How to improve the conversion rate of old customers bringing in new customers?

In simple terms, bringing in new users means finding people who are trusted by users and who understand the product to promote the product, and attracting new users through their promotion. The two most important steps are: encouraging old users to share and convincing new users to participate.

I was assigned to the growth group at the beginning of the year, and since then every day the topic has been related to data. When making a graph, I have to think about whether the conversion rate is good or not and how to make it better. Of course, most of them are confused, like a rookie entering the workplace. They have so many questions that their heads hurt. For example, they often can't figure out why such an ugly graph has a high conversion rate; what process data can be used to calculate the data they want; faced with a lot of questions that they don't understand, where should they start asking...

In the blink of an eye, more than half of the year has passed, and I have made some progress as a rookie, so I plan to sort out the problems I encountered and the experiences I gained in the past six months. Let’s start with how old users bring in new users in the first article. In simple terms, bringing in new users means finding people who are trusted by users and who understand the product to promote the product, and attracting new users through their promotion. The two most important steps are: getting old users to share and getting new users to participate.

The article is roughly divided into the following parts:

1. Encourage old users to share;
2. Impress new users to participate;
3. Common ways to increase conversion rate;
4. The value of a designer.

1. Encourage old users to share

If you want to encourage old users to share actively, you need to have a point that can stimulate them, and this stimulation must make them feel happy and feel that they will lose out if they don’t share, such as getting rewards, a sense of accomplishment, etc. after inviting them.

1.1 Rewards

Rewards include cash, physical gifts, and virtual items. These are the most commonly used methods by various apps and are also one of the most effective methods. There are three types of rewards: selfish, altruistic and win-win. The most common one is the win-win model, that is, both parties can get rewards after the invitation.

Rewards can also be distributed in a tiered manner. The more new users you invite, the richer the rewards you get, which will encourage old users to invite more people.

1.2 Group Buying

Similar to Pinduoduo, it is cheaper to invite friends to buy in a group. The price of individual purchases can be put up to highlight the price advantage of group buying.

1.3 Bargaining

High-priced items can be purchased at a lower price by inviting friends to bargain. Appropriately highlight on the page how much money can be saved after sharing with friends to stimulate users to share.

1.4 Sense of accomplishment

The product satisfies the users’ vanity, gives them a sense of accomplishment, and encourages them to share. After all, it is difficult to praise yourself out loud, but it is different when it is conveyed through a product. The check-in activities and personality tests that are often seen in the circle of friends are just using the product to praise yourself for your hard work and seriousness...

1.5 Satisfied with the service

The user is very satisfied with the product's service and hopes that his friends can also enjoy this service. However, simply being satisfied with a product is unlikely to motivate users to share. There must be a guiding point. Just like you like the service of NetEase Cloud Music, but you won’t recommend it to your friends for no reason. What might attract you to share it is probably a song or a line of lyrics that touched you.

2. Impress new users to participate

After old users share with their friends, what are the reasons that prompt their friends to participate?

2.1 Rewards

The most effective way is still rewards. You can get rewards after participating in the activities.

2.2 Cheaper

The price advantage and the participation of the inviter make it more trustworthy.

2.3 Limited time and quantity

The shared content is very cheap and affordable, the cost of participation is low, and it is limited in time and quantity. If you miss this opportunity, you will never have it again.

It should be noted that the focus of inviting old users and new users is different. Taking Didi Chuxing as an example, the text that the inviter sees is "Invite friends, get cash, the more you refer, the more you get", and the text that the invitee sees is "Instantly save 15 yuan on the first order", highlighting the benefits that each can obtain.

3. Common ways to improve conversion rate

The final conversion rate of old users bringing in new users is mainly affected by the total number of participants in the event, the number of invitations from old users, and the number of new users participating. The conversion rate of the entire funnel can be improved by increasing the number of participants in these three processes.

3.1 Expand the total number of participants in the event

The number of participants in the entire event, as the source of the entire funnel, will greatly affect the final result, so the first step is to increase the number of participants in the event.

1) Add activity entrance

Provide multiple activity entrances, which can be inside the APP, outside the APP, and other places where users can see them. However, you also need to be careful and appear in appropriate locations, such as: homepage pop-up windows, banners, personal centers, pages after successful order payment, etc.

2) Choose different activity plans according to different user groups

Users have different attributes and interests. Some users pay more attention to service than price, while some users are more sensitive to price. Different activity strategies can be adopted for different user groups.

