Get APP product analysis: How to attract new users and retain them?

1. Functional architecture and user usage path

2. Market Analysis and User Analysis

3. Functional analysis and optimization

4. Operational concept

5. Summary

1. Functional architecture and user usage path

1.1 Functional Architecture

1.2 User Usage Path

1.2.1 Users browse the knowledge city and interact with other users

1.2.2 Users learn the content of purchased courses

1.2.3 Users search and purchase products

2. Market Analysis

2.1 Defining the Market

Get uses lifelong learning as its slogan and paid knowledge products as its carrier to build a university.

The initial and core business obtained was paid knowledge courses, and profits were made by selling original courses. Later, it entered the field of e-book reading, and the market boundaries continued to expand.

According to iResearch's positioning of Duoduo, it can be seen that Duoduo belongs to the paid question-and-answer and reading tool industry, so Duoduo's main market is the knowledge payment and mobile reading market.

According to Analysys data, the main user groups are aged between 24 and 40, accounting for 74.39%. Since Duode has also launched a sub-product - Duode for Teenagers, and teenagers are defined as users aged 7-17, it can be concluded that Duode's target users are users over 18 years old. In my country, the population over 18 years old accounts for about 82% of the total population. About 1.148 billion people.

Judging from the content obtained, the course content is mainly for self-improvement, and also includes content from some specific subjects, such as Xue Zhaofeng’s economics class at Peking University and Wu Zhihong’s psychology class. Therefore, the target users of Duode tend to be well-educated people. Given that Duode has recently launched many courses with low barriers to entry, the educational level of Duode's target users can be positioned as those with college degree or above. The data of the seventh national census showed that as of 2016, the number of people with university education (referring to college and above) in my country was 170.93 million.

Most of the users obtained are those with medium to low consumption capacity, accounting for 84%. It can be analyzed that the target users obtained are consumers with medium to low consumption level or above. Analysys defines low- and middle-income consumers as people who have certain daily consumption preferences within a certain period of time (such as online shopping, life services, travel, etc.). For people with an education level of college or above, at least 95% of them have this level of consumption capacity.

Therefore, based on the above information, it can be concluded that the user boundary of the product is at least 162 million people.

2.2 Market Competitive Product Analysis

Himalaya is a well-known audio sharing platform with a total user base exceeding 480 million. Its mobile client was launched in March 2013.

On January 26, 2011, Zhihu went online and began operations. On September 2, 2011 and September 28, 2011, Zhihu launched the iPhone version client.

Dedao aims to provide users with "time-saving and efficient knowledge services". It was launched in May 2016 and produced by the Luoji Siwei team. It advocates fragmented learning methods, allowing users to acquire effective knowledge in a short period of time.

2.2.1 Analysis of active users and activity

According to Analysys data from July 2018, there is a huge gap in the number of monthly active users between Duoduo and Himalaya and Zhihu. Zhihu's monthly active users are nearly 10 times that of Duoduo, while Himalaya's monthly active users are as much as 40 times that of Duoduo.

The reason is that Zhihu and Himalaya apps were launched earlier, 5 years and 3 years earlier than Duoduo respectively.

Zhihu has accumulated a large number of users in the form of a question-and-answer community and makes profits through paid courses. Himalaya is an FM and audiobook platform that has accumulated a huge user base through its audiobook and FM services, and later launched the knowledge payment business to increase its profit margins.

Therefore, Zhihu and Himalaya had already accumulated a large number of users and had a large user base before they started paying for knowledge. In this case, it is easier to convert users.

The initial users came from logical thinking and the appeal of big Vs such as Luo Zhenyu. But the number of users of Logical Thinking is only in the millions. In addition, it has only been online for two years, and the course content is relatively limited, and some courses tend to focus on specific subjects, so it is reasonable that the user scale is relatively small.

It is worth mentioning that in 2017, the Duode APP ranked first in the App Store's Chinese Mainland Books Bestseller List; in December 2017, the Duode APP was selected as one of the App Store's 2017 annual trends (knowledge payment category). It can be seen that the potential obtained is still huge and there is a lot of room for improvement.

Judging from the development history of Zhihu and Himalaya, building a user social center and diversifying products are effective ways to accumulate users. Therefore, while ensuring the quality and reputation of the courses, we must enrich the course content, build a good user community, and improve the ancillary functions of the product, which is exactly what the Get team is currently doing.

