How can APP increase daily activity?

This time we will talk about how to increase daily activity. According to the breakdown, daily active user increase = adding new users + improving new user retention + activating old users + recalling lost users . In the previous article, we talked about how to increase new users. In this article, we will talk about the remaining 3 areas.

Improved new user retention

1. Application push is the most direct means

What if your KPI is to increase the next-day retention rate of new users, and you haven’t done any app push yet? Don’t think too much about anything, just use the message push. It’s less work and more effective. You can improve by 10 points without any thinking and easily complete the annual KPI target.

But I always have a vivid feeling about this kind of push, which is like slapping the user's sleepy face and telling him to ignore me!

This method is not a good way to push products. We still need to understand the user's thoughts and wake him up in the way he likes. This depends on the refined push of dishes.

How to know what users want to know? One way is to let new users choose the content they are interested in . Another way is to use user behavior to understand the content users are interested in or the functions they want to try but have not been able to use . It will be more targeted to push related content from these perspectives.

There are also push notifications for common usage scenarios in different regions for users , such as UC pushing cricket information to Indian cricket fans.

If there are paid functions internally and the user is interested in clicking on the paid functions but does not pay for the purchase, you can also push free function trials to him to let the user know about the functions he is interested in. Even if he does not purchase them in the end, you can retain the next user.

As for which content is more interesting to users, in the past, A/B testing was done through simple variables, but this type of test requires constant control of variables. Now, we can also try multivariate deep learning to explore.

Since app push is so effective, how about I proactively prompt users to turn on message push? Unless the user himself wants the APP to remind him, such as to-do reminders like omnifocus. Otherwise , don’t create reasons for users to turn on message reminders , otherwise you will only get the opposite result. Don't ask why, I'm just in tears.

Let me give you some more knowledge. For application messaging services, iOS uses APN, and the Google play version of Android uses FCM. In China, try not to use push services that are implemented through permanent background services on Android . The user experience is very poor. Huawei, Xiaomi and other manufacturers have formed a unified push alliance , which you can try.

1. Guiding users through the core process can improve retention

An app must solve a user pain point.

It is not easy to attract users at present. After attracting users, we must do everything we can to let users experience the main pain point solution process . E-commerce apps often offer the first order for free, educational apps do level assessments, and health apps generate fitness plans, all based on the same idea. Moreover, the optimization of this process does not mean reducing the number of user clicks, but meeting the user's psychological expectations . Sometimes multiple steps of a single operation will produce better data than one step of multiple operations.

And adding dynamic effects that surprise users in this process can further deepen their impression of the product. This type of animation generally expresses product impressions such as fast speed, good effect, and high technology .

These are essentially to allow users to clearly perceive the value of the APP , so that they are interested in spending time to explore it more deeply.

1. Magic number: key behavior incentives can improve retention

The core process of user experience is just an entry point. If we want to retain users, we must also make the functional experience irreplaceable , or the cost of user abandonment is too high . Otherwise, user loyalty will not be enough to ensure long-term retention.

So we are going to explore the application of magic nubmer .

The magic nubmer method is to find the behavioral differences between active users and inactive users through analysis and research, and then find a magic nubmer that makes users active, strengthen guidance through operations and product design, and thus improve user activity. For example: Facebook found that the retention rate is high if you add 7 friends within 10 days; Linkedin's retention user characteristic is that you add 5 friends within a week.

The key behaviors of magic number can be linked together through a rewarding task system, which can reduce the distraction of the main process.

In essence, it is the tape-repeat-style repetition that deepens the impression of "I am awesome" or makes users invested, thereby increasing the cost of users' abandonment .

1. Improve product experience

Functional experience optimization, support for new mobile phones, processing speed improvement, problem fixing, etc. I put these at the end to emphasize that this is the basis for all improvements.

The main measurement indicators are application startup speed, ANR/crash status, etc. For Android, you can refer to the Android vitals data in the console background. In terms of basic technology, you must keep up with the cutting-edge technology of the system platform. This means active cooperation for the system platform and an improvement in experience for users.

Activate old users

1. Check-in function can improve activity

The main function of check-in is to make inactive old users more active .

Is it necessary to implement sign-in for some tool apps with relatively low user activity? From the perspective of user experience process, there is really no need to add more.