For example, for price-sensitive users, the activity strategy focuses on low prices; while for users who care about services, high-quality services are promoted.

3.2 Increase the number of invitations from old users

There are two main ways to increase the number of invitations from old users: increasing desire and reducing resistance. I won’t go into details about increasing desire here. For details, see the above article “Encouraging old users to share”.

Reducing resistance means reducing the number of steps users take in the sharing process and lowering the difficulty of operations. For example, a page should focus on only one thing to avoid making users think. Giving too many choices will most likely make users not know what to do and thus lose users.

3.3 Increase the number of new users participating

In order to increase the number of new users participating, in addition to the above-mentioned methods of impressing new users to participate, you can also strengthen the participation of old users and link the final conversion results with the interests of old users. In this way, old users will voluntarily supervise the results, such as frequent sharing, one-on-one private chats, etc.

3.4 Activity Form

The event mainly takes invitation posters and invitation links as entry points, through which you can enter the event page.

1) Invitation poster

After the old user shares, the new user will see an invitation poster and can receive the discount by identifying the QR code in the poster. Before receiving the discount, the new user needs to log in to the account and determine whether the identity meets the conditions for receiving the discount after logging in.

2) Invite link

There are two types of invitation links. One is the link that the APP directly shares to WeChat.

Another way is to share through WeChat mini-programs. The mini-programs can obtain the user’s WeChat information. The user only needs to authorize the login and does not need to log in manually.

4. The value of designers

Designers all have a heart to change the world and hope to use design to promote business growth. But in actual work, what can be done is relatively limited. I think there are two main reasons: one is professional limitations. Designers tend to get caught up in specific pages and ignore the overall picture. The other is information asymmetry. Compared with PMs, they receive less information, which affects the final judgment.

But as an aspiring designer, you still need to think proactively. In addition to completing your job, you can think more about what design can do in the event process. Here are a few things you can try to do. (PS: The designers mentioned here do not refer to all, but only to experience designers like me)

4.1 Invitation Poster

The first entry point for users to access an event is the invitation poster. It is particularly important whether the poster can attract users immediately and prompt them to take action.

Generally, invitation posters contain the following elements: main title (required), subtitle, highlights, LOGO (required), low cost, rewards (required), authoritative endorsement, scarcity, and QR code (required).

I found a relatively complete picture on the petals, which allows me to see the information layout more intuitively.

Before you start to formulate requirements, you can first break down the information hierarchy of the page to highlight the most important and eye-catching information. Secondly, you can optimize the copy so that people can understand it at a glance without having to think. Instead of following the PRD completely, believe that if what you say makes sense, the product will listen to your opinions. Over time, trust between the two parties will be established, and there will be much less resistance when you want to push things forward in the future.

For example, the main title of the picture above can be optimized, "If English is not good, how can I teach my child English?" After seeing this sentence, users need to think about two questions: "Is my English good?" and "How can I tutor my child?" There is an extra step in the thinking process, and the copy is bland and does not touch the user's heart. You can try changing it to “What should I do if my child is not good at English?” or use a subtitle like “8 lessons to make your child an English expert” etc. to make users feel fear or expectation, so that they will want to understand the solution and participate in the activity.

4.2 Activity Process Optimization

The invitation poster focuses on the issue of visual presentation, while the activity process optimization focuses on the interactive process, such as whether the entire activity path is smooth, whether users will follow the steps set by the product, whether the information of each step is clearly conveyed, etc. Designers can experience it with a pure user's mentality, find out the doubts, and then think of solutions.

4.3 A/B Testing

If conditions permit, different solutions can be tested. When testing, in addition to paying attention to the process, designers need to pay more attention to the issue of "design reuse" and summarize the experience that can be reused in the future from each test result. For example, the conversion rate will be higher if there are gift pictures or real-life photos.

However, it should be noted that not all solutions need to be tested, especially visual solutions. Some results can be judged based on experience, such as "the click-through rate of flat buttons and three-dimensional buttons". There are only two results with a high probability. The click-through rate of the three-dimensional button is slightly higher or the same, which does not play a decisive role.

Therefore, resources should be used where they are more needed. Before testing, designers can set an A/B test schedule and conduct testing in a planned manner. As for how to make a schedule, it doesn’t quite fit the topic of this time, so I’ll leave it for next time. You can look forward to it.

Author: Orange Orange

Source: Haiyan Society