Analyze the user incentive system and operation model of the APP!

This May marks the third anniversary of the Duoduo APP, with the number of users exceeding 30 million. Among the first-tier knowledge payment platforms, the Duode APP has attracted much attention from all parties because it was derived from "Luoji Siwei".

Compared with Luoji Siwei’s early vigorous screen-sweeping marketing, the operation of the APP is low-key and pragmatic. Today I would like to disassemble the user incentive system I have obtained, hoping to summarize some experience and methodologies for your reference.

This content is:

1. Product logic and user portrait;
2. User paths and core behaviors;
3. User incentive system;
4. Medals and credits;
5. Thoughts and summary on incentive system optimization.

01 Get product business logic and user basic portrait

The Get APP is a knowledge service platform produced by Luoji Siwei. Get provides users with time-saving and efficient knowledge services and advocates fragmented learning methods. It is a "free + paid" fragmented lifelong learning platform.

Judging from the download trend of the Android market, the APP is still in the growth stage and needs to continue to consider the expansion path and possibilities of the business:

• Core business objectives: paid conversion;
• Recommended core product optimizations: personalized recommendations, membership system, and social relationships;
• Core operations tasks: user incentive system and attracting new customers.

The core business model of the Get APP is to monetize knowledge through payment. In the figure below, I have briefly sorted out the product business logic and user basic portrait.

02 Obtain user growth path and core behaviors

Combining the analysis of the business logic and user portrait of the Get APP, we know that the core behavior of users on Get is learning.

Let’s look at the three key points of breaking down core behaviors:

1. What to learn ? It is a knowledge content service provided by Duoduo. The current core types include e-books, audio courses, audiobooks, video lectures, etc. The quality control of the courses has always been very good, and they have also worked very hard to expand the categories;
2. How to learn ? This is a product logic of mutual learning. When the learning stage shifts from offline to online, from platform recommendation to user experience to mutual matching, a series of incentive tasks and conversion methods are needed;
3. Persistence learning ? In fact, it is to enhance user participation, cultivate learning habits, and improve user retention. Sustained learning by users requires learning tools and a long-term incentive system provided by the platform. Completing learning plans and participating in learning tasks (liking, commenting, forwarding, leaving messages, taking notes, sharing, collecting, etc.) are all positive motivational behaviors.

Then, by breaking down the core behaviors, we can understand the user value growth path, which can actually be as follows:

03 The incentive system based on the user value growth path

The first step is to sort out what incentive resources you have

The resources that the Get APP itself possesses can be used in the incentive system, such as teacher resources (offline meetings with teachers, teacher live broadcasts, teacher signed weekly reports, etc.), knowledge resources (audio, e-books, videos, physical books, etc.), "Luoji Siwei" Internet knowledge community, "Luoji Siwei"/Get peripheral products, New Year's Eve speeches and other offline activities, Get customized gifts, etc.

The second step is to sort out the available incentives

(1) Spiritual motivation

It includes levels, medals, honor systems (such as QQ levels, Weibo medals, Starbucks membership privileges, etc.), member benefits (business class passengers can board the plane first, Thunder members can speed up, and higher-level services that can only be enjoyed by a small number of or paying users). The most commonly used medals and honors are in the form of knowledge city-state rankings, credit rankings, etc.

(2) Emotional motivation

It is a very good way to get things done. From the perspective of human nature, there are laziness, vanity, possessiveness, curiosity, fear, a sense of belonging, etc.; from the perspective of the social system, there are one-way interactions such as (likes, favorites, attention, etc.), and two-way interactions (groups, comments, sharing, competition, teams, etc.), which we can see in the user incentive system.

(3) Interest incentives

The type of coupons currently used in the APP is coupons. There are actually many types of ticket tools (such as full-return red envelopes, combination tickets, vouchers, etc.), platform virtual currency, and physical virtual prizes.

The third step is to analyze the incentive system from the user growth path

(1) From new or lost users to trial users, prioritize solving users’ “one-time” and “simple repetitive” behaviors

1. Complete personal information, bind mobile phone number, bind WeChat, complete profile picture, nickname, gender, education background, industry, occupation, etc.;
2. Complete the first trial listening, complete the first purchase, complete the novice course schedule, make the first study plan, and guide the first purchase;
3. Try "simple repetitive" behaviors, such as logging in to study multiple times, clicking on different courses multiple times, downloading audio, etc. Note: The focus is on guiding lost users to their first behavior after returning.

In the new user incentive system of the Get APP, the focus is on the following two strategies. Compared with the novice task system commonly used in other mobile apps, the novice automated reach strategy is not involved.

1. A special activity called "First Class" is launched for registered users, with strong guidance in each self-tab and homepage banner. The disadvantage of this novice activity is that the course content lacks personalization and the activity intensity is slightly lacking. You can also try to set up a ladder course;
2. A strategy of offering a free trial of 5 lessons has been established for each course, with entry prompts at the top of the course details page and on the purchase page.

(2) From trial users to consumer users, the focus is on guiding users to continue learning and cultivate the habit of paying for learning

1. Strengthen advanced learning behaviors, such as completing notes for the first time, leaving comments for the first time, liking and sharing, etc.
2. Guide continuous learning and provide rewards, including continuous paid lectures, paid purchase of various types of knowledge services (e-books, audiobooks, courses, lectures, etc.), and try cross-category marketing;
3. Periodic activity incentive strategies, such as guidance on user advancement paths, experience upgrade benefits (similar to Didi’s cabin upgrade), points feedback, platform node activity stimulation, and random ticket activities.

