WebFest.Me: 10 Rules of Making It Human by 21-Year Old Web Wizard

Brian Wong, the founder of Kiip.me (pronounced “keep”), shared his 10 tips of making your business human in order to be successful. Remember, he spoke at the WebFest.Me conference:

1. Existing patterns of behavior

   Find out what people are doing and take what you have observed when you are building your business. For example, we know that people get hungry when they are drunk and are more likely to eat junk food. The result is — there are McDonalds’s near clubs and bars that are open late at night. For kiip, this was about mobile activity, people are already playing games and looking at their phone. What are your customers already doing and how do you make more sense of that action?

2. Take a look at the moment

   Apple shows us what a moment can look like when we use their product in their commercials.  Sometimes it is purely visual, purely inspirational, but this is what you should do to your customers. For kiip, they found the achievement moment. That moment is a pause, something that means completion. They identified it and decided to make it better.

3. Engage meaningfully.

   Nike is good at doing this at marathons. They created a way to use their products, without really advertising their product. Kiip will be like the free Gatorade that you take in a break. You should surprise and delight your customers. People should not play games for the sake of reward kiip is offering. “I do not wanna dangle incentives at people and make them act just in order to get the incentive, because I do not want the human race to be like that. You never know when your reward will come“, says Brian.

4. Identify emotional highs.

   We are a very emotional species. We want to know when people are feeling happy, when they are feeling angry. That is why customer service is important, but you have to recognize these moments and augment them. You should think about how people feel when they are using your app. A good example of this is Path app – their photos are called moments and users can express their emotions with smilies (not just “liking” something).

5. Kiip (keep) it simple

   As an entrepreneur, it is more important when you say no, than when you say yes. What you are cutting is important. What makes you indispensable? If you are really good at UX, make sure people know you know how to make stuff sexy. Sometimes you will learn just by your business growing what the needs of your customers are.

6. Create a two-way x2 connection

   In kiip’s rewards, you have the ability to gift your reward to a friend. They let people market for them by sharing the rewards with their friends and family.

7. Choice.

   Perceived Choice is not real choice, but it is important. Perceived effort is an important part of that. An example of perceived effort is companies for finding plane tickets: they want you to feel like they try really hard to get the best prices, so they make you wait 10-15 seconds to show your search results. It does not take them that long to really get the results, but if you feel like they put effort into it, you will be pleased with the service.

8. Serendipity

   Serendipity is about experiencing life with explaining how you can go through life and bring delight into information gathering.

9. To build a story.

   People will relate to you on an emotional level when you tell the story, when they know what drives you. It is important to craft your stories. For kiip, a rewards network is very mechanical and it is about the people receiving it.

Inception.

You can not force a vision down someones throat, you have to help them see the idea, you have to help them inceptionize that. With kiip, Brian wanted to show people exactly why mobile advertising was something that had to be changed.  You should talk more about why than what has to be done. That purpose is incredibly important and unless your business has that purpose very well branded into it, people will not know how to follow you, how to rally around it.

If you missed our first article on Brian, make sure to check it out!

Photography by: Marina Filipović Marinshe