Liulishuo-In-depth analysis of product operations!

In an era of increasingly fierce competition, adults cannot stop learning. Learning a foreign language has always been at the top of the list of learning needs, which has spawned many foreign language learning software, and Liulishuo is one of them. This article will analyze it in depth, I hope it will be helpful to you.

I have always focused on research and analysis in the field of e-commerce. This time, I took the opportunity of taking operation-related courses to do an in-depth disassembly and analysis of Liulishuo, a product that focuses on English education.

The biggest feeling I got from the whole analysis process is that having a reasonable and smooth disassembly idea and framework can help you to look at the current situation of a product and the breakthroughs for its future development from different dimensions. I will also recommend that you can use this disassembly framework to carefully analyze your own products again, which may bring you different thoughts and inspirations.

1. Product life cycle judgment

1. The life cycle of Liulishuo

Liulishuo English is an English learning app focused on AI-driven education. It was founded in September 2012, but according to data from ZCOOL, the app's downloads have accumulated and grown since August 2013, and as of April 2021, the total number of downloads has reached 940 million. In terms of the number of registered users, as of June 30, 2020, the cumulative number of registered users was 185.6 million.

From the cumulative download curve in Figure 1, we can see that Liulishuo has gone through the introduction period and the growth period. It is judged that the product will enter the mature period and the user growth rate will begin to slow down.

From the daily download volume curve in the past three months in Figure 2, it can be seen that the daily download volume has basically remained stable, with small fluctuations within a certain range. It may bring a wave of short-term growth driven by special operational means (such as on March 9, 2021, it may be through gifts for downloads, or it may be through the promotion of festivals before and after to increase the download volume on that day). Therefore, it also reflects from another aspect that the current product has entered a mature stage, and should focus more on refined operations and improving operational efficiency, focusing on improving the activity of retained users, and considering how AI and online education can be more deeply integrated to further enhance user experience and tap user value (after all, it has been known for AI+English education since its launch), and converted into revenue promotion.

2. Operational strategy behind PLC (Product Life Cycle)

We have compiled and summarized the core functions of Liulishuo's versions in different mid- and late-stages of its life cycle. It can be seen that Liulishuo has been making different attempts and adjustments in different periods.

For general APPs, the introduction period is the time to attract new users and accumulate user base. From its initial version iteration, we can see that Liulishuo puts all its energy into building basic functions, such as the three most basic elements of speaking English - if you want to speak, you must have a recording function to record it so that customers can listen to it repeatedly, and the system can also give users' recordings intelligent scores. For example, learning can not only be "a battlefield for one person" but also "the smoke of war for a group of people". Therefore, the most common means to motivate users to learn is group learning, which brings together users who want to learn English and practice speaking together, thereby improving user stickiness and increasing user stay time.

As the number of users continues to increase and the infrastructure within the application is completed, it will enter the growth stage. During this period, if you seize the opportunity and become a "pig" on the vent, then during the growth stage, you can attract a large number of new users while keeping old users active, continuously expand the scale of the application, and at the same time build word of mouth, forming a good positive cycle. During this period, we also saw Liuli's ambition to be innovative, such as being the first to launch AI oral scenario practice.

What impressed me most was the advertisement that was spoken fluently in the elevator at that time. The protagonist's perspective (that is, my own perspective) was brought to the office, where he greeted several foreigners in a relaxed and cheerful manner. The whole scene was natural, smooth and reasonable, as if this was just one of your thousands of "daily lives as a social animal". Why is it that Chinese people are said to be good at speaking English but keep silent when it comes to speaking? In fact, it is because there are too few actual practice scenarios. They are immersed in a sea of ​​questions every day and cannot extricate themselves. They seldom stand in front of others and speak. The psychological burden comes to their minds when they are asked to speak.

