What we do with it
- 01
Count the steps people can see. “Step 2 of 3” works; “47% complete” with nothing behind it doesn't.
- 02
A head start helps. A coffee card of twelve stamps with two already filled gets finished faster than a blank card of ten.
- 03
Only when it's true. A step the person already did counts as done. Progress we made up does not.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
“Your profile is 20% complete” on day one, counting steps that don't matter, to make people anxious.
Do
“Step 2 of 3” where step 1 really was the email you just confirmed.
The evidence
What the research says.
Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky and Yuhuang Zheng's 2006 study ran in the field, with real customers: café customers bought coffee more often as they got closer to a free one, and people rating songs online rated more of them as they neared a reward. The “head start” card worked as well. Online, Frederick Conrad and colleagues found in 2010 that a survey's progress bar mattered most at the start: one that crawled early on made more people quit.
Sources
- Hull, C. L. (1932). The goal-gradient hypothesis and maze learning. Psychological Review, 39(1).
- Hull, C. L. (1934). The rat's speed-of-locomotion gradient in the approach to food. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 17(3).
- Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1).
- Conrad, F. G., Couper, M. P., Tourangeau, R., & Peytchev, A. (2010). The impact of progress indicators on task completion. Interacting with Computers, 22(5).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current