What is an Aha moment?

How to help users find value in your product.

What is an Aha moment in product design and why should you care? Well, an Aha moment is the exact point in time when a user understands the value they get from a product or service.

This means they understand the value the product will provide to them as a customer and then in turn usually results in a commitment from them to said product.

A good example of an Aha moment might be when you sign up for a fitness app, you get a 10-day free trial and dive in. If the product doesn’t present an Aha moment, you may never convert. So you must understand the value within the first 10 days.

For that example maybe the Aha moment is the first time you complete one of the awesome workouts, you then realize how world-class the content is and how clear and easy it was to follow while presenting a good challenge for your fitness level.

You think to yourself, I can see myself doing this and getting the gain I am after. Aha! There is the moment, values aimed at the target user and understood. From research, we understand that improvements in a user’s first 5 minutes can drive a 50% conversion in lifetime value.

This means it is vital to get users to the Aha moment as soon as possible, or at least set up a continuation of the experience to unlock it.

How can we understand our Aha moment?

One thing you must be careful of is cognitive bias, cognitive bias can happen when you believe your users have the same amount of knowledge as you and you can end up hindering Aha moments with this type of thinking.

That is why user testing is imperative, there a few ways to understand your Aha moment. Firstly you need a clearly defined value proposition (as all good products should) which helps you understand where you are most valuable and to who. If you have that in place then it is a good starting point to interview users who are new to your product or to walk brand new users through your onboarding with a user test to gather feedback.