Strategies to improve user retention

I have written an article in my previous diary called “Advanced Operational Thinking…”, which also talked about the model of the traffic system. I have been coming into contact with knowledge related to “systems” recently.

Why should I be interested in learning about "system"? Because I discovered a phenomenon that everything can be seen as a system. Nature is also an ecosystem. Our cells, our human body, etc. are all systems. So is a water cup. It has an internal structure.

Moreover, I also found that the industry experts, big-name lecturers, efficient people, etc., all have their own set of methodologies, which are based on the "system".

Understanding the "system" will make it easy to find the most efficient path in very complex things.

Today I will use the traffic in operation as the theme to talk about the system. I will disassemble the system step by step and give corresponding cases. If you follow my thinking, I hope you can understand the concept of the "system" model more easily.

The purpose of this article is to give everyone a conceptual understanding of the "system", which is the first step to elevate your thinking.

Retention is just one variable in the traffic system. I have written an article about traffic system thinking before (now I have put it on Knowledge Planet). That article also explains the theory of traffic system. If you don’t understand it very well, you can go back and read the previous article.

The views in the current article may be somewhat repetitive or conflicting with those in the previous article, but the logic will not change and there are things that can be learned from them.

Once you have a good understanding of the system structure, you will be able to find key variables more easily.

Flow system: inflow-retention-outflow.

There are three ways to improve retention: increase inflow, expand and improve retention, and reduce outflow

Seeing this, we have basically sorted out the direction.

The next step is to make attempts and strategies in three directions.

Increase inflow

All traffic has a channel, and this channel will determine your traffic growth rate. There are two very important variables in traffic growth rate: width and length.

For example, if your channel is very wide and short, then the increase in your stock will obviously be much faster than if it is very narrow and long.

So, what is the width of the traffic channel?

If your budget is 50,000 yuan and you make a paid placement on channel a, then the width of the traffic channel here is: channel a + budget.

We broke down the system into the inflow, and then found the core point that affects the inflow, namely the growth rate. From the growth rate, we found two key points that affect the growth rate, namely width and length.

So, what should we do to increase the width of this traffic?

First: Obviously, increase the budget investment in channel a and optimize the quality of traffic from channel a (quality of new users).

Second: increase the channels for inflow, that is, increase the delivery of other channels. This is easy to understand, so I won’t say much about it, such as adding bcd channels.

Now that we have talked about the width, let’s talk about the length.

It is an obvious phenomenon that the longer the pipe is, the longer it takes to flow to the end, which will directly affect the inflow speed.

Therefore, length is also important in speed increase.

The length of the inflow is the length of the path that the traffic takes to enter your stock pool.

This requires channel path optimization. If you have invested in several channels, you need to analyze the data to find out the quality of the traffic brought by each channel and why the traffic stock from a certain channel is very poor? Is the path too long?

For example, a new user sees your ad on channel a and clicks, downloads, launches, registers, and uses it.

This is a normal path.

But there are also some situations where the location of your delivery channel is not eye-catching enough. For example, the effect of the third-level page of channel a will definitely be worse than the second-level page or the first-level page. Even the users of this channel rarely go to the third-level page/an unpopular section.

You might think that this is not a question of length, but a question of channel exposure.

wrong.

This is the problem of length (path), because the length here not only refers to your own length, but also refers to the length of the users in your delivery channel that reach your ads.

Thinking globally, you must regard the behavior of "channel placement" as the "product" itself. You need to think about the other party's user share, basic attribute preferences, platform positioning, and even more, you need to choose the placement location based on your understanding of their platform.

Because the common phenomenon now is that the larger the product, the more complex the user portrait will be. For example, if you want to invest in Xiaohongshu, do you know what type of notes Xiaohongshu users like to read and how they express themselves?

Assuming that 70% of Xiaohongshu users watch makeup tutorials in the form of videos, 10% watch clothes, and 20% watch shoes, then if you are a shoe buyer, how do you think you should invest? Obviously, you should invest in the shoe section, or in the details of the notes with the shoe tag, right?

#I haven't studied Xiaoxshu, the above is just an assumption.

Because the source is on the channel side, you need to simulate the user path on the channel side. If their users need a long path to find you, it will obviously affect your traffic growth rate.

Therefore, if you plan to place an ad, you must choose a relatively good location.

Of course, the channel path involves the issue of choosing the placement, and in the length of the traffic growth rate, another variable is the path length of one's own product.

Optimize what needs to be optimized, and try to make sure users can quickly understand three things after they come in: What is it? How to play? What value does it bring?

If a new user can solve these three problems in a relatively short period of time, there is a high probability that he will turn from an inflow into a real stock.

Expand and improve retention

The retention here refers to capacity, that is, the size of the traffic pool.

I pay great attention to retention. Now basically all products use daily active users as an indicator, and daily active users include retained users.

Moreover, the value of retained users must be greater than the value of new users, because new users have not yet been converted into retained users by then. Therefore, the value of new users at this stage is not easy to judge. Maybe they come, take a look and leave.

The retention here does not mean until the next day, but refers to users within a longer period, which you can understand as active users. Therefore, here you need to define what are the active users of your product based on your own product?