2.2.2 Analysis of user launch times and usage duration

Judging from the average monthly usage time and launch times per person, the data obtained is quite different from those of Zhihu and Himalaya.

The main reason for this result is that the main businesses of Zhihu, Himalaya and Duoduo are different.

Zhihu is a question-and-answer community, in which questions in the fields of learning and entertainment account for a large proportion.

When users use Zhihu to browse questions, they usually read more than one answer, and articles with high likes are usually longer, so users will stay in the APP for a longer time. Due to the community nature of Zhihu, there are high-frequency interactions between users, such as liking and private messaging. In addition, when browsing Zhihu's questions and answers in a mobile browser, if you want to see more answers, you must open the Zhihu APP. Therefore, Zhihu is far ahead in terms of average number of launches per person and average usage time per person.

Himalaya's main businesses are FM and audiobooks, among which entertainment products account for a large proportion. Users are easily attracted by Himalaya's content and listen to FM and audiobooks continuously. Since Himalaya has a large amount of content, it is easier to push products that suit users' tastes through their usage records and display them to users in the form of notifications, thereby increasing the number of times users open the products.

In contrast, Duoduo is a serious knowledge payment platform with almost no entertainment content, so users will only open Duoduo when they want to learn. In addition, the content of the courses is relatively complex, requiring users to go through a process of understanding after learning, and is not suitable for continuous listening like listening to ordinary FM.

Tuo Buhua also mentioned a point of view in the regular meeting of Getui - "learning is anti-human". Even if fragmented learning methods are used to reduce the pressure of learning, it still requires self-motivation from users. It is impossible for users to be as enthusiastic about learning as they are about browsing entertainment content. Therefore, in terms of the average number of product launches and average usage time per person, the data obtained is much lower than that of Zhihu and Himalaya, which are of an entertainment nature.

Although in terms of business attributes, to a certain extent, the average number of launches and average usage time per person are far lower than Zhihu and Himalaya. However, this data also shows that there are still many shortcomings in attracting users. It is suggested that the diversity of courses can be increased, and the fun of the content can be appropriately increased while maintaining the original serious content.

2.2.3 User Retention Rate Analysis

In terms of user retention rate, the obtained user retention rate is only half of the average of Zhihu and Himalaya. This shows that there is a big gap in how to retain users, which is one of the reasons why the growth of active users of Duoduo is slow or even shows a slow downward trend.

The reason why the user retention rate of Duoduo is low has a lot to do with the fact that Duoduo is a serious knowledge payment platform and does not have any entertainment content. It is not easy to persist in learning, so in order to better retain users, it is recommended to establish a user incentive mechanism to improve user retention rate.

2.3 Summary

Combined with the above analysis, although Duoduo currently has a certain scale and potential, there is still a big gap between Duoduo and Zhihu and Himalaya in terms of active users, average user usage time, average number of opens and retention rate.

The main reasons for the gap are: Duoduo was founded relatively late, the content is not rich enough, and a mature user community has not been established; because Duoduo is a serious knowledge payment platform with almost no entertainment content, there are certain barriers in accumulating and retaining users.

In order to gradually narrow the gap with competitors, it is recommended to improve the interest of content and establish a richer content system while maintaining the professionalism and rigor of knowledge; at the same time, build good community functions, connect users, increase interaction between users, and increase incentives for user learning.

3. Get user analysis

3.1 User Data Analysis

3.1.1 Gender and age analysis

According to Analysys data, male users account for 62.27%. This is related to the content bias of Duoduo, which is more masculine. Duoduo currently has 115 paid courses, of which only 28 are female authors, accounting for 24.35%, so it attracts more male users.

In the user age distribution, users aged 24-40 years old account for 74.39%, among which users aged 24-30 and 36-40 years old account for the highest proportion of 23.53% and 34.46%.

The user group aged 24-30 includes newly graduated undergraduates and postgraduates as well as newcomers to the workplace. This group of people have high requirements for self-improvement and are eager to learn new knowledge to enrich themselves and improve their competitiveness.

