Case analysis: How to achieve user growth?

How to achieve user growth for Airbnb using the AARRR model?

It’s hard to imagine that Airbnb, now valued at $31 billion, started out with three air mattresses①.

In the fall of 2007, the annual meeting of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) was held in San Francisco. At that time, the surrounding hotels were fully booked and many participants were unable to book a room. In order to reduce the pressure of rent, Joe Gebbia, a designer who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, wrote an email to his roommate Brian Chesky, suggesting that they add a few air mattresses at home to provide a temporary place for the designer to live.

They also provide breakfast to guests every day during their stay. Airbed & breakfast is also the origin of the name of the website where they publish accommodation information, which was later shortened to Airbnb.

However, the business model of sharing living space with strangers is not favored. When Airbnb was seeking to raise $150,000 in funding, Brian Chesky's friend Michael Seibel recommended them seven well-known investment institutions in Silicon Valley. Unexpectedly, 5 of them refused and the remaining 2 did not respond at all②.

When it was extremely difficult to reply to one of the letters, the founder also tried selling cereal. During the Democratic National Convention, they customized cereal packages with popular candidates. A box of cereal that originally costs $4 can be sold for $40 after changing the packaging.

The sales of Obama-printed cereal were huge, and the revenue unexpectedly helped Airbnb survive a difficult period. But the platform's traffic never improved, and the company was on the verge of life and death. With no money to eat, the founder even lived on leftover cereal. Finally, this cereal story impressed Paul Graham ③ (a famous Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and programmer).

He figured that if these guys could sell $4 cereal for $40, they could probably convince people to let strangers live in their homes. The day the YC roadshow ended, he called the Airbnb team (CEO Brian Bresky, CPO Joe Gebbia, CTO Nathan Blecharczyk).

As soon as the call was connected, Paul said half of the sentence "I think..." and the call was disconnected.

The three people were so anxious that they jumped up and down in the car.

Then I realized that they had already driven onto Interstate Highway I 280. That's a stretch of road less than 100 kilometers between Silicon Valley and San Francisco, with no signal coverage at all. Then the three of them drove fast all the way to San Francisco. Before he arrived, Brian Chesky received a second call from Paul Graham.

“I want to say welcome to the Y Combinator Winter 2009 class.”

Airbnb was resurrected from the dead.

Product Overview

1.1 Product positioning - define the problem it solves

Solving people's "short-term accommodation and entertainment needs" is Airbnb's core business.

Unlike traditional hotels, Airbnb does not provide homes. This is just a platform that provides users with short-term rental information, and users can quickly complete the booking process on the website or App. Moreover, since the houses listed on Airbnb are provided by individuals, they have two major advantages over hotels: they are cheap and as comfortable as home. But there are also two major disadvantages : lack of standardization of service quality; and relatively high communication costs.

2018 was already the second year that Airbnb began to make a profit, but an official spokesperson refused to disclose the specific figures④. However, it can be found that Airbnb exceeded its revenue plan in 2017, with annual revenue reaching US$2.6 billion and annual profit reaching US$93 million.

Let’s take a look at Airbnb’s ranking and download volume in the App Store and Android app charts (data taken as of January 25, 2019).

1.2 Product Market Performance - Ranking and Downloads

(1) According to Qimai data, Airbnb ranks 258th in the overall iOS ranking (free) and 13th in the travel (free) ranking.

(2) According to the iOS download volume estimate, the daily download volume hovered around 10,000 for 5 months in the past year. Then, the daily download volume exceeded 30,000 in March, May, late June, July and September. The peak was 54,767 on August 3, and the annual download volume reached 7.76 million.

(3) The Android ranking is now 25th (in the App Store channel).

In the past year, it has been stable around the 20th place, and the best was No. 2 on December 22nd, and the worst was 101st on December 15th.

(4) Android downloads: The total number of downloads is close to 90 million, with an average daily download volume of about 460,000.

