On meeting your members where they already are.

UX Laws in Membership Design | Part 2: Jakob's Law

Users spend most of their time on other sites, so they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

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When I started my community membership for virtual assistants, I thought that Slack would be the best place for the virtual assistants to be since it had a great free plan and we could organize everything into channels.

So when new virtual assistants wanted to join our community, I sent the Slack invites and shared a brief description of what Slack is, linked to its website for more information and was excited for the new members to join.

For most of the virtual assistants, it was their first time using Slack. We were working with the youth in Kenya who were looking for remote work opportunities and so some had not been exposed to platforms like Slack.

The challenge started from the very beginning. Some did not even know how to create accounts and when they tried and could not figure it out, they gave up and never joined the community. Others joined but even with the FAQs and tutorials from us and Slack, they just couldn't get around to using it. Then there were those who downloaded it and were excited to use it but it just was not top of mind because it is not a platform that they would usually check.

So we had a ghost town.

After a couple of months and seeing that Slack wasn't working so well, I decided to move to WhatsApp, which is a very popular communication app in Kenya, and honestly worldwide except maybe in the US.

Our engagement skyrocketed.

The difference was very simple. Our virtual assistants were already spending hours every day on WhatsApp chatting with friends, coordinating with family, checking updates. They had built up years of familiarity with how it worked. So when they joined our community on WhatsApp, there was nothing new to learn. They could immediately jump into conversations without thinking about how to navigate the platform. 

That's Jakob's Law in action: people prefer platforms that work like the ones they already know and spend time on.

This is something that every creator or entrepreneur who is thinking of starting a community membership should consider when choosing platforms and how to deliver the value of the membership.

A community that I am in moved from Circle to WhatsApp and also saw massive engagement. It wasn't that people did not want to engage before, it was just that they are more used to and familiar with WhatsApp and so it made it easier to engage. It also helps that people check WhatsApp daily for their communications needs.

Another community that I would really like to engage in but often fail to is using their own custom platform that I really didn't understand how to use and so I hardly check in. The community is really lovely but the mental bandwidth required to figure out the platform makes me not check in regularly.

Does that mean that everyone should leave community platforms like Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool, Kajabi, Slack, Discord, Heartbeat etc?

Not really.

I have also seen great memberships in these platforms and depending on what your membership is about, these platforms might actually work better. However, you need to understand that some of your members might not be familiar with how these platforms work and that might reduce their engagement, even though they love your membership.

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How to apply Jakob’s Law to your membership

Research your audience's existing habits first. Before choosing a platform, survey or interview your target members about what apps/platforms they already use daily. Choose based on their behavior, not your preferences.

Test with a small pilot group. Run a trial with a few members to see what feels intuitive or confusing before fully committing to a platform. Use their feedback to fine-tune your setup.

Use familiar UI patterns and terminology. If you must use a specialized platform, customize it to mirror patterns your members know. For example, if they're used to Facebook Groups, set up your community to have similar navigation and features.

Leverage platform features your members already understand. If your community is on a less familiar platform, enable integrations with tools they DO know. For example, email digests, mobile app notifications similar to their messaging apps or browser extensions that make it feel more familiar.

Create comparison guides. Make onboarding easier by saying "If you've used [familiar platform], here's how [new platform] works differently." For example, "Think of spaces in Circle like channels in Slack."

Consider a hybrid approach. Keep daily engagement on familiar platforms (like WhatsApp for daily chat) while using specialized platforms for specific features (like a course platform just for video lessons they access occasionally).

Platform migration can be costly and a lot of work for both you, the creator of the membership, and for your members. So take some time to remember Jakob's Law when you are choosing the platform for your membership. And if you end up choosing a platform that requires a learning curve, spend time hand-holding your members during onboarding so that they get used to it. After all, the easier it is for your members to navigate your community, the more they'll actually show up and engage.

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This is the second article in my UX Laws in Membership Design series. 

For an overview of the broader UX principles that can transform your membership experience, check out Proven Design Principles You Can Apply to Your Membership.

Article 1: On having fewer options and why that might be better for your membership | Hick’s Law

P.S. I offer membership audits and ongoing support to help entrepreneurs and creators design thriving memberships that people love. If you’d like to work with me, reach out at jolleenopula.com/contact