As social competition becomes increasingly fierce, people aged 36-40 begin to enter a midlife crisis, experiencing changes in their lives or facing turning points in their lives. I hope to draw nourishment from the outside world, improve my competitiveness, find solutions to problems by learning new knowledge, adjust my way of thinking, and broaden my horizons. Therefore, users in these two age groups have a greater demand for new knowledge and account for a higher proportion of users.

3.1.2 Consumption Capacity and Geographical Distribution

In terms of consumption capacity, consumers with low to medium-high capacity accounted for the highest proportion of 83.76%, among which medium-high consumers accounted for 35.3%. In terms of geographical distribution, most users are concentrated in second-tier and above cities, accounting for 80.57%, of which first-tier cities account for as high as 49.91%.

As a serious knowledge payment platform, Duoduo's users have a high level of education. Most of them have stable incomes and a certain amount of disposable assets, and have a certain level of consumption capacity.

Analysys International describes the middle and high consumption capacity as people who have a certain degree of investment and high-end business travel consumption preference within a certain period of time (such as investment and financial management, high-end hotels, aviation services, tourism, etc.). It basically meets the consumption level of white-collar workers with certain work experience in big cities.

Since most of Duoduo users are located in large cities with higher consumption and salary levels, middle- and high-income consumers account for the highest proportion. The high proportion of users in big cities is in line with the characteristic of my country's talents gathering in big cities. Moreover, users in big cities have a stronger acceptance of new things and are more likely to accept the new learning model of paying for knowledge. In addition, the pressure of life in big cities is relatively high, especially in first-tier cities, and users have a greater demand for self-improvement. Therefore, the users obtained are mainly distributed in large cities, with the largest number of users in first-tier cities, accounting for nearly 50% of the total number of users.

3.1.3 Times and duration of time-sharing usage

From the average number of startups and usage time per user by time period, it can be seen that the data reaches the highest level between seven and nine o'clock, which is consistent with the user's working hours and commuting time.

It can be inferred that most users are working people with fixed working hours; and one of the main user scenarios is commuting to work, and users use the free time during commuting to recharge themselves. Seven to nine o'clock is also the time when most people wake up. We can analyze that some users will use the time after getting up, washing, eating breakfast, etc. to study on Getui. This is also consistent with the concept of fragmented learning.

Combining the above analysis, we can conclude that most of the users live in big cities, have a relatively high income level, are concentrated in the age group of 24-30 and 36-40, and are mostly male. The main usage scenarios are commuting and fragmented time after waking up.

3.2 User Profile

Xiao Zhang, 24 years old, male, living in Shanghai, senior student at a university

Xiao Zhang is a college student who is about to graduate and hopes to work as a product manager after graduation. However, since the major he had studied had little to do with product managers, he was worried that his thinking ability was insufficient. On the recommendation of a friend, he bought "Liang Ning's 30 Lectures on Product Thinking" on Getui.com, studied it before going to bed, and took notes to record his learning experience. He hopes to use this method to learn a way of thinking suitable for product development.

Xiao Li 29 years old female living in Guangzhou pregnant mother

Xiao Li is a woman in her second trimester of pregnancy. She is a white-collar worker at a company in Guangzhou and is now resting at home in preparation for giving birth. Seeing that she was about to become a mother, she was very happy, but at the same time she knew that she was far from ready for the role change and she had too little knowledge on how to educate children. Since I used to use Dedao when I was working, I knew that it had some good parenting courses. So she decisively bought "Dr. Wei's Family Education Handbook", began to systematically learn scientific parenting methods at home, and shared her learning experience with her bestie and husband.

Xiao Zhao, 30 years old, male, resides in Beijing, programmer at a large Internet company

Xiao Zhao is a programmer with three years of work experience. Recently, he feels that the work of a programmer is increasingly boring. He also hopes to be promoted to management level in a few years, so he wants to transfer from the technical department to the marketing department within the company. In order to learn some business and management-related knowledge, he studied "Five-Minute Business School" and "Ning Xiangdong's Management Course" during his daily commute to work, laying the foundation for his future career change.

Da Zhou 36 years old male Resident Shenzhen Workplace elite

After several years of hard work, Da Zhou was promoted to a management position in a company in Hangzhou this year. While he was happy, he also found that his free time was becoming less and less and his work pressure was becoming greater. He used to spend two hours reading every day, and he enjoyed the feeling of enriching himself. But now that he has just been promoted, he has to devote even the time he used to study to work, which makes him feel a little knowledge anxious.