(5) The top three competitors are: Xiaozhu 15, Tujia 29, and Hazelnut 79.

1.3 Product Structure——App Functional Layout

AARRR model analysis

In order to figure out how to achieve the overall growth goals of the product and achieve more detailed optimization, we need to further break down the life cycle of user-product interaction. According to the type of user behavior, it is divided into 5 stages:

Acquisition
Activation
Improve retention
Increase Revenue
Referral

For each stage, we define clear evaluation indicators, use data to quantify the effects, propose optimization plans for testing and continuous adjustment, and finally find an effective path so that the core functions of the product can better serve users.

Traditional brand marketing, market channel promotion, SEO, ASO and other work focus on the first stage: acquiring new users, attracting new traffic, and reaching more audiences.

How can Airbnb optimize this aspect?

2.1 Acquisition

Reaching the audience is essentially a process of information dissemination. Before answering this big question, three small questions need to be defined.

What kind of people are Airbnb’s target users? What are the characteristics?
What are the channels through which these groups receive information? In other words, when and where does the corresponding scenario occur?
How can we convey Airbnb’s product value to them in an effective and impressive way?

These three questions define the object, channel, and content of communication respectively.

(1) User stratification (515 words) From the perspective of user needs and budget requirements, it can be roughly divided into three categories: travel, business travel, and internship or short-term study (Intern & Summer or Winter School).

The above table is based on my personal experience as a landlord. There is a lack of specific data support for the user base and user proportion, considering that Airbnb's revenue is mainly service fees for orders (and 20% of the experience, which will not be discussed here for the time being).

Service fee = 10% of order amount, and the annual order amount of a certain type of user = room price * number of days * frequency.

Therefore, considering the three factors of payment ability, length of residence and frequency of use, the most valuable demand type for a single user is business travel, the second most valuable is traveling, and the lowest is internship/training. However, judging from the three factors of user base, proportion of user types (this is just an estimate, and specific data is needed to determine), and population covered, travel has the largest demand, followed by business travel, and the smallest is still internship/training.

After completing user segmentation, target long-term new customer acquisition channels based on specific groups of people.

(2) Long-term acquisition - acquisition channels (1589 words) Because Airbnb's revenue mainly depends on service fees from order volume, the order of channel consideration is based on business volume (that is, the demand analyzed above).

First, let’s analyze the acquisition channels of travel users:

1) From the moment a travel user has the idea of traveling to the end of a journey, all travel-related links in between are very good opportunities for brand exposure, which can deepen the user's impression of Airbnb.

The following diagram simply summarizes the action path of a traveling user:

The scenarios that trigger users' travel needs may include:

A young man who has been working overtime for a long time thought during his coffee break that he should think about where to go on his day off.
Our anniversary is only a month away, should I plan a wonderful vacation for my wife?
The project is about to be completed, and after it is online and stable, I will take my team members to relax.

The keywords for the above scenes are rest, relaxation, beauty, and vacation.

Then, occasions in daily life that can evoke these keywords and have a highly overlapping target customer group with Airbnb can be considered as brand joint promotion partners. For example: online there are websites or apps or public accounts that specialize in introducing [travel guides], and offline there are high-end brands of [food dessert cafes, flower shops, art galleries, museums], etc.

For brand promotion partners, the biggest benefit is that they will have Airbnb's online traffic. The customer base will no longer be just local users, but will also attract users from other places. For Airbnb, it can increase brand penetration through offline channels.

In addition, three months, one month, or one week before long or short holidays, you can carry out a wave of marketing activities targeting content accounts that are of interest to specific customer groups.

After the idea of going out to play comes up, users need to decide where to go. There are two possibilities:

I have wanted to go to XXX place for a long time, but I never had the time;
I don't know where to go and need some information to help me make a decision.

For the former, Airbnb can give targeted recommendations of city highlights based on the user’s search keywords. For the latter, users need a "planting list" .

