How does product operation improve user stickiness?

Products of various categories cover all aspects of life. If you want to make a product that stands out, keep users coming back for more, and cultivate high stickiness, there are three core points you need to know.

What is the essence of business? Is it to meet the needs? Is it to benefit users? Or solve the problem?

I will leave the answer to this question aside for now.

Let me first show you what a typical daily routine is like for a young working person in a big city.

1. 16 categories of apps, accompany you for 16 hours

At 6:30 in the morning, you are woken up by the alarm clock. You turn off the alarm on your phone and open WeChat to see if anyone has left you a message or if there is any @ group message that requires your reply.

At 7:15, after breakfast, you put on your Bluetooth headphones, open the ② audio APP , and start listening to the latest learning course.

You walk out of the community, open ③ the shared bicycle app , find the one closest to you, move forward to scan it, and see the progress bar slowly move from 0% to 30% and 60%; based on your experience, this bike definitely cannot be opened. Sure enough, when it reaches 100%, the software prompts you that the scan has timed out, and you feel the experience is very poor.

There happened to be another bicycle of a different color next to you, so you changed the APP, scanned it and clicked to confirm. Within 100 milliseconds, the bicycle lock was immediately opened. You felt as refreshed as if you had eaten a piece of honey, and pedaled briskly towards the subway.

At 7:30, you take your backpack out of the security machine, open the subway APP skillfully, and scan the code to pass through the gate.

At 8:30, you scan the code again to exit the station; the subway entrance is full of bicycles of two colors. You choose the color you rode before and go to the company.

At 8:45, you open the company’s required ⑤ clock-in APP and clock in successfully!

At 10:45, you open the ⑥ food delivery APP , grab a red envelope, and then check what delicious food is available today; after making your selection, you use the ⑦ payment APP to complete the payment.

At 12:15, after a full meal, you threw away the takeaway box, opened the ⑧ News Consulting APP , looked for topics of interest, and relaxed yourself.

At 2 p.m., open the office software APP (9) , retrieve the document from your notes, and report the latest progress of the project to your leader and colleagues.

At 17:30, I get off work and open the clock-in app again to clock in; put on Bluetooth headphones to listen to the class; take a shared bicycle; scan the subway QR code to enter the station.

At 17:45, I calculated the time and bought the dishes to be cooked in the evening on the ⑩ Fresh Food APP .

At 18:00, open ⑪ game APP or ⑫ short video APP to relax yourself.

At 18:30, scan the code to exit the station and ride a bike home.

At 18:45, I arrived home and met the vegetable delivery guy at the door.

At 7 p.m., open the ⑬ Music APP and enjoy music while cutting vegetables or cooking.

At 19:30, open the ⑭ Video APP and enjoy the double beauty of TV series and delicious food.

At 9 p.m., open the ⑮ Sports APP and do some physical exercise.

At 9:30 p.m., open the ⑯ Reading APP and recharge yourself.

At 22:30, open the audio app and listen to the story to help yourself fall asleep.

2. Competition for time and competition for scenes

A few years ago, Luo Zhenyu, the host of the program "Luoji Siwei", made an assertion:

What modern businesses compete for is users’ time .

Judging from the typical daily life of young working people in big cities above, to be precise, modern business is competing for users’ time in different specific scenarios .

Indeed, because there are users willing to stay in the APP in specific scenarios, the APP will have traffic; because of the influx of traffic, the APP will have the opportunity to monetize by placing advertisements or directly sell products to achieve sales conversions.

Then the question arises, you definitely want users to stay with you longer; you would also like users to come to you again and again, every day.

But the key lies in how to do it effectively and efficiently?

What I want to discuss with you in this article is how to achieve refined user operations through three core points, so that users come again and again.

3. Core 1: Reduce the difficulty of use for users

If you play a new mobile game, there will usually be a tutorial at the beginning; the game will guide you to press buttons and help you achieve the initial interaction.

However, the more powerful APP can make users understand in seconds, and users seem to know naturally which key is used for what.

In the user behavior design system, there is a very famous formula called B=MAT .

B stands for Behavior, which is user behavior and a result. From the perspective of user operation, B is the result of the user's behavior of spending time with you in a specific scenario. This result is the result of the combined effect of three factors, which are the three letters on the right side of the equation: M, A, and T.

M and T correspond to Motivation and Trigger respectively.

Among homogeneous apps, there is almost no difference in motivation now.

For example, if you want to commute short distances, you would think of riding a shared bicycle, but now the era of spending money on red envelopes or riding for free has long passed. So if the price of a single ride is the same, the motivation to open any cycling app is roughly the same.

There is no difference with triggering. Triggering means that you think about using it.

For example, in the two scenarios of getting out of the subway and going to the company or home, it will naturally trigger users to use the shared bicycle APP; of course, if you are richer, there are also taxi apps available.

The main thing we need to discuss here is A: Ability .

The capabilities here are both the threshold for a novice user to use for the first time and the experience of an ordinary user.

For example, let’s make a comparison. Can you guess what the peak daily active user number of World of Warcraft, which was popular all over the world at that time, was? Can you guess what the data of “Honor of Kings” is?

It is obvious that "World of Warcraft" is an epic masterpiece and a global product; but compared with the domestic game "Honor of Kings", the former's data is only one-quarter to one-third of the latter.

This is the difference in difficulty for users.

Back then, in order to play "World of Warcraft", not only the computer's CPU, graphics card, and memory had to be updated, but a novice user also needed to relearn how to use each profession and combat skills. But looking at "Honor of Kings", you can play it with a medium-sized mobile phone worth more than 1,500 yuan, and although there are so many heroes, each hero only has four skills. Obviously, the difficulty has been greatly reduced.