Fortunately, a friend recommended him to give "Elite Daily Lessons" a try. After listening to it, he found that it was exactly what he wanted. It not only helped him save reading time, but also the selection of books also fully met his needs. So he decisively bought "Elite Daily Courses" and used the fragmented time on his way to work and after work to recharge himself.

Old Wu, 40 years old, unemployed in Hangzhou

Lao Sun used to work in the technical department of a medium-to-large Internet company in Shenzhen. He thought he would soon be promoted to management level, but the company was recently in a downturn and he was unfortunately laid off. His career plans were all disrupted. He didn't know what to do for a moment and fell into deep anxiety. His wife and friends' advice didn't have much effect, so he thought that maybe the best way was to let him realize it himself.

So, Mr. Wu’s wife bought him the “Anxiety Management Course”. After listening to the explanation from the authority, Mr. Wu felt suddenly enlightened and decided not to think about work for the time being. He had been busy with work for so many years and had not spent any time with his family. Now he wanted to enjoy the time with his family. Old Wu also saw the great changes in himself and the power of psychology, so he bought "Wu Zhihong's Psychology Class" on the Get platform and studied psychology seriously every morning when he woke up.

4. Functional Analysis and Optimization

Through user interviews, we found that users easily lose interest in courses and rarely complete the courses they purchase.

The user's enthusiasm basically conforms to the user self-driving curve in the figure below. It can be seen from the figure that the user's self-motivation reaches its peak when purchasing a course, and then has been on a downward trend. This shows that after purchasing a course, the learning time obtained by the user is constantly decreasing; this trend will lead to a low average usage time and number of times the app is used, and is not conducive to the user's secondary purchasing behavior.

Therefore, using incentives to increase users' self-motivation after purchasing courses is an effective way to improve the above data.

The interviews also revealed that users rarely engage in social activities such as reading and writing messages, indicating that apart from learning about paid products, users rarely spend time on getting things done.

Therefore, the author designed an incentive system for the social aspect of Get, so that users can engage in more social interaction behaviors; it can not only increase the activity of the community, but also increase the learning time of users, thereby improving the user retention rate, usage time, number of uses and user stickiness of Get.

4.1 Points system

The system rewards users with points for their learning and social behaviors, thereby recognizing and encouraging their behaviors. Points are mainly composed of fragments and ink values.

Supplement: The black ink value awarded by the system can only be used to reward other users, and the rewarded users will receive blue ink value.

4.1.1 How to earn points

Daily login reward: 10 ink points

Daily usage time: Different points rewards will be issued based on the user’s daily usage time.

According to Analysys data from August 2018, the average daily usage time per person (monthly) was 17.45 minutes. Therefore, in order to allow most users to receive rewards, the duration of the first stage is set at 25 minutes, with an audiobook fragment and ten ink points as rewards, gradually lighting up the user's audiobook reward button; at the same time, the current progress is displayed (similar to the battery display when charging a mobile phone), so that further feedback can be given to users, increasing the sense of accomplishment brought by timely feedback. The duration of the second stage reward is set at 55 minutes, and the reward is one column fragment and 20 ink points, which, like the audio book fragments, displays the current progress.

The following figure shows the user's time goal completion and the reward collection entrance:

Total usage time: Based on the total usage time of users, users will be awarded points, coupons and paid product rewards.

The following figure shows the entrance to claim the total time reward:

Social activities: Users can earn 3 points and 1 black ink point for posting articles and making comments, with a daily cap of 20 points.

Medal Reward: After completing a specific medal task, the system will reward you with a point of merit.

4.1.2 Use of Points

Fragments

Every seven audio book fragments can unlock a book interpretation of the book you listen to every day. After collecting 100 column fragments and unlocking three special medals, you can get a column worth 199 for free. However, if users want to redeem the column, they need to unlock certain specific medals. This part will be introduced in detail in the medal system below.

Ink Value

(1) All products in the Ink Mall are limited edition products. Every 5,000 blue inks can be exchanged for a signed product of the columnist, such as a book or a physical column redemption card. According to user interviews, the columnist's signature product has an irresistible appeal to users. Placing signature products in the ink mall can give ink value in the minds of users and increase users' motivation to obtain ink value.