How to satisfy users' curiosity and show the interesting side of the world?

Here users need personalized introductory content, such as: global regional specialties, specific styles of architecture, a period of history, special events and other in-depth topics.

Therefore, any individual or team that has established a mature content system and regularly produces high-quality content such as city food, architecture, history, special events, etc. is worthy of establishing in-depth cooperation. They have already formed a certain influence in the tourism circle and are also a very valuable channel for attracting traffic. For example, travel programs such as Lonely Planet, National Geographic, and Discovery (if budget allows).

Because Airbnb’s main business is currently booking rooms and local experience activities, the most valuable exposure opportunities (the part with a red box in the figure below) are before booking a room, including when booking air tickets.

Most people book flights first and then accommodation, so targeted advertising can also be placed on the [flight booking page] .

If users come into contact with Airbnb in the red box section, the possibility of booking a room on the platform will increase significantly. In addition, there are sections in dark purple frames that are helpful for booking experiences on Airbnb, such as: [Booking tickets for attractions, activating local networks, or checking local commuting] , etc. Partnering with [these service providers] will also help grow Airbnb’s Experiences business. Because at this time, people's schedules are not yet fully booked, and they are still looking for interesting activities to enrich their journey, which is when the demand for experience is the highest.

For all the channels mentioned above, the key cooperation period is within three to six months before the long holiday. And take into account the peak season in popular tourist cities.

After analyzing the channels for acquiring travel users, let’s look at the business travel users with the highest individual user value.

2) Business travel users As mentioned in the previous user segmentation section, the payment decision factors for business travel users are convenience and efficiency, and their special need is invoice.

For this type of user, the purpose is very clear, so there are very few steps required before booking a room, which results in fewer channels that can influence users to book rooms. The most direct and effective way is to [negotiate cooperation through BD and corporate HR with high-intensity travel needs] . Online, you can try to contact [calendar apps, weather apps] to see if you can identify business travelers based on their usage records and push ads to them in a targeted manner.

As for offline, the places where business travelers frequently come into contact are [airports and taxi-hailing apps] . Although it can be considered, the traffic of these two methods is huge and the population covered is not just business travelers, so the marketing cost will be much higher and not very targeted. The effectiveness of these two channels still needs to collect data for further evaluation, or plus and high-end business brands can be placed in business class or high-end lounges to test the effects.

3) Internship/short-term study users: This type of users comes to work, not for fun, and have a low budget, so they have the highest requirements for cost-effectiveness when searching for properties.

When we design the product, we can make the ordering process meet their expectations. However, taking into account the two factors of "user base" and "payment ability", it is initially determined that there is no need to spend time and effort to expand this customer source channel. I won’t take up much space for analysis here for now.

(3) Channel Performance Scoring Criteria (1,342 words) The development of long-term sustainable channels and the maintenance of high-quality channels require a lot of investment, so the effectiveness of all channels must be evaluated. Currently, room bookings are Airbnb’s main source of revenue. Therefore, the North Star indicator for evaluation is set as trading volume, which is the number of orders and the total amount of orders .

Then, based on the main steps of attracting new customers, "reaching users" → "further understanding of potential users" → "intention to book" → "reservation", the North Star indicator is further broken down into first-level indicators, "channel size", "potential user volume", and "target user volume".

Table 1: Tracking table of important indicators for new customer acquisition channels

The purpose of obtaining these data is to answer three key questions:

Among the alternative channels, which ones are most compatible with our target users? ——(Who to choose)
How are the channels you chose to target performing? ——(Further narrow the scope)
Next, how should each channel be optimized? ——(Revenue maximization)

How to determine the types of valuable long-term cooperation channels?

Look at the matching degree. In other words, the degree of overlap of target users. In the absence of specific data, the following figure is a simulation diagram.

From the above figure, we can see the value of each channel, that is, how many exposures are consumed to obtain each user who places an order . The principle here should be "the smaller the slope, the better" , so the ranking of channel value is C > B > A.

