What an App that Limits Screen Time Taught me about Customer Research, Competitive Intelligence & Messaging.
How an app that limits screen time reminded me that without a deep understanding of your customers and the alternatives they've tried, you can't build a great product or even market a fantastic one.
I downloaded an app to help me reduce the time I spend on Social media (Instagram and Facebook precisely). As I onboarded myself, I was so impressed. It reminded me again that you can’t build a great product or market a fantastic product without understanding your customers and the competitive alternatives (or simply put - the different ways customers have tried to solve that problem and its shortcomings).
To explain why I love this app, I’ll tell you about:
Myself, the different ways I’ve tried to limit screen time, and why it’s been unsuccessful
What the product got right that made me believe that they nailed customer research and competitive intel.
About Myself
(think of this as a customer interview 🙂)
As long as I can remember, I’ve always tried to limit screen time. One of the hacks I use and still use is to put my phone away while I’m working. This means that my phone is in another room while I am working but close enough that I can hear it ring.
The problem is that once it’s 5 pm, I grab my phone to check all that I’ve missed. And what happens is that by the time I flit through Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and WhatsApp Business, I’ve spent so much time online that I have little time left for my after-work plans which are usually to read books/newsletters, create free resources for my community or do some research for my newsletter.
Other ways I’ve tried to solve this problem: I use the screen time feature on my iPhone. One thing I did was to set up focus time. That way, these distracting apps aren't on my home screen. Then I also set up a time limit on these apps. Now this is laughable because each time the time elapses, I click on the button that asks me to stay on for an extra 15 minutes. Somedays, I simply turn off the timing 😂
Last week, I realized that this method is simply not working. If I can easily extend the time I spend on those apps, then it defeats the purpose of imposing the restriction in the first place. So I began to search. I did some Googling and also went to Reddit. Reddit was super helpful. I had trouble choosing from all the recommendations but I settled for ScreenZen because:
When you want to open an app, it doesn’t open it instantly. Instead, it makes you wait for some time (a time you have set) before it grants you access. (Can you see how different it is from the iPhone screen time feature?)
It has a feature called Pause message which is a message they show you before opening the app. The message can either be other things you can do instead of scrolling through the app or a custom message you write to yourself. This is the route I choose. (my custom message is: Onyi, is this necessary? Does this not distract you from what you ought to do this evening?)
It limits the number of opens in a day and also lets me set a time limit for each open. I set mine to 4 opens per day and a limit of 5 minutes for each open. This brings the total time I spend on each app daily to 20 minutes.
The clincher is that I don’t see these apps on my screen 🤯. For this to work, you set a schedule when it should hide these apps completely. Mine is from 9 am - 5 pm. During this time, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp are not on my home screen. And after 5 pm, the restrictions I set in c above kick in.
Writing this now reminded me that you can’t do effective messaging without being specific. Blanket statements like increase your productivity or reduce the time you spend on social media will only work if you back them up with features. You can lead with benefits but the product features are the only thing that makes me believe your claim.
What’s even more interesting is that most times when people who’ve been using alternatives (and trust me, all your target customers are using an alternative) start searching for a new product, it’s usually a feature-specific shortcoming that prompts the search.
For example in my case, I was looking for a tool that would make it difficult for me to give myself an extra 15 minutes on Instagram (which was a shortcoming of my current tool). That’s what prompted the search and not a broad search for “reduce time spent on social media”.
How they showed this on their website
While writing this, I checked out ScreenZen’s website and it was impressive. As I mentioned earlier, most product search begins because target customers hit a constraint with their current tool. ScreenZen capitalized on this insight when writing their website copy, especially the hero section.
The market for apps that limit screen time is competitive. You’re competing with native apps on iPhone and Android as well as others like RescueTime and Freedom. The free versions of these apps are very solid. If you operate in this market, you have to literally differentiate or die.
The first impressive thing ScreenZen did is that they did not lead with broad messaging - something like “limit the time you spend on social media”. Instead, they figured out their UVP, what their users love most about their product, and built their messaging around it.
This UVP is “pause before opening a distracting app.”
They didn’t just stop there. The rest of the website supported this core value proposition. This is evident in the featured testimonials. What everyone is talking about is how this pause feature reduced the time they spent doomscrolling.
Finally, they introduced other equally amazing product features.
Did you notice that they did not try to talk about all these product features at the onset? They led with the one customers loved the most and later on, shone the spotlight on the others.
This reminded me of the wedge theory in product marketing (well, I’m the one who coined the name wedge theory 😊). But basically, April Dunford who is a B2B positioning expert advises that when you have multiple products and are confused about how to position them, lead with a wedge. (listen to the podcast here).
This wedge is the most important product you’d like your target customers to buy. When they’ve converted, you can then tell them about the other amazing products you have. She gave an example with Salesforce. They have multiple products but they lead with their CRM after which they introduce you to other products in their suite.
ScreenZen applied this principle on their website.
In conclusion:
Good marketing starts with understanding your customers (which you almost can’t do if you don’t talk to them and ask them the right questions*), understanding the current ways they’re solving their problems and the shortcomings of this method, building a product that is better than the alternative and communicating effectively, how this product is better than the alternatives.
I can't help but add that Copywriting is not just showing up and stringing a couple of words together. If you ever want to hire a copywriter, hire one who understands the customers, the competitive landscape, your product, positioning, and messaging. Without this, they can never write good copy that will support your acquisition goals.
*I created a customer interview bundle. It contains a template for conducting customer interviews as well as another template for extracting insights from these interviews. I created this using insights from Adele Revella’s best-selling book on Buyer Persona. Join our community to get this resource.
this was very helpful and interesting to read. thank you!