Before you enforce rules, understand the resistance
When users do not follow your product rules, the instinct is to penalise. Sometimes the better move is to understand why.
When users do not follow the rules of your product, the instinct is often to correct them. Add friction, add penalties or tighten enforcement.
Sometimes that is necessary. But sometimes, it is premature because mostly, non-compliance is information.
Users may not be following your flow because it does not match how they naturally work. They may be skipping steps because they do not see the value. They may be bending the system because the official path is too rigid for their real-world context. It is easy to drive strong metrics by optimising for your most disciplined users. They follow instructions, complete flows and behave exactly as your system expects.
But that can be because these users are desperate.
Organic product growth usually comes from understanding your ICP deeply — especially the ones who should be a fit, but are not behaving the way you expected. That gap is where product learning lives.
- Why are they dropping off?
- Why are they bypassing steps?
- Why are they resisting your rules?
Those questions matter more than enforcement. Because if your ideal users keep resisting the system, the problem may not be the users. It may be the system.