This shows that the users in the C channel have the highest overlap with our target users, and it is a high-value delivery channel. It is very worthy of attention and in-depth cultivation. Then we can find ways to expand other channels with similar nature as Channel C to obtain more traffic; or find ways to further increase the average order value and increase the total amount of orders.

Generally speaking, advertising budgets are limited. So resources must first be concentrated on the best performing channels. Or even if the budget is sufficient, the inferior ones should be abandoned based on their performance.

So after the nature of the channel is determined, the next indicator to look at is which channel of the same type performs best?

We call the relevant indicators related to channel performance lag measures ⑤.

Lag Measures for channel performance are nothing more than ROI, that is, how much revenue is obtained for every dollar spent on advertising. That is:

Here is another example:

p.s. This picture is only used for schematic analysis and has no logical connection with the previous picture in terms of data. The previous picture is arranged by slope size, and the order of channel performance is A > B > C [Again, the channels A, B, C here are not the same as in the previous picture].

This shows that A got the most value for his money, even though the total order amount and number of orders were smaller than B's. The total order amount is about 70% of that of channel B, and the number of orders is 1/4 of the latter (all data are hypothetical values and are only used to assist subsequent analysis). After determining the specific channels for long-term investment, it is necessary to formulate data indicators to continuously optimize the performance of the channels.

This indicator serves as a lead measure. So how do you know which step is done right?

Next, we need to further break down the links and look at the lead measures.

If we look at each link of Lead Measures in detail, we may see the following possibilities:

The order rate is higher than other channels;
The number of attractions/properties collected is greater than the average;
App download rate or mini program click rate is high;
The traffic scale is large and the customer acquisition cost is low.

Therefore, data such as order rate, average order value, number of attractions/properties collected, App download rate, or mini-program click-through rate, traffic scale, and customer acquisition cost can all be used as small goals for other channels and optimized through single-point breakthroughs. You can even check whether the data of channel A is lower than those of other channels, and find out where you can optimize.

The core of the overall optimization guidance is to find ways to increase the number of orders and increase the average order value.

The concepts of ps lag measures and lead measures were mentioned by Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School in his book The 4 Disciplines of Execution.

The former refers to the core indicators of long-term goals, whose performance depends on past behaviors and generally lags behind the actions taken, so it is not conducive to motivating organizations. Therefore, the latter is required to provide real-time feedback on whether the action is effective and whether it is approaching the target.

(4) You can consider selecting the most touching stories from tenant reviews as material, and adapting them into a more realistic short film, which will be more touching. Try to touch your audience’s emotions. However, this is something that needs to be considered when placing advertisements. It is more professional to consult and outsource to an excellent advertising production company than for the user growth team to do it themselves. So I won’t discuss it here.

(5) Short-term acquisition - event marketing (1584 words) · Best Timing Generally speaking, people who like to travel will plan ahead, so the most ideal marketing event, that is, the time to acquire customers, is during the peak period of room bookings before the start of a long vacation. For specific time periods, you need to refer to the data of the same period in previous years.

Thought before an Optional ProposalThe driving forces behind the recent domestic screen-sweeping events include "identity recognition" - "Middle-aged people, halfway through the workplace", "causing resonance" - "What is Peppa Pig", "topic controversy" - "Hupu vs. Kris Wu", "material desire" - "IG wins the championship Wang Sicong lottery", "Alipay Koi". But in addition to adding points to the brand, marketing should also consider "how to better fit the business and drive revenue."

So for Airbnb, how can it combine its own business - homestays and experiences - while taking into account the communication effect of activities/events, so that people who don’t know Airbnb will have the urge and motivation to use Airbnb’s services?

Combining my own experience as an Airbnb host (housing & experience) and observations in my personal life, I discovered a potential option - large-scale offline games.

This idea came at an intersection.

