User operation: the core operation methodology that you must know!

For a long time, people have had many opinions and misunderstandings about the position of user operations , and there have even been some debates.

For example, some people believe that promoting user growth, retention, and activity of a product are all within the scope of user operations work. There is nothing wrong with thinking this way.

Some people also think that organizing activities and creating content can also be considered as user operation work, and there is nothing wrong with thinking this way.

Some people also believe that maintaining KOLs, establishing large and small WeChat groups, QQ groups and other communities, and maintaining major customers can also be considered user operations, and there is nothing wrong with saying this.

Others believe that the main task of user operations is to build a user growth system, an active system, and to formulate various incentive policies. It is correct to say that these are also part of user operation work.

So you see, whether we are working on growth, channels, events, content, community, customer service, or products, although the content of our work is different and the ultimate goal is different, we are actually all working around "users". So broadly speaking, we are actually doing "user operations".

But if we really want to do a good job in user operations and truly grasp the essence of it, we must touch its core essence in our work.

So what is the core essence of user operation? It is the grading, classification and grading of users.

I think this is the most important action framework in user operations, and it is also the core that guides us to carry out real user operations, or even refined operations.

Before I continue, I want to make one point clear. Since user growth has always been the primary goal of major companies and major products, user growth is often discussed separately. Due to the limited space today, my content will not involve user growth. I only want to give you a simple, intuitive and clear user operation framework.

I would like to emphasize again that this article will not cover user growth.

01

So what exactly are the levels, categories and stages of users? Let’s talk about them one by one.

First of all, let’s talk about classification. The most important purpose of classification is to allow your operational resources to quickly benefit those user groups that are most important to the product in the most efficient and accurate way.

Operational resources are always limited, people are limited, money, material incentives, and honor incentives are all limited. "User classification" can help us match resources to the best user groups as quickly as possible.

Let me take Zhihu, which is often used by everyone, as an example. The core of Zhihu products is high-quality answer content. Therefore, in the actual operation process, the more questions answered, the better the quality of the answers, and the answerers with other important characteristics (such as important social influence, etc.), such answerers will be quickly captured by the system or operators, and they will be labeled with "A" level, and important resources will be allocated to them (such as more exposure, more distribution, or disguised money, material, honor incentives, etc.).

Of course, gathering the “A-level” answerers does not mean giving up on other users. After all, the user base of a high-quality product is pyramid-shaped, and the middle, bottom and base levels all require a large number of high-quality users.

For example, some users who answer few questions or whose answers are of poor quality may be classified as "Grade B" during the operation process. Such users will also be given corresponding operation strategies, such as slightly less exposure and distribution, etc., to promote the enthusiasm of "Grade B" users to answer questions.

And so on…

The above is just a small example I gave from Zhihu, and it is not a true story. Maybe Zhihu’s operations are not based on my assumptions above. Maybe they have a more advanced or more chaotic user operation logic. But that doesn't matter.

What’s important is whether this example can help you understand what user classification is and the operations after classification.

First of all, you need to formulate standards based on your product form to screen out the most important users to you, as well as the second most important users and so on.

Then, for different levels of users, you need to use different user strategies to operate.

It sounds complicated, but in fact, whether in a startup or a listed company, many people will subconsciously classify users when doing operations.

For example, a small e-commerce platform will add all users who have purchased products worth more than 100,000 yuan on the platform to WeChat groups and establish many small user communities. Whenever there is a large-scale promotion, they will distribute coupons in the group.

This is not only a sincere feedback to old users and high-value users, but also a tiered operation of users. Gather users with high average order value and push them regularly , although the method is a bit simple and crude.

For example, a certain mobile game adds all the wealthy players on WeChat one by one, and sends special staff to provide personal service to solve the bug feedback, game equipment development and other issues of the wealthy players as soon as possible.

This can also be considered a type of user classification operation, but it is simpler and more crude.

In order to distinguish high-quality large-scale formal merchants from small and medium-sized grassroots sellers, Alibaba created the Tmall platform based on Taobao. This is definitely a user stratification operation at the strategic level.

Therefore, the essence of user classification is very simple, which is to screen out more high-quality users (merchants), formulate strategies, allocate resources, and promote them to continuously generate value.

So can tiered operations only be used for “producers” in products such as content producers, merchants, etc.? No, consumers can too.

02

The hierarchical operation of users can also be applied to "consumers" in the product (content readers, buyers, players, product users). In this regard, information content apps and e-commerce products are relatively widely used. For example, for an information app, a very important reference principle in user classification is the user's usage time and the number of articles read.

For example, if the user uses this information app every day and reads more than 10 articles, we can tentatively judge that he is an in-depth and loyal user of the product. Naturally, the user's classification level is higher.

So what does this classification affect?

To give a small example, the most direct impact is APP push. If you use my information APP very frequently, then I can assume that you are a heavy content or information demander. Naturally, the frequency of APP push messages to you will be higher. For example, ordinary users will only receive 1 push message per day, while users with higher levels will receive 3 push messages.

Dear readers, have you noticed in your life that you receive a lot of push notifications from the information apps you use heavily?

If the user only opens the content APP once in a long time, then the frequency of push notifications to him will naturally not be too high, because the user is not loyal enough to the APP. Once he is pushed too many times, he may directly uninstall it.

This example is very simple. I think there are even more e-commerce products.

For example, in the e-commerce industry, loyal customers who make long-term and stable purchases will be classified at a higher level in the grading process. The most important impact is that the customer will rarely receive coupons.

Yes, the more loyal customers will get fewer coupons...