So in fact, Liulishuo has grasped this user pain point, and has therefore spent a lot of thought on dialogue and practical scenarios. This attempt has also been very successful, allowing users to remember Liulishuo's ability to conduct real-life dialogues with a high sense of immersion.

As for the maturity stage, we can see that Liulishuo is actually also making new attempts and breakthroughs, focusing on the combination of AI and education. Under the trend of national big data, how to accurately locate the pain points and characteristics of different users and realize refined operations and course recommendations may not only be the bottleneck that Liulishuo needs to break through, but also the bottleneck of applications in many different fields.

But unfortunately, it seems that the performance of Liulishuo in the mature stage is not as impressive as in the growth stage, so there has been no second explosion point since then.

2. Business Logic & Competitive Products

1. Cash flow vs. flow?

According to the explanation in Baidu Encyclopedia, the origin of cash flow is modern financial management, which refers to the total amount of cash outflows and cash inflows that occur during the entire life cycle of an investment project. In simple terms, it is the circulation of funds. Traffic is easier to understand. It is the number of users entering the application within a specified time. Obviously, for the Liulishuo APP, the core of operation should be traffic rather than cash flow. There are many free online education software on the market now, so the overall business logic is to start with traffic, quickly acquire and retain users, improve user stickiness and loyalty, and then introduce paid courses, make paid conversions, and monetize the traffic.

2. High frequency vs. low frequency?

Learning itself is something that requires perseverance, so any learning app will initially be considered a low-frequency-use app, but as the user's learning habits are cultivated (and I believe the goal of every app is also to cultivate the user's learning and usage habits), it will become a high-frequency-use software. Given that Liulishuo has now entered its mature stage and its positioning has shifted to a high-frequency application, it should focus on continuously improving the user experience on the platform, increasing sharing points, improving user stickiness, and further monetizing knowledge payments.

3. Competitive products

There are many online education software. Currently, Liulishuo ranks 31st in the Application-Education Ranking. Other similar competitors include: Zebra Education, Baidu Word, Duolingo, Silently Memorize Words, English Fun Dubbing, No Memorization Words, Scallop Words, etc. In terms of the focus of competitors, most of them focus on the niche field of memorizing words, while Liulishuo focuses on oral training, which is a more prominent entry point that is in line with China's national conditions for English education.

3. What are the key factors for the success of the product’s core business logic? The key issue?

1. Core business logic

The figure below is a summary of the core business logic of Liulishuo. However, according to the latest version, it can be found that Liulishuo has weakened its social attributes and strengthened knowledge payment at this stage. Functions related to social attributes such as circle creation, UGC output, posts, etc. have been offline. The current focus is on AI customized learning plans, segmented free/paid courses, live classes, dubbing and other modules, in order to achieve continuous traffic and knowledge monetization.

Key factors and key issues for success:

①Continuous enrichment of high-quality course content

Rich and high-quality course content is the basis for attracting users to continue to check in and study. At present, the courses on Liulishuo are relatively simple and do not quite meet the level of mid-to-high-level users. If we can consider continuously segmenting users and recommending courses that are more suitable for their English level, it may help expand the user base and allow users of different levels to find learning content that suits their needs on the platform.

② AI is more deeply integrated with English learning, making the conversation more situational and more immersive

Since its inception, Liulishuo has been promoting the concept of combining AI with education, which was a very attractive highlight at the time. I was deeply impressed by an advertisement a long time ago. It used real foreign dialogue scenes to make users feel as if they were having a 1 on 1 conversation with foreigners. This scene and promotional method were very novel, and it also made many users remember Liulishuo. However, when actually using the app, you will find that there is not such a strong sense of immersion, but a relatively stiff one-on-one voice chat. In addition, the level of the users matched for the dialogue does not match the results of your own tests, and the script is also relatively simple.

