A sure sign of success is the acceptance of your product as an everyday business addiction by your targeted users. To create an everyday business addiction, the technology needs to evolve a common human task, be highly personalized, have minimal downtimes, and excellent customer management and fulfillment. Products that are successfully adopted for daily usage provide personalized control of and access to information that we either need or enjoy on a regular basis. Building and maintaining this type of technology, either client-based or web-based, is more difficult and expensive than building and maintaining technologies that have discontinuous usage. In addition, successful execution of these products requires a streamlined internal organization with a clear vision, a definitive understanding of the techno-graphics of that market, funding and staff for customer support and fulfillment, as well as a commitment to the longevity of the product.

There are many differences between creating products that have discontinuous usage, a one-way information site for example, and a product that is a necessity or habit. Of these, one of the most crucial is a streamlined commitment to the success of the product by senior management within the organization. This usually entails having a strong and clear vision, as well as commitments to staffing and funding that are larger than other types of products. Building a scenario or task-based product requires a specialized interface, code and systems that can deliver and perform, established forms of customer support and fulfillment, and a strong marketing plan. Accomplishing this with minimal crisis points requires that the organization be well prepared to quickly address issues as they arise during the build and launch cycles. Post launch the focus shifts to, accessing funds to support the expense of refreshing content or the cost of adding features as the needs of the users increase. For the leaders of the organization and the builders of the product, having an understanding of how people behave, and of creating user-centered designs that bring business, technology, and interface tightly together are also critical.

In the case of America Online, a client-based product with mass adoption, it took a major business shift in 1997 to move the company from a static format to a live-rotation publishing format. The new formats were geared towards creating habitual household usage. Upper management within the organization decided that to increase profit, they would need to also significantly increase the costs of doing business (financially, technically, and organizationally) in an effort to create a system that users felt they needed. The need to drive traffic deeper into the content, allow users to create personal spaces, and to increase dependency upon the use of the software became a primary goal. This effected both staffing and the amount of dollars spent towards bettering the technology. At that decision point, with over a year's worth of effort, the company changed from being self-indulgent to focusing on user needs. The end result is a company that has been adopted by the mass market, and which has encouraged both the everyday business and personal addictions of its users.

The goal of the addictive product is to attract a large number of curious people, and then encourage them to return, and to increase their dependencies upon your technology. The trick in enabling this to happen is to know to whom you are marketing. The Psychology of Everyday Things by Don Norman, Now or Never by Mary Modahl, and Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore all address adoption patterns of mass markets to new products. In addition to the expectations within the community you are targeting, for instance the steel industry, there are distinct techno graphic (skill level) groupings within your potential users. Of these, you will need to draw early adopters to your product first. These are people who like to use technology before it is mainstream. "They are also prepared to bear with the inevitable bugs and glitches that accompany innovation just coming to the market" says Geoffrey Moore. These people will readily give you insightful feedback as to how to improve your product. What is interesting here, is that throughout history the mass markets have followed the group that is willing to try something first. Only when a product has solidly proven to be an evolution of, not revolution of, a certain task will the next segment of the market give it a try. A product of this nature needs to address the technical skill levels of the early adopters, but cannot overwhelm or alienate the market segment that follows.