On one hand, the number of views on Airbnb Experiences (visible in the host backend) is lukewarm; on the other hand, there is a high-frequency demand in WeChat groups - everyone is waiting for others to organize offline events (that is, the demand for local offline activities).

Proposal offline games are time-consuming, costly and difficult to control, so domestic brands currently lack experience in operating such marketing activities. However, there have been many successful cases abroad. For example: Google Maps' April Fools' Day offline game Where's Wally was inspired by Pokémon GO; another example: Nike's lunar epic running shoe park in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Both of these marketing efforts are extremely consistent with the product's own functions. While expanding the brand's influence, they can also create a positive cycle and encourage users to further use the product in depth. For Airbnb, the many existing experiences, if well-connected, have great potential to meet the strong demand for offline social entertainment on weekends or holidays in first-tier cities. For example, the top 10 experiences in Beijing include food such as "strolling and eating in Sanlitun & tasting tea at Zhaimen'er" and history such as "appreciating the ancient buildings of the Forbidden City & cycling in the thousand-year-old hutongs".

These experiences, which bear a strong imprint of the city, are not only worth exploring for tourists visiting Beijing, but are also very suitable for locals to discover the interesting side of this ancient city.

Suggestion: The event planning team should first conduct an in-depth and comprehensive evaluation of all popular experiences (e.g., those with a rating of 4.9 or above and 50 or more reviews). Then look at the activity radius, select the experience to be promoted, and then extract valuable and unpopular knowledge points suitable for dissemination (such as the raw materials or methods of food, or the famous historical events behind a historical attraction, etc.), or compile very interesting highlights into a set of [Enjoy Beijing/City Adventure Question Bank].

Then use this set of questions to distribute the flow of people to popular experiences or attractions to form a step-by-step adventure route.

Those who participate in this adventure treasure hunt quiz game must go offline to get hints. Only after answering the question correctly can they know the next question. The destination is hinted in the answer. You can also set the difficulty of the questions to satisfy the desire of high-end players to win, which also helps with dissemination (an opportunity to demonstrate your abilities).

In order to avoid cheating, it is necessary to limit the number of participants and the effective participation time.

Current limiting can arouse the public's curiosity to a certain extent, and at the same time can effectively control and monitor the effectiveness of activities. Then the question bank can be divided into several uses, and the activities can be divided into several sessions with different themes, which also helps to continuously create the heat of the event.

In order to ensure the fun and topic spread of the game, a professional puzzle designer is needed to design all game links and integrate the knowledge points of high-score experience into the game links.

Each question can appropriately revolve around the knowledge points introduced in the experience meeting to increase the participants' curiosity and desire for the experience trip, and then at the end of the game, give different rewards to the players according to their scores. The reward can be coupons for different discounts on experiences, such as free for children when traveling with a family, or half-price for girls when traveling with a partner, etc. It can also be a combination coupon for several experiences.

The interactive process of answering questions and the final score need to be achieved with the help of online tools, which also makes it convenient for contestants to share their results online.

If the effect is good, the question bank can be expanded and a "city ranking" can be launched, and the scores of each game can be accumulated. This can encourage users to participate multiple times, and can stimulate friends around them to play and challenge together. It can also "add interactive links", such as collaborative problem solving, or "dividing the work to solve different levels within a specified time", etc., to further add social fun to the game.

Before actual operation, it is best to conduct a small-scale trial and actively invite users who are most interested in the experience to run through the process. In addition, try to minimize bugs during practical operation.

However, if a bug really occurs after the activity goes online (although it is hard to avoid), after a period of fermentation (preferably no more than three days, wait for a round of self-media commentary articles to come out before responding), PR will come up with a fire-fighting plan and seize this opportunity to leave a good impression on the public.

Possible business partners Large-scale offline games and potential brand partners that can help amplify the functions of the product itself are all partners that Airbnb can consider for cross-border cooperation. For example: sports fashion brands, short-distance travel tool brands, location information service providers, and online communities that may like to play this type of adventure game.