③ Traffic monetization, continuously improving user conversion and increasing the proportion of paying users

According to the Q3 2020 financial report data, Liulishuo has more than 200 million registered users, but only 500,000 paying users during the reporting period, and the growth of paying users continues to slow down. Therefore, how to increase the proportion of paying users to achieve traffic monetization is a key issue that needs to be solved urgently. As far as paying for knowledge is concerned, current users are actually not unwilling to spend money on courses or content and pay for knowledge, but whether the content is worth the money spent, current data shows that Liulishuo still needs to improve its value at the content level.

④ Social needs that cannot be ignored

Circles, posts, and interactive comments are basically nowhere to be seen at present, but in fact social needs are also an essential element in maintaining users and improving user stickiness. Learning is also divided into self-motivated and mutual motivational types. Different people learn in different ways. If the balance is directly tilted towards knowledge payment and the user group that needs mutual motivation to persist in learning is ignored, then it is likely to lose a wave of fans.

4. What is the market status of entry? Potential Operational Possibilities

Judging from the development history and scale of online education, the current online education market is relatively mature and the structure is basically determined. Although the growth rate has slowed down, the scale has grown relatively steadily. As users become more and more aware of and accept the concept of paying for knowledge, it is estimated that the scale may still have relatively large room for growth in the short term. In terms of segmentation structure, Liulishuo belongs to higher education, which still accounts for up to half of the online education market, so there is a high possibility of continued monetization. Based on the current information analysis, the potential operational possibilities of Liulishuo are as follows:

① Consider expanding offline education

After all, online learning cannot replace offline learning. Affected by the epidemic, offline education was hit hard for a period of time, but it has gradually recovered now. Therefore, it is also possible to consider combining online and offline learning to explore greater application scenarios and monetization possibilities;

② Improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness

Consider integrating marketing channels and cooperating with high-quality traffic platforms and content providers to improve traffic generation effectiveness while also improving the quality of the platform’s own content.

③Retain social attribute functions and find a balance between social attributes and knowledge payment

Learning can be a solitary thing, but for most people who are new to English, finding friends who are at a similar level to check in and make progress together, and then being able to show off their progress to their social circles, may be the driving force that motivates them to continue checking in and studying, and even guide them to monetize their knowledge through payment. Solitary learning is suitable for advanced users, while group learning is suitable for basic users. Balancing social interaction and knowledge payment based on the current user level ratio may bring better results.

5. User Decision Scenarios and Processes

Liulishuo is a 2C platform. The user decision-making scenario is relatively clear, mainly online learning. Users make unilateral decisions, but the decision may also be affected by many factors, such as:

• Career development needs: Due to workplace factors such as certification and promotion, users are stimulated to look for fragmented English learning opportunities and platforms;
• Social influence: Since relevant information is exposed in the friend circle or social circle, word-of-mouth spreads, and matches user needs, users are attracted to join the platform and start to check in and learn together;
• Media publicity: Attracted by novel advertising selling points, they enter the platform to find out the truth;
• …

VI. Conclusion

In general, when online education first emerged, Liulishuo entered the market with the niche field of spoken English (combined with the AI ​​concept), and gained high attention in the beginning and attracted users with English learning needs, especially those with English speaking training needs. Currently, Liulishuo has entered a mature stage and needs to achieve the goal of refined operations and improved operational efficiency through better user learning experience, more segmented user operation strategies, and higher-quality course content targeted at segmented user groups. It will continue to focus on increasing the proportion of paying users and the monetization of traffic and knowledge.

Finally, we have sorted out the core operational points and core indicators of Liulishuo in the future. However, the situation is changing so fast that we may have to adapt to the times and wait until things get better before we can implement them.

However, this time, from the entire life cycle of the product to the decomposition and sorting of the core business logic, and then deducing the corresponding core operational scenarios in the future, this step-by-step decomposition and analysis framework can be applied to product analysis in different fields. I will also share it with everyone to see if your own products can gain more insights and subsequent detailed implementation strategies through this step-by-step reverse reasoning.

Author: Product girl vc

Source: Product Girl vc