However, we can understand the function of sign-in as a form of advertising . For example, Sprite itself is already very famous, but why does it still need advertising? People's impressions will gradually fade over time. The advertisements repeatedly reinforce the association between Sprite and summer thirst, so that people can immediately think of Sprite in summer thirsty scenes.

Therefore, the purpose of signing in is to remind users every day that such an application exists, and when encountering relevant usage scenarios, they will associate it with use immediately. At the same time, once you sign in continuously, there will be an abandonment cost. Combined with push notifications, users can be effectively activated .

The sign-in rewards must be calculated well, and the reward value configuration can be optimized through A/B testing, thereby effectively increasing the average number of days users sign in .

1. Add more frequently used functions

For products with relatively low usage frequency, the frequency of product usage and daily activity can be increased by adding more frequently used features.

The angle of exploration is to expand horizontally and deeply in the existing product usage scenarios. Taking the APP for taking ID photos with a frequency of use of more than half a year as an example, horizontal expansion can consider expanding ID storage management, and in-depth extension can consider connecting to visa-related content which is one of the subsequent scenarios for ID photos.

How to extend it is also related to the future form of the product, so this needs to be considered carefully and launched with caution.

1. Exposure experience of more functions

In addition to the most important functions, there are many additional functions that users cannot perceive at all in daily use if they are not guided. This is also one of the shortcomings of super APP. Therefore, for active old users, we need to expose them again and again so that the added functions can help users solve more problems.

However, we must pay attention to the situation where the exposure conversion rate is too low. In this case, one is the product manager’s self-satisfaction function , and the other is the lack of accurate exposure to the target users . These all need to be optimized in a timely manner, and those that need to be taken offline should be taken offline decisively.

Recall lost users

When it comes to recalling churned users, we must first reach a consensus on churn within the team. The churn time for each product is different according to the frequency of user use. It is generally considered that churn can be considered as more than 25 times the average usage interval .

Let’s analyze the common reasons for user churn. I think there are four main categories, all of which I have encountered in my product career.

1. Demand disappears and loss

This type of loss can be divided into subjective disappearance and objective disappearance. Subjective disappearance means that users will not be forgotten for a long time after their needs have been met. Objective disappearance means that users have left the original demand scenario or that the demand scenario has disappeared with the progress of the times.

Objective disappearance means that the problem solved by the product has disappeared and cannot be recalled. When talking about recall, we are only talking about the situation of subjective disappearance.

Users churn because their needs are met. This type of churn often occurs in products with infrequent demand pain points, such as picture editing. After a picture is edited, the time required to edit it again is uncertain, and it is easy to cause churn due to forgetfulness.

This loss can be regularly notified through push notifications of new technology/feature updates, user-favorite feature use cases, holiday promotions, etc. , so that user memory remains active and can be recalled in time when there is a subsequent need.

1. Loss of better solutions

In simple terms, other people's products are better than yours, and users have all gone to competitors' products. This problem can only be solved by pursuing and surpassing user experience and functionality . Don’t be afraid of plagiarism. First copy the highest level product and then talk about surpassing it. Copying without distortion is also a kind of product capability.

If you are still in a leading position temporarily, you should also periodically track the updates of your competitors to prevent yourself from being overtaken.

To recall this type of users, it is more effective to recall them after optimization and updating .

1. When problems cannot be solved, loss

There are several situations where this occurs:

1. Users cannot use the program due to bugs, and cannot find effective solutions;
2. After the user tries it, the results cannot meet the user's needs;
3. Loss of user data;
4. After the functional interaction of the new version changes, users are unable to adapt;
5. …

This type of users are generally very resentful, and if the problem cannot be resolved temporarily, they will be determined to leave. The only way to retrieve it is through timely communication and reassurance from customer service, and new technology/function updates .

1. Special circumstances loss

What I have encountered is being removed from the shelves. This kind of loss is the most destructive, and users cannot come back even if they want to.

Therefore, we should not touch the bottom line of the application market, and should not engage in any behavior that is expressly prohibited by the application market. Some domestic manufacturers always have a fluke mentality. You can search for related products that have been removed from the shelves. They are all singing "What a painful realization" in their hearts.

Author: Product is thinking

Source: Product Thinking