While user habits are a boon to companies fortunate enough to engender them, their existence inherently makes success less likely for new innovations and start-ups trying to disrupt the status quo. The fact is that successfully changing long-term user habits is exceptionally rare. Altering behavior requires not only an understanding of how to persuade people to act—for example, the first time they land on a web page—but also necessitates getting them to repeat behaviors for long periods, ideally for the rest of their lives.