The incentives for growing users in the Get APP are mainly reflected in the learning achievements section, which includes learning data, medals, certificates, and credits. Medals are an honor incentive system, and credits are equivalent to a points system.

Interestingly, there are very few marketing activities in the Duode APP. Different from various big promotions on e-commerce and financial platforms, Get launched the "Get Knowledge Calendar". It is a test for operations to maintain the tone of the school platform on the one hand, and achieve explosive conversions through precise activities on the other.

(3) From consumer users to contributors, users can complete a major upgrade in their identity, that is, from ordinary users to super users.

1. Guiding continuous participation behaviors, such as continuous comments, favorites, following, liking, sharing, forwarding, and recommending;
2. Exclusive identity design, design that requires special rights and exclusive interest incentives;
3. Advanced guidance guide, providing users with advanced guidance in the form of member groups or targeted activities;
4. Emotional advancement allows users to invest more value and emotion in the product.

When it comes to the ways to incentivize contributing users, I think the most common ones are emotional and spiritual incentives, such as "becoming an honorary sponsor". Through a simple sponsorship method, the emotional bond between the official and the user is enhanced.

For example, "Open Day Event/New Year's Eve Event", this kind of event resources that are good for reputation will definitely give priority to inviting users who are ranked at the top of the scoreboard; for example, the "Recommended Friends" that are obtained, 6 versions with different styles and contents are designed, making users feel honored when inviting friends.

However, there are also details to consider, such as guiding users to participate in the Knowledge City. In addition to listing weekly ranking activities, the social atmosphere can also be enhanced through two-way interactions such as friend connections and team tasks.

04 Get special incentives: medals and credits

As a long-term incentive strategy, the design of the medal is centered around the user's core behavior of "learning".

In terms of design vision and user experience, it emphasizes the identity of scholars and the tone of the platform, while combining honor incentives with interest incentives. It is said that it draws on the school's scholarship system. I think this design is very immersive.

In the picture below, I have broken down the medals and level rewards I have received so far in detail.

From the perspective of medal types, the focus of upgrading medals is to encourage experimental and continuous learning behaviors; special achievement medals are restricted medals set up for specific nodes and specific times.

The first type of medal focuses on the user value growth path setting, encouraging the most important behaviors in the "learning" path, such as study time, consumption amount, study plan, notes, e-books, and sharing behaviors; the second type of medal has two characteristics: scarcity and node nature. Both are issued once to encourage user participation in specific scenarios.

In addition to the two existing badges, there is actually another badge called the Enjoyment Badge, which covers the current special badges, such as the All-Round Master - encouraging subscriptions to multiple column courses; Early Bird - encouraging early reading behavior within a certain period of time, etc.

There are more badges for various study groups, such as the Wealth Freedom Battle Badge, which encourages users to join the Wealth Resources Column Study Group and check in for 3 consecutive days. However, this type of badge has been offline.

I think the main reason is that this type of badge is set up around the column itself, rather than around the core behavior of the user. As the column or course is taken offline, this set of incentives will become useless and no longer have practical incentive significance.

In general, the positioning and goals of the current two types of medals are clear. The core goal of upgrading medals is to retain active users, convert users to paid users, and increase user online time.

The core of the Special Achievement Medal is to improve short-term conversions, periodic retention, and assist operational indicators within a specific period of time.

This year, Get changed its point system to a credit system that is more in line with the school's temperament. The credits are calculated and scored based on each user's learning behavior data in the Get APP. Currently, credits are only used to measure learning enthusiasm and effort. Points are updated weekly.

The composition of credits is also set around users' core behaviors and growth paths. The incentive behaviors of the credit system and the medal system are basically the same, but in the later stage, the points will be more focused on reflecting exclusive rights and interests, and there will definitely be detailed level differences in the future, especially for super users.

05 Conclusion

Through the above phased analysis, we can summarize the current operating system of the Get APP as follows. This system is mainly aimed at non-teachers, and does not cover offline and community operations of Duode.

We can see that this framework can actually be applied to e-commerce/finance and other platforms. By stratifying user behavior and guiding their growth and advancement, a hierarchical system is formed. A membership system is built through honor incentives and point incentives. Finally, privileges are expanded, rights and interests are improved, and the mall takes over the consumption of points. Independent super user rights (VIP system) can also be considered.

There are 3 operational strategies that are particularly worth learning from:

1. Make more efforts in retention operations, provide high-quality services and experience for existing users, create high-net-worth users, and serve high-end users well;
2. Operations should make good use of emotional and spiritual motivation methods, which can solve many user conversion problems;
3. There are many ways to play on the Internet, and you must find the most suitable one based on user core behavior and platform positioning. The key to operation is precision rather than quantity.

However, what we are sorting out at present is mainly based on the external operation system. The complete operation system also includes internal refined stratification and automated conversion tasks. The optimization of the incentive system also needs to consider product optimization and thinking.

There is actually a lot of content that has not been covered in this issue, such as the growth model of old employees bringing in new employees, the super user thinking that Luo Pang has been talking about since 2016, and the refined stratification and automated operation system of the background. We will talk about them later. See you next time.

Author: Mrs. Mingli

Source: Mrs. Mingli