habit-forming products that engage users without spending a lot on advertising. He introduces the ‘hook’ model, which relies on the concept of “Unprompted User Engagement” – using users’ habits to keep them hooked on the product.
Let’s try to comprehend how the ET App utilizes the hook model to keep readers engaged.
The Hook Model describes four essential steps to forming a habit.
- Trigger
- Action
- Variable Reward
- Investment
Trigger:
The Hooked model starts by creating triggers that prompt users to take action. These triggers can be external, like email or advertisements, or internal, like emotions such as fear, happiness, or sorrow.
The ET App once installed successfully sends you a discovery email showcasing the wealth of content available in the app and CTAs placed to log into the App. Subsequently, you get 3 types of triggers periodically –
- A daily morning email & In-App alert about the day’s news
- Breaking News Alerts
- Thrilling hook news alerts that trigger your curiosity to peek into the news.
Action:
Action is the second step in the Hooked Model. Action is the response to the trigger in anticipation of reward. For any action to take place, three elements are required – Trigger, Motivation & Ability. Additionally, heuristics – cognitive actions are used to nudge users to take quick actions.
Once the external trigger is delivered periodically, the ET app tries to nudge the readers to take action.
How does it nudge users to take action? The alerts are timed, the headlines are optimized to trigger curiosity, and news is sensationalized.
All this nudging is good, but what motivates the user to take action to click the news item? Probably it could be the pleasure of reading, avoiding fear of missing out on information, curiosity to gain knowledge..
Once the motivated reader responds to the external triggers (In-App or Email news alerts), the deep links seamlessly take precisely to the page and section that the app intends the reader to read.
Variable Reward:
A reward is the third step in the Hooked Model. The author explains three types of variable rewards exist – The Tribe, the hunt, and the self. Some examples of rewards -are social likes, customized feeds, mentions, etc. Variable rewards must satisfy users’ needs while leaving them wanting to reengage with the product.
The ET App reader having responded to the trigger and taken the action, the reader is presented with a sensational or interesting news item that is in line with his interest. This serves as a personal form of gratification for the action taken. The variable reward achieved here is gratification for the action taken.
The rewards vary the next time reader goes through the hook cycle. The rewards could be personal gratification, relieving the sense of urgency, fear of missing out on the breaking news, etc.
Investment:
Investment is the fourth step in the model. This phase concerns the anticipation of rewards in the future.
Examples – Setting user preferences, referring others, followers, reputation, etc. Investments increase the likelihood of users iterating the Hook cycle again by loading the next trigger to start the process again.
The ET App user, having experienced the gratification for the action taken – ie. reading the targetted news item, invests more time in the app to continue experiencing more and more by reading related articles strategically placed at multiple points along the web page.
For a given user, the investment could be different in every hook cycle. Some examples of investment are – Personalizing the app, Subscribing to newsletters, liking a particular editor’s content, etc. The ET app tries to nudge you to use the myET feature specially meant to personalize your reading stuff.
The app smartly uses these investments to load the next external trigger to start the cycle all over again. Ex: If the user subscribes or personalizes any type of news content, the next alert will be designed based on this data.
These Investments increase the likelihood of users iterating the Hook cycle again by loading the next trigger to start the process again.
This is how the iteration continues. The readers may not go through the entire hook cycle in the first instance. But over time, the app tries to put readers through these steps again and again to complete the entire hook cycle.
Over time, the external trigger slowly gets converted into internal triggers associated with the user’s habits (Boredom, Curiosity, Consistency), and this cycle repeats over and over involuntarily turning this into a habit.