You might say that these are products of two different eras and are not comparable.

That’s okay, let’s talk about another setting that you’ll definitely want to abandon as soon as you find an alternative. For example, some apps require you to enter your account and password every time you log in; but with some apps, you can log in securely and immediately with just a touch of your fingerprint.

Yes, user experience is also a threshold.

Over time, some apps with smooth experience design will naturally crush those apps with extremely high "friction costs" due to poor experience.

4. Core 2: Increase user abandonment cost

Before starting this topic, let me ask you a question.

How many years have you used your mobile phone number? Why are you unwilling to switch to another operator's package when it is obviously more favorable?

The answer to this question is obvious, because so many friends have saved my mobile phone number, and it would be too troublesome to notify them all every time I change my number. The "trouble" here is a threshold that makes you give up the behavior of changing your number, which is the so-called "abandonment cost".

So how can we build up the user’s “abandonment cost”? I'll tell you 3 tricks.

1. Use the user growth system to make users feel a sense of growth and gain

For example, some sports apps will tell you how much total exercise time you have spent on them, your growth value, what special treatments you have unlocked that are only available to users with high growth values, and how many achievement badges you have earned.

Don’t underestimate these contents as they are mostly empty and less practical. Human beings are essentially animals that pursue a sense of meaning. It is these "virtual" contents that make you feel that you are unique and proud when exercising here.

In this way, unless the other software is more than twice as good as the original one, it will be difficult for users to give up their achievements and switch positions.

2. Build a user network effect so that users can effectively socialize with you

When your friends invited you to go out and play in the past, did you ever say: If xxx goes, then I will go too.

In fact, it is very likely that this friend will immediately invite xxx, and then xxx may also say: If "you" go, then I will go too.

That's right. Whether it is physically visiting each specific location; or moving your thumbs to let your soul enter an APP to shop or play games; or even just seeing what others are doing or what books they are reading - the network effect can give users a sense of warmth, making people reluctant to leave here and go to another seemingly better application.

Here is a famous failure case: Jack Ma invested heavily in creating "Laiwang" in an attempt to surpass WeChat. Early adopters saw that there were few people they knew on Laiwang and uninstalled and stopped using it after a few days.

3. Scarcity

In fact, scarcity can no longer be described as a routine. It is a supreme leading advantage, which can be said to be better than having any tricks.

No matter whether the technology is scarce or the formula is scarce, once the scarce product has been experienced by users, someone will pay for it no matter how high the price is.

Why is iPhone 6 called Kidney 6, but rarely is anyone calling iPhone 11 Kidney 11? Because the Apple experience is no longer scarce in the minds of many people.

Another kind of scarcity is appearance.

That kind of pleasing sensory stimulation will make the human brain secrete a large amount of dopamine, which is a substance of happiness. This is why so many young ladies go to short video apps to repeatedly watch handsome young men; male users are so concerned about the marriage status of Yang Mi, Angelababy and others.

5. Core 3: Continuously improve the user map

Please guess what is the most frustrating problem for APP developers?

The most frustrating thing is probably that there is no new content to give users a reason to come here.

A long time ago, there was a professional term: AFK. It is an abbreviation, the full name is: Away From Keyboard, which means "take your hands off the keyboard" when translated directly.

Since it was the era of desktop computers and hard drives were relatively large, they felt they would come back; so only a few people uninstalled the software. However, they no longer log in in the short or medium term, and some even say goodbye forever.

Similar situations also exist in the era of mobile Internet.

The face-changing APP that was popular on WeChat Moments some time ago did not die due to social opinion, but after the novelty of it wore off, few people were interested in it anymore. So some people sigh and say: This is the best of times, a hot product can become popular quickly; this is also the worst of times, a product that was previously praised as a good product can become a cold product in the blink of an eye.

Therefore, unless you are an application that is used frequently for daily necessities such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, as long as your users are alive and you are not replaced by more efficient and lower-cost alternative products, your APP may have continued vitality.

Of course, you also need to withstand greater competitive pressure. For example, there are now more than five leading players in the fresh food app market, and the earlier shared bicycles, live streaming, and group buying were even more bloody battles.

But what if you don’t have an urgent need?

Although the competition may not be so fierce, you will definitely face the dilemma of running out of ideas and having no other tricks.

The three ways out we see at present are: content-based "PUGC" (content produced by experts or users themselves); game-based "PVP" (let users fight each other) + the arrival of new heroes (new skins, props); other types of "finding reasons for activities" (none of the 24 solar terms can be missed, Chinese and Western festivals must all be celebrated, as well as store celebrations, weekends, looking for opportunities and paths, with only one goal: to wake you up).

In general, users will come again and again only if you have thought clearly about what they can do with your company, what they can do to have fun and gain a sense of achievement, and what value it can create for them.

6. Final words

At the end of today, let’s make a summary.

First, modern business competes for users’ time in different specific scenarios.

Second, there are three core elements in user-oriented operations:

Core 1: Reduce the difficulty of user use;

Core 2: Increase user abandonment cost;

1. Use the user growth system to make users feel a sense of growth and gain in your company
2. Build user network effects and allow users to effectively socialize with you
3. Scarcity

Core three: Continuously improve the user map.

Dating is not an easy thing. It is easy to hold hands but difficult to get along with each other. User operation is even more difficult. It is not easy to attract new users and even more difficult to retain them.

But I want to say that once you do it well, you will have the opportunity to stand on the top of the times.

Finally, we still have a gap left to fill: what is the essence of business? Welcome to leave messages in the comment area for communication.

Author: He Shengjun

Source: He Shengjun