APP operation user growth routine!

The core purpose of operating an APP is to keep users using your APP so that the value of the platform itself to users can be continuously improved, so that users' dependence on and contribution to the platform can be steadily improved. What we often call “attracting new users – activation – retention – dissemination” is the most basic routine method, and its purpose is to continuously improve the user’s “conversion rate” and “engagement”.

1. New customer acquisition routine: maximizing customer acquisition at the lowest cost

Optimize customer acquisition channels-mining and optimization

This is the routine summarized by growth hackers. We lock in the two steps of the best channels: discovery and optimization.

During the discovery phase, the team should extensively experiment with various possible channel options and conduct in-depth research on each channel, but this does not mean making random choices. The initial assumption that your target user group is necessary means that you will define your core user group and draw a rough user portrait, which is the direction for initially choosing promotion channels.

But it does not mean that the channels selected in this way will cost a lot of time and money to invest. The idea of ​​A/B Testing will be a way to optimize channels. The optimization and screening of channels is inseparable from two basic principles: matching with the product and matching with the input-output ratio.

Through the existing channel data, even if it is only one day's data, operations need to conduct insight analysis. The feedback of channel data is analyzed from the user retention rate, frequency of APP use, and in-depth analysis of the match between channel users and products. Are these users your hypothetical target user group? Is there even an extra surprise of discovering a new group of users?

In addition, for the matching of channels and investment-output ratio, the basic routine is to screen channels through continuous two-dimensional comparison. For example: channel retention rate/number of channel users, channel user usage time/number of channel users, channel user usage frequency/number of channel users, number of channel users/channel expenditure. Through this two-dimensional method, you can simply draw a four-quadrant diagram and put the two dimensions into the x and y axes. Then you can clearly select from the four quadrants which channels should continue to be invested in and which should be abandoned.

2. Ensure your users are active

If a user is active as soon as he opens the product, does that mean he will definitely stay? Give value to the platform? The user operation system should evolve dynamically. In the user operation system, evolution is a positive pyramid-level division of user groups. Users are guided and educated, and use the APP more and more frequently and deeply.

The core routine can also be classified into two steps: newbie guidance and continuous stickiness.

1. New employee orientation

The novice guide here does not just mean the literal meaning of guiding new users and briefly introducing the product. To put it in one sentence: let new users quickly experience the "aha" moment of your product.

The "Aha" moment refers to the core value concept provided by the product itself, which can make the user have a good impression after the experience and make him continue to use it.

So the first thing to think about is whether the value proposition of the product itself is truly recognized by users?

To put it bluntly, do what you say and what you do solve users’ problems and meet their needs? If your value concept is: to solve the problem that users don’t know what stock market information to read.

So should we first determine whether this is a false demand? Or is it just a necessity? Are users in the market really facing the problem of not knowing what to watch, or is there such a demand?

If it doesn't exist, no matter how much guidance and growth you do, it will only make the product die faster and make users deny your product faster. If the value exists, the second thing to consider is whether the current design allows users to quickly experience this value.

Onboarding is more about resolving barriers to conversion and improving conversion rates. The user life cycle of a product develops gradually in a positive pyramid model, but the onboarding is an inverted pyramid model that allows users to get a taste of the benefits first, stay, and gradually develop into a positive pyramid life cycle.

Then the routine here is more like:

1. List out the things that make users stay? It can be content, functionality, design...
2. What is the user experience of these things in the product? Build a funnel from app activation to usage of these things;
3. How to discover conversion data through funnel?
4. Where the conversion rate is low is where the blocking point appears;
5. What is the strategy to resolve this blocking point?

In fact, the strategy in the fifth point is the embodiment of novice guidance. This is not just the pop-up guidance that pops up when new users open the App as we commonly understand it. That is just one of them, but not necessarily the best experience. This type of guidance should be inserted anywhere in the product, with appropriate strategies implemented in appropriate places.