For example, logging in for 7 consecutive days? Or added 5 friends in 7 days? Uploaded 5 pictures in 3 days? etc.

How to do it?

Two points.

Expansion: that is, expanding capacity to allow more people to stay in a certain area or section. For example, if you find that there is no community function, then you develop one. In this case, this new community section contributes to the increase in capacity.

For example, adding social groups is also a way to expand capacity, that is, increasing the user container. Tencent QQ has many containers to store incoming traffic, such as QQ groups, QQ spaces, interest groups... and now we are also expanding the list.

It stores traffic through various types of containers.

You can see the importance of retention.

Any traffic that is not converted is not considered effective traffic.

Improvement: The improvement here refers to increasing the probability of them staying, which involves the product side, and the main thing is the product experience and the value it brings.

The product experience section includes: how to make the novice guidance more reasonable, UI interaction design, color matching, key features introduction, etc.

The design of all products must follow two core points: experience and value.

These two are necessary. Without them, there is no need to talk about retention.

To put it more extremely, your service may be very poor and users may not be able to find your customer service for a long time, but you must provide good experience and value, otherwise everything will be in vain.

Reduce outflow

Both users and products have a life cycle. How long users will stay is determined by the product form. Once users enter the traffic pool, life cycle management should begin, such as preventing loss, preventing silence, and promoting recall, which are more operational means.

Of course, there is also the issue of products. What the product needs to do is to let users form usage habits during the retention period, even if you ask them to sign in every day.

For example, if you know that a certain user likes to read the contents of the xxx column, then you can tell the user that the xxx column will be updated at x time on x days, or at x on weeks. First, cultivate the user's biological clock, and at the appointed time, he will know that the column he follows will be updated.

Cultivating user behavioral habits is not a matter of one day or one night. During this period, it involves whether the value you provide still meets the user's expectations. If in this process, the user finds that the value you provide can no longer satisfy him, he will start looking for alternatives.

So, there is another key thing you need to do: provide new value.

For example, if a user follows the running column, we can conduct research and analysis from a horizontal perspective: if the user follows running, does he like fitness or other sports? If the answer is yes, then you should provide this kind of information and functionality to users.

Toshifumi Suzuki said: The biggest competition comes from the ever-changing demands of customers.

Only by continuously meeting the diverse needs of users can users stay for a long time.

A large part of reducing outflow is actually establishing a set of anti-loss control or recall mechanisms.

The core of preventing churn is to reduce the channels for outflow and improve the service experience. The core of the recall mechanism is to allow users to return to the normal path they have taken after being reached, and to make users feel the value again through a series of means.

When I played dnf before, after not playing for a certain period of time, when I logged in again, the system would give me a return gift package. This was a kind of welfare. After I got this gift package, I would start to brush the map again. This is a service mechanism, you can also understand it as a welfare.

The first point to reduce the outflow channel is that you have to find the channel first, that is, which behaviors are causing user loss. These behaviors are the channels. If you fill these channels and optimize them, user loss will naturally decrease.

How do you identify these behaviors that may cause user loss?

Data analysis, reputation within the circle, and feedback.

Data analysis: Divide users into groups and check the differences in behaviors among users in different groups. For example, users in group A subscribed to a column, while users in group B did not. Then, look at the retention data of these two groups of users to see which group has a higher retention rate. Analyze why the retention rate of users in group A who subscribed is higher. Is it because the platform does not have the column content that users in group B like?

I won’t say much about the reputation and feedback within the circle. Negative reviews are the biggest pain points and need to be taken seriously.

What I talked about above is the "system" model. You should raise your thinking and remember three points: inflow, retention, and outflow; then remember three methods: increase inflow, expand capacity, and reduce outflow.

All your actions should start from the bottom up to find ways to increase the inflow, should you increase the delivery of channels or increase the budget of designated channels, or post everywhere for free? Or maybe you can build a good relationship with the group owner and ask him to help you promote your products? As long as it can bring inflow, you can try it.

I wrote it in great detail because I hope that you can find solutions from the bottom-up thinking rather than focusing on a certain point and being unable to get out of it. If you find that the retention rate is low recently, no problem, look for the method in the "system" model above the table.

If retention rate is low, first find out the reason, and then look for ways to expand capacity and improve product experience to create new experience value for users.

Everything is inevitably inseparable from the "system", and the "system" mentioned above is divided into several structures. For example, the structure of the inflow is length and width. These two variables will determine the quality of the inflow structure.

I will gradually reflect the content about structure in the following diaries, so I will not go into details here due to space constraints.

Summarize:

System = inflow - retention - outflow, among which retention is the key variable. There are three ways to improve retention: increase inflow, expand/improve retention, and reduce outflow.

Increase inflow: expand the width and reduce the length of the inflow

Expand/improve retention: increase functional modules (capacity) that allow users to use the service for a long time or frequently, and improve user retention rate, giving priority to experience and value.

Reduce outflow: Establish anti-churn control and recall mechanisms, and provide new value to retained users, that is, develop new features or content.

Original title: Teach you to easily understand the "system" model of operation and understand the underlying logical structure

Author: Wen Qinghe

Public account: Rain Washes Thousand Peaks Show (ID: shenzhuangnaiba),