Make it easy to do

How can we steer people to build a new habit that is sustained over time?

It is said that, 'to uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth'.

So here is one of the six essential strategies (taken from Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker's new Behavioural Science guide to habit building) which is effective for forming a new habit. 

Make it easy to do

Behaviour change experts emphasise the importance of making any desired behaviour easy to do; this is no less important for habitual behaviours, especially when they are very new.

When learning a new behaviour, we have to think a lot more, which takes more effort and so it can already seem harder to do.

So, minimising barriers, making it feel less daunting or simplifying choice can steer someone closer to starting and continuing a new habit.

This is especially important when the desired new habit needs to take place in an already demanding situation, where the cognitive capacities of the consumer are already stretched, perhaps with other distractions or limited mental bandwidth.

For example, trying to change habits in the workplace can be difficult when people are already overloaded and often stressed.

Specifically, it’s useful to think about three elements that help to make a new habit easier to establish:

Eliminate friction by reducing the number of decisions a consumer needs to make:

The easier the set-up is, the more likely we are to at least start the new behaviour.

How many decisions are you asking someone to make before they can begin? Are they likely to know or easily find the answers or will the decisions just confuse and put them off?

Chunk or reduce the steps to carry out the behaviour:

New behaviours and actions can seem daunting due to their unfamiliarity.

If we can make the steps required for the routine simple and minimal (say no more than three), it’s more likely a consumer will try and adopt.

Reduce the perceived effort or any other potential barriers:

Changing the status quo and starting a new behaviour is always going to feel like more effort, but if we can reduce any known barriers to the routine, we have more chance of success.

For example, if you wanted to get citizens cycle commuting rather than taking the car, it would be a good idea to ensure that cycle lanes are in place and bike racks near workplaces are sufficient

Applying the strategy

The Behavioural Architects worked with an online payment platform to strengthen usage of their payment mechanism and help build a stronger payment choice habit.

Even though consumers intended to use the platform, their behaviour showed that they often used other payment mechanisms. By analysing and observing the user experience and asking consumers to describe their varied online payment experiences, we were able to identify recommendations to convert intention into action. 

We were able to promote greater use of the payment platform by making it easier to select and use, and in the process strengthening the cues to use the platform. We also identified how to make the rewards of use more self-evident.

For example, one recommendation was to create a more salient online cue to use the platform when choosing how to pay.

Webpages can be very cluttered and overwhelming and often important features and choices are not noticed by the customer. But making choices stand out better on the page and catch people’s attention can increase use and reduce confusion.

A good example of another salient payment process would be Amazon’s ‘one click’ buy button.

A second recommendation was to make the payment mechanism easier to use, chunking up the process into clear, simple stages, to ensure customers understood what they needed to do next and feel less daunted by the process. This increased ease served as a reward too – consumers were motivated to use the platform because it allowed them to make quicker and easier payments with little effort.

Both these recommendations helped to reduce perceived barriers for consumers.

Payment Mechanism Habit

Cues: Consistent, salient, visual cues in online stores, leading up to payment

Repeated: For any online payment

Reward(s): Ease and quickness of use. Secure payent

Strategy used: Make it easy (to pay

Download the e-book to discover the other six strategies to make new behaviour stick.

This extract was taken from 'How to Make New Behaviour Stick', A Behavioural Science guide to habit building by Crawford Hollingworth and Liz Barker