2. Continuous viscosity of the product

Why do service industries such as luxury stores care so much about the quality of service provided to their customers? The most important reason is the customer's stickiness to the brand and the tendency for them to come back for consumption next time. The same principle applies to operating an app. To keep new users coming back, and even to keep old users opening the app and using a certain feature or service every day, operators should think of ways to make users come back tomorrow and use the app again tomorrow.

The most basic operation is to focus on the user's retention on the next day, 3 days, 7 days, etc. But in reality, this is just a result indicator. It does not have any guiding role in the operation strategy. Moreover, this indicator is not based on the user's perspective, so the resulting strategic guidance will mostly ignore what users think.

Retention rate = continuous stickiness, and continuous stickiness is interspersed throughout the product, and continuous stickiness must be broken down to one point. For example: Today, the user used your stock selection function and read an article in a certain column.

So how can we get him to use it the next day? This is the most effective entry point for improving retention rate, because the operation knows why the user comes, and uses this point to attract him to come again, and the user's willingness will be very high.

So the routine here is:

1. List the key points that users use on the product;
2. Pay attention to their continuous stickiness index. Similarly, there should be subdivisions on the next day, 3 days, and 7 days.
3. The operation's growth strategy revolves around continuous stickiness at this point, and this data must be fed back the next day or even at all times.

Let’s take a practical example: Information is the core value of an APP, so how do you verify the value of the content? How to verify that users approve of your content?

The indicator of continuous viscosity is particularly important here. We observe not only the reading volume of this content, but also the continuous stickiness on the next day, 3 days, and 7 days. If a user watches it today and continues to watch it the next day, 3 days, and 7 days, it means that the user has recognized this column. How to achieve this? First of all, the content of the column itself must contain inducements to guide users to come the next day.

The simplest one is the column’s slogan “Update on time at 7 o’clock every day”, which is an inducement point to cultivate user habits. Or you can create user habits - increase the exposure of the column, increase the frequency of user perception, and let users who open the app for the first time open it for the second time in the longest time. The user must browse your column when he or she uses your app for the last time today, so that the user will remember you (for example, the last peak of daily active users is at 10 pm, so the content must be updated and pushed to users at this point).

Keep doing this, and after continuous stickiness appears, gradually reduce the exposure to verify whether the habit is formed and whether the user is guided to actively browse this column. But finally, it is worth mentioning that all the above strategies are based on the fact that the content itself is valuable and is recognized by users upon the first reading.

3. How to stimulate the spread of good products

1. Zero-cost communication strategy

When it comes to growth, communication is a very important part, even the most important and core part, but in this communication, what routines can we learn?

A bad example: What are flow-type products? The growth of these products is easily ignored. Just write some content, maintain it, find a channel and launch it. Users come and leave after using their computer. The result is not good, with slow user growth and excessive waste of traffic.

Let’s go back to the first and second points of channel optimization and user retention. Assuming that all of this is fine, if you don’t let users actively spread your product, then the growth of your product is nothing more than spending money.

Therefore, the first trick to get users to analyze is to let them actively but be stimulated to spread your product. The premise is still that the value of the product itself is recognized (returning to the second retention issue). Once the value is recognized, the product has the gene of sharing, which can stimulate users' desire to share.

But this desire needs to be stimulated. Two data can prove this: only 1 out of every 31 Twitter posts is retweeted, and the Facebook sharing rate is only 0.5%. Generally, people are reluctant to share, even if the product is great. So how should we stimulate users' desire to share?

Growth hackers mentioned a viral growth formula: Virality = Payload × Conversion Rate × Frequency.

• Payload refers to how much each user shares with each other;
• Conversion rate, as the name implies, is how many people successfully receive the content after sharing it;
• Frequency refers to how often the sharer shares.

This is a routine. When there is a problem with sharing, the operation strategy is basically to solve the problem of three factors: payload × conversion rate × frequency:

(1) The problem with the payload is that the product itself does not successfully motivate users to share

Assuming the value of the product itself has been verified, we have mentioned to users that please remember to share it with your friends after reading it? Of course, it is not such a simple operation, you have to set up a scene.