If you think about it, you can guess that since the customer already has a high degree of loyalty to the product, there is little point in giving him coupons, and it will instead reduce sales profits. For users with higher grading weights, it is natural to recommend more products to them and increase the average order value as much as possible.

The above are just two simple examples of user classification operations. They are not absolute and may even go the other way.

For example, I have seen that some e-commerce platforms will give more coupons to more loyal customers, and the fewer times a content app is opened, the more push notifications it will receive... There are also such counter-intuitive operating strategies.

But no matter what strategy is used, it is based on the ability to classify users according to certain standards and implement different strategies for users of different classifications.

This is the core of user operation.

03

If user tiered operations are based on users' contribution to the product, frequency of use, duration, loyalty and other factors. The classification of users is even simpler, it is based on the user's operating behavior.

We all know that users have many active and passive operation behaviors, such as geographic location, mobile phone model, registration time, etc. These are passive operation behaviors. The active operational behavior is broader.

Including usage time, active time, usage frequency, number of clicks, reading categories, purchase value, purchase frequency, purchase type, check-in willingness, activity participation frequency, etc.

There are countless examples of this, and user behavior varies greatly depending on the product type. But in any case, the user's operating behavior reflects their many characteristics, and also provides a lot of execution basis for our user classification and post-classification operation strategy.

There are many examples like this, and we can think of many if we use our imaginations a little.

For example, if the user's usage frequency is very high, these users will be given priority for testing when the product is phased out to collect the most intuitive feedback;

For example, if users participate in activities very frequently, many activities will be pushed to these users first to collect first-hand bug information and participation willingness;

For example, if users tend to prefer a certain type of content, our operation strategy is to provide them with more content.

For example, if user A often opens the app during the day, and user B often opens it at night, then the two types of users will receive push notifications at different times.

For example, if user A likes sports content and user B likes entertainment content, the push content received by the two users will also be different;

Finally, for example, for users A in the north, the recommended product they receive in winter is cotton clothes, while for users B in Hainan, the recommended product they receive is casual clothes...

If you dig deeper into examples like this, don't go too far. In fact, classifying users according to their operating behaviors is equivalent to labeling them and creating user portraits.

The more categories you divide into and the more accurate they are, the more refined your operational strategies will be, the higher the conversion rate will be, and users will have a feeling that "this product really understands me."

04

After talking about the grading and classification of users, let’s talk about the stages of users.

If the first two are divided based on specific attributes, then the user phased operation is more divided based on the time dimension.

From the time a user first downloads the APP, registers, uses it for the first time, to the early, mid-term, and late stages of use, as well as churn, recall, etc., different operation strategies should be formulated for user operations in each dimension.

Generally speaking, the industry that performs best in user-phased operations is gaming products.

From the earliest download of the game, the rewards given for the first login, the rewards given for the first operation, the rewards given for the first recharge, as well as the subsequent series of task rewards, upgrade rewards, until the user finally loses, many gaming products have their own very mature playing methods and systems.

Since I am not in the gaming industry, I won’t teach you about this, but the specific framework is roughly like this. Readers can carry out strategic operations at different stages based on the life cycle of their product users.

So the question is, even if after reading this article, you understand the core essence and action framework of user operation, but in actual operation, you will still feel helpless. This is like knowing a lot of chicken soup, but still not living your own life well.

I have thought a lot about this, and I think it mainly focuses on the following points.

1. If you want to carry out refined user operations, first the product itself must be able to complete the user data closed loop. For example, websites and apps can collect all the data from user registration to loss. This excludes most WeChat public accounts, third-party platform accounts, etc. Because they are unable to fully monitor, screen, and differentiate user data and operational behaviors.

Of course, despite this, there are still many WeChat operation friends who do user operations in disguise by establishing WeChat groups, QQ groups and other communities. Although it can achieve the basic purpose, it is too simple and crude after all. It is not a long-term solution to stay in this kind of manual workshop form of attracting people, forming groups, and doing customer service for a long time.

2. Secondly, refined user operations have high requirements for product placement, data, and background support. First of all, the user data collected by the product must be sufficient and can be displayed intuitively and clearly. After reading the above content, you will find that the execution of user operations actually involves the permutations and combinations of various operation strategies , which require constant debugging, testing, and correction. This requires intuitive feedback from the data so that agile corrections can be made for each adjustment of the operational strategy, but in fact many Internet companies do not do very well in this regard.

3. Secondly, user operations have a high demand for support from system backend automation. The ideal situation is that once a certain user operation strategy is implemented, the system can fully and automatically support this set of processes. Thereby saving a lot of manpower.

4. Then, the business level involved in user operation is more complicated. The execution of many user operation strategies requires the linkage of technology and products. However, many operators who have been in the industry for 1 to 3 years do not have such capabilities, so the execution will be greatly discounted. The direct result is that the strategy cannot be promoted and executed.

5. Finally, many user operations lack very standardized methods in the specific implementation process. This approach includes setting standards, screening users, formulating strategies, trial and error in small steps, corrections, and batch replication... If this standardized approach is lacking, many user operations tasks can easily become customer service tasks. I will explain the specific implementation details of this aspect in detail later when I have the chance.

But despite this, I still believe that user operation has become more and more the most important part of the operation team. As more and more products have entered the era of user stock, how to do a good job in their refined operation, stock operation, and improve user repurchase, re-viewing, and recurring rates is still a very important and valuable task.

Today I just briefly talked about the entire framework of user operations. In the future, I will bring you more practical content to help you implement it based on the framework.

Friends of user operations, are you ready?

Author: Liu Weidong

Source: Liu Weidong