Articles by Sarah Tavel
Hierarchy of Engagement, ExpandedTo build an enduring consumer product, you must maximize user engagement in three levels: 1. Grow users who complete your core action, the single most important action that defines your product. 2. Retain users through accruing benefits and mounting losses as they use the product more. 3. Finally, create virtuous loops where user engagement fuels self-perpetuating growth through network effects and other feedback cycles. Of these, network effects are the strongest virtuous loop as they improve the product simply by users using it more. Interesting products like Evernote have succeeded at the first two levels but failed to create virtuous loops to reach the third level of enduring growth.