Take Fan Deng’s reading as an example: after listening to the book, the user feels particularly good. So if you give the user a summary of the reading notes, they can get them just by sharing it. At this time, the user will share it with a high probability.

Why? Because this strategy thinks about what the user’s next action will be after using the product? After finishing reading the book, the user most likely needs to organize his thoughts and what he has learned. If he is given a prompt to obtain reading notes at this moment, he will most likely complete the task of sharing and obtain the notes. Therefore, the stimulus that guides your sharing is particularly important, and there needs to be a causal relationship.

(2) Conversion rate issue: once a user shares something, does that mean the sharer’s task is completed?

Not really. Many times we think that after sharing, we can convert his friends to download the APP. The problem with friends’ unwillingness to download is that the APP is not attractive enough, or the users simply don’t care. But he never considered that the person who shared it was not working hard enough. The former consideration is to solve the problem of conversion friction, which is not wrong and should be optimized in this way. However, if you give the product to the user to promote, and he just talks about it casually, sends it on WeChat and that’s it, then his friends will just think it’s an advertisement. Why would they download it?

What cannot be ignored when it comes to conversion rate is how to help the sharer better convert his friends:

1. Make the default words more thoughtful.
2. Establish a set of mature sharing templates to educate sharers on how to share, and indirectly tell sharers what kind of friends are more suitable to share with.
3. Be sure to highlight the core value of the product to the sharer's friends to help them understand and convert.

(3) Sharing frequency

When many people share but the conversion rate is low, you should increase the sharing frequency. This way, even if the conversion rate is low, the number of converted users you obtain will increase relatively. Assuming that there are many people sharing and the conversion rate is good, why not expand the growth and encourage sharers to share more frequently. To solve this problem, you only need to do one thing well: the stimulus should be enough to stimulate the user's desire to share. You must not give the stimulus to the user all at once. Instead, give it to the user in a scattered manner, which will gain more converted users.

2. Core user maintenance

Every core user will actively spread and introduce your product because they are the core users of your product and trust and love your product. So, how to build a core user group and establish a community effect?

First of all, you must establish enough trust with users. This is the most fundamental and underlying logic. Of course, there can be routines, but you must be more sincere. Secondly, based on this strategy, users can be stratified into: traffic users, ordinary users, moderate users, and core users.

1. Provide good new user guidance to let traffic users know your product and turn them into ordinary users;
2. Through continuous stickiness, ordinary users can increase the frequency and depth of use and become moderate users;
3. Establish user interactions, such as “Learn together”, “Highlight the product”, “I want…” and other routines to screen out your core user group. This process is to build a psychological identity with users, reach common values, and even let users participate in your product strategy and product design; communicate with core users based on two principles: insist on authenticity and insist on interaction. It is necessary to give users a real and tangible personality, and then constantly interact with users to output real value to each other;
4. Throw in sharing items and stimulation so the core group can start spreading the word.

How to start core user maintenance? Take the planning of the Kandian applet as an example:

(1) If the Kandian Mini Program wants to screen the core user group, the fastest entry point is users who post comments on dynamic events.

(2) The reason why users participate in comment interaction is the content of Teacher Ke himself. However, these contents are not easy to share, and there is no in-depth user information that can be mined for these contents in the mini program itself.

(3) Establish several core behavior points such as complaint channels, product announcement channels, and welfare channels to focus user interactions more on the core content and functions of the product.

(4) Use Mr. Ke’s updates as a traffic guide, and at the same time expose more new channels with updates to let core users know and attract them to participate.

(5) Maintain interaction and ensure content updates. Be sure to create comments 1-3 (you can create them yourself) to trigger user comments. All user comments must be responded to, with the following key points:

1. Be sure to let him know when you reply (push notification of reply plays a role here).
2. Good replies should be publicized and exposed, which not only makes the user's interaction feel honorable, but also serves the purpose of educating other users.

(6) Once the new dynamic channel is laid out, the core users of the mini program are obtained through screening. For these core users who are heavily involved in the product, there is a higher probability that they will invite their friends by stimulating sharing.

Author: Operation Man

Source: Operation Xia