(2) Ink can be used to reward other users. After seeing other users' messages and comments, users can not only like, comment and forward them, but also reward the user with ink points to express their strong approval of the user's views. Since black ink is only valuable when given as a gift to others, this method not only adds a form of social interaction, but also promotes user interaction. Users can also gain a sense of accomplishment when rewarding others with ink points.

The following figure is the points mall interface designed by the author:

4.2 Community internal rankings

Setting up a leaderboard within the community can motivate users. For users on the list, they can gain a great sense of recognition and accomplishment; for users who are not on the list, the ranking list serves as a role model and increases users' self-motivation.

In addition, a user may study multiple columns and join multiple column communities, which gives the user more opportunities to appear on the leaderboard, increasing the user's enthusiasm for interacting with the columns.

The rankings are divided into two dimensions: learning ability ranking and blue ink value ranking.

Learning ability represents the user's total achievement in social and self-learning. It is determined based on the user's learning time in this column, the degree of learning completion, and the amount of blue ink rewarded for publishing articles in the column. Learning ability tends to assess the user's self-motivation. According to user interviews, some users are naturally introverted and do not like to post messages and comments anywhere. Therefore, in the learning ability ranking, learning time and learning completion account for the main calculation proportion.

The calculation formula is shown in the following table:

Assume that user A studies a column for 12 hours, completes 61% of the courses, and is rewarded 32 inks in the column community. Then the user's learning ability score is:

(12*8)+(100*61%)+(32*1)=189 points

The following figure shows the learning ability ranking and blue ink value ranking interface:

The blue ink value ranking represents the user's enthusiasm for outputting content in a certain column community, the popularity of the content, etc.

4.3 Optimize the medal system

The purpose of the medal is to increase the user's sense of identity, give the user a surprise, and satisfy the user's desire to collect. The current medal system has relatively little content, and all medals are related to user learning time, purchases and other activities. None of the medals encourages users' social behavior.

Therefore, in order to encourage users to engage in more social activities, it is necessary to add medals corresponding to social activities. As shown in the following table:

The newly added social medals can also serve as a prerequisite for using fragments to unlock columns for free. Only when the Medal of Continuous Writing is at level 3 or above can you use 100 column fragments to unlock a free column.

In addition, a medal wearing function has been added, allowing users to select a medal to wear behind their avatar.

The following figure shows the interface for users to select the medals they want to wear and the interface after the user wears the medals:

After the user clicks the Wear This Badge button, the badge icon will be displayed on the right side of the user's nickname, and the application scope covers all interfaces involving information display.

Users can click on the icon of a worn medal to go to the medal setting interface and choose to wear other medals or cancel wearing of medals.

4.4 Community Incentives

Through user interviews, we found that users rarely engage in social activities within Getui and have hardly ever used the Knowledge City function.

Combining user suggestions and personal usage experience, it is found that the content in Knowledge City is not recommended according to the columns that users are currently studying, and cannot meet the needs of users who want to improve and discuss the content they are currently studying; and the recommended content is determined based on the user's attention.

In reality, users rarely take the initiative to follow other users. In combination with the above points, the author intends to redesign the predecessor of Knowledge City, that is, to establish respective communication platforms under each column, so that users can better communicate the content of the column they have learned.

Through community interaction and internal community incentives, we can increase user retention rate, usage time and usage frequency, and improve user stickiness. The existing Knowledge City-State function remains unchanged and is used as a "discovery" function.

The following figure shows the entrance to the column community. The name of the entrance button is related to the column name and content and can be changed flexibly:

Compared with other social platforms, such as Baidu Tieba. Dedao is a learning platform, so the community focuses on sharing and exchanging learning experiences, and the content is high-quality. All behaviors such as spam advertising will be strictly blocked to maintain a high-quality community environment. High-quality content is fundamental, so the following incentives are designed to encourage users to present better content.

4.4.1 Incentivizing users to publish content

The first step in building a community is to have high-quality content. In order to encourage users to publish high-quality content, the author set up the following mechanism:

1. Every week, we select high-quality content from each column community and publish it as the column’s weekend featured articles.
2. In the column community, the system pins five high-quality contents to the top every day.
3. Every quarter, a user who has published original content is selected from the community and a signed book by the column lecturer is given out through a lottery.
4. In the community, users can donate ink points to articles they approve of.

