Familiarity-Anchor Copy for New Concepts
When users land but don't act, the product isn't wrong — anchor unfamiliar concepts to something they already know.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
When users reach a page or app and do nothing, the problem is usually copy, not product — they haven't even experienced the product yet. The fix is to resonate with the user's pain point rather than describe your solution, and to tie any unfamiliar concept to something already familiar in their mental model so they can slot themselves into the use case. Gojek repeatedly grew adoption just by re-anchoring copy and visuals.
Origin
Widjaja's applied copy/positioning heuristic from Gojek's early growth, where familiarity anchoring (framing a novel product as a known one) drove measurable acquisition.
Core principles
- 01If users land and don't act, they haven't experienced the product — so it's the copy, not the product
- 02Speak to the pain point, not the solution you're offering, so users fit themselves into the use case
- 03Tie an unfamiliar concept to a familiar one to make it graspable and actionable
- 04Small copy and sequencing changes can move conversion a lot without any product change
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose inaction as a copy problem
When conversion fails between app launch and first action, treat it as copy: users who land and do nothing haven't experienced the product, so the product isn't the thing that's wrong.
Pro tip Split the diagnosis — no conversion from launch to first action points to copy; conversion that's just infrequent points to painfully long conversion paths to shorten instead.
- 2
Rewrite copy to the pain point
Change the copy to resonate with the user's pain rather than describing your solution, so users understand how to fit themselves into the use case.
- 3
Anchor the unfamiliar to the familiar
Find the closest concept the user already understands and present your novel feature as that thing, so it maps cleanly onto their existing mental model.
Pro tip Reuse a familiar object visually — Gojek printed a virtual account number onto a picture of a credit card so users grasped a digital wallet.
- 4
Ship the copy change and measure the loop
Deploy the re-anchored copy or visual and watch the conversion/adoption metric move, since these are cheap, fast changes with no engineering build.
In the wild
Many Indonesian users didn't know what a digital wallet was, so Gojek put a user's virtual account number onto a picture of a credit card. Users then understood it acted like a debit/credit account and could type the number at an ATM to top up.
→ Top-ups increased based on literally just sending that familiar-looking picture — a copy/visual change with no product change.
On the infrequent-conversion side, Kumu users wanted to sign up and find friends but the underutilized, slow search API was the painfully long path. The team sped up search and added more content there.
→ Conversion rose toward 90% over a few weeks of optimizing the longest painful path.
Common mistakes
Blaming the product when users land and don't act
If users reach the page and do nothing, they never experienced the product, so it can't be the product — teams waste effort rebuilding features when the real fix is copy that speaks to the pain point.
Describing your solution instead of the user's pain
Copy centered on the novel solution leaves users unable to place themselves in the use case; anchoring to their pain (and to a familiar concept) is what makes them convert.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and growth marketers whose funnel shows users arriving but not taking the first action on an unfamiliar product.
Not ideal for
Funnels where users do convert but infrequently — there the fix is shortening the longest painful conversion path, not re-anchoring copy.
From the transcript
“if you have a lot of people landing on a webpage or an app and then not doing anything then it's probably copy like they…”
“change the copy and resonate with the pain point rather than the solution you are offering so that users understand how to fit themselves into…”
“we did was to actually take someone's virtual account number and put it onto a picture of a credit card”
“we actually saw top-ups increase based on us literally just sending that picture”
“how do we tie the familiarity loop back into the consumer mental model of the product and drive acquisition”
From the episode
How to scrappily hire for, measure, and unlock growth
Crystal Widjaja, Gojek and Kumu