Reasons for establishing the above mechanism:

(1) When a user's article is selected by a columnist, it is a great recognition of the user's authority and a huge affirmation of the user. In addition, the current average number of subscribers to the column is around 80,000. Once a user's own work is selected, it can be seen by more than 80,000 users, which further increases the user's sense of accomplishment.

(2) Daily pinning of high-quality content gives new opportunities to users whose content is not selected as high-quality content, increases user enthusiasm, and allows more users to gain a sense of identity in the community, forming a virtuous circle. In addition, giving ink value also represents the recognition of other users.

(3) By publishing high-quality content, you can earn Ink Points and redeem them for signed works by columnists in the Ink Mall. For users, this is a two-birds-with-one-stone thing, further stimulating users to publish high-quality content.

The following figure shows the display interface after the experience posted by the user in the community is selected by the column:

Allow users to interact directly on the article interface instead of having to enter the community to interact. Reduce the cost of user interaction, increase the chances of selected articles being recognized and rewarded, and further motivate users to publish high-quality content in the community.

The following figure shows the interface within the community:

Add a featured label to high-quality content and pin it to the top of the day. Further increase users' enthusiasm for publishing content.

The following figure shows the interface for exchanging ink points for signed works by columnists:

4.4.2 Encourage users to participate in community interaction

It was mentioned in the ink value acquisition mechanism that users can also obtain ink value rewards by commenting on content posted by other users. Each comment earns 1 black ink point. In addition, comments written by users can also be liked and rewarded with ink points. This will further promote interaction between users. Increase the activity of the column community.

5. Operational Concept

April 24th is World Book Day. Starting with World Book Day, a week-long operational activity was designed for Get.

Event name: 4.24 World Book Day

Event time: 2019.4.24 to 2019.4.30

Operational Purpose:

1. Attract new users
2. Increase old users' preference for the product, turning them from fans into loyal fans, while promoting activation at the same time.
3. Strengthen the product culture and positioning of Get: a knowledge payment platform that allows you to learn throughout your life.

Operational content:

(1) On Book Reading Day, users who forward and share the following poster on their Moments will be given the privilege of borrowing all e-books and audiobooks for free for 24 hours.

(2) Log in on Book Reading Day to receive an audiobook as a reward.

(3) Continuous login within seven days of the event: You will be rewarded with an e-book of your choice and an e-book redemption voucher.

(4) During the seven days of the festival, the fragments and ink value rewards received by users will be doubled.

(5) During the promotion period, members can enjoy a 20% discount on renewal fees.

(6) Speaker of "He Fan's Reading Club": He Fan will conduct a live broadcast on Get on Book Day to share his reading experience. At the same time, users who listen to the live broadcast on the same day can receive a RMB 50 coupon for "He Fan's Reading Club".

(7) On the second day of the event, Zhang Kai, the speaker of “How to Become a Speed ​​Reader”, will conduct a live broadcast on Getui to share his latest insights on speed reading. At the same time, users who listen to the live broadcast on the same day can receive a 5-yuan coupon for the premium course "How to Become a Master of Speed ​​Reading".

(8) Activity for collecting learning experiences: Users post their learning experiences in the Knowledge City, with the hashtag #WorldBookDay. Selection and rewards will be made based on user likes and editor reviews. (The collection period is seven days, and the winning users will be publicly displayed on the eighth day. The system will automatically issue redemption coupons to the user's account.) The event rewards are as follows:

• Thirty winners will be selected and rewarded with one-year membership of Listen to This Book Everyday.
• The user who receives the most likes will receive an additional signed book from the columnist.
• The user who receives the second most likes will receive an additional reward of a physical book from the mall.
• The user who receives the third most likes will receive an additional 'Friends of Time' bookmark.

VI. Conclusion

As a knowledge payment platform APP, Duode has achieved remarkable results in just over two years since its launch. Although there is a big gap in user numbers compared with Zhihu and Himalaya, its monetization capabilities and high-quality product culture are strong advantages.

With the wave of knowledge payment, more and more people are willing to pay for learning. I believe that as long as Duoduo continues to launch high-quality courses, meet users' learning needs and stimulate their enthusiasm for learning, it will be able to set sail in the red ocean of knowledge payment.

Author: Cayman

Source: Cayman