(6) After the marketing effectiveness evaluation standard activity is launched, the entire network will monitor search index, media public opinion, Baidu index, Weibo popularity, App downloads, experience searches, experience views, and experience reservations.

At the same time, timely statistics of the background data of the online answering tool are collected to check the behavioral characteristics of the participants, create user portraits, and analyze interest distribution. It is best to determine the type of experience the public desires, and provide relevant data to experts who already have experience for reference so that they can optimize. It can also be made into introductory materials to help experts who want to conduct experiences learn more about target users.

2.2 Activation

We define the activation phase as the time from when the user downloads the App or opens the Mini Program to when they book a property for the first time. So how do you design all the interaction paths before placing an order? How to meet user needs while improving user satisfaction?

In order to answer the above two questions, we need to complete two steps in the key activation link of "user placing an order":

According to the "user action path" described in Section 2.1, sort out the interaction path between the user and the software end;
Borrowing the "KANO Model" of user satisfaction in product development proposed by Noriaki Kano, professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology⑤, we can predict user expectations and standardize the corresponding step behaviors in the interaction path to ensure user satisfaction.

(1) App interaction path, activation of travel users

Let’s first look at travel users. Users directed from various channels can be roughly divided into two types: “those who know where they want to go” and “those who don’t know where to go”. Airbnb can currently satisfy users who "know where they are going".

"Search for location, you can add filter conditions [Date], [Budget for single room], [Super host]" → "Show listing results" → "Can consult and book" → "Payment".

This is how Airbnb currently sets up its activation process for new users.

However, if you want to effectively accumulate the traffic in the channel and form your own long-term user pool, in the long run, you need to create a "travel recommendation content system" with complete classification and high quality to meet the needs of users who "have not yet decided where to go."

The logic of the "travel recommendation content system" is based on the user's desire to go out and play, and then classify them according to the points that they value most. For example, user A recently adjusted his vacation and has 7 days off, but doesn't know where to go. At this time, the Airbnb client can present a 7-day travel guide recommendation to this user.

For example, if an important anniversary is approaching and user B needs to plan a trip to surprise his or her partner, Airbnb can provide some romantic tourist attractions and itineraries.

Some users are interested in a topic about the evolution of a historical process, and Airbnb can also provide route suggestions for a series of related major events.

The classification suggestions can initially focus on people’s major desires and interests:

Eat - "Food Exploration"
Spiritual enjoyment——"Humanities and History", "Music Journey"
Play & Seek special and exciting experiences "Extreme sports (diving, surfing, rock climbing, etc.)"
Curiosity about the world - "visiting museums, famous art exhibitions & photography exhibitions, religious culture, architectural styles" etc.

All the attractions you see in the special content can be automatically added to the attraction favorites by double-clicking [equivalent to a red heart collection, equivalent to "want to go"], or you can long press [equivalent to "must go"]. After users have read the topics they are interested in and have collected them several times, they can jump to the homepage of the collection page. All the collected attractions will be marked with a "star" on the map.

for example:

These attractions can then be placed into the box of the blank calendar (the date can be filled in later) at the bottom of the same screen by long pressing and dragging. Because the physical distance between attractions can be intuitively seen on the map, it is very convenient for users to plan their daily itinerary.

It should look something like this:

ps It is best to display the map and calendar on the same screen for easy dragging. As for whether the upper and lower halves of the screen are occupied respectively, or whether it is a mother-and-child screen, AB testing is needed to see which usage users are more accustomed to. At the bottom of the favorites page, there is a button that allows users to directly go to the next step to recommend nearby properties based on the "attraction location" and "date (if filled in)" in the schedule, guiding users to book a property. Once a new user places their first order, the activation of "users who initially don't know where to go" is completed.

Activation of business travel users Considering that users who travel frequently have a higher frequency of using apps than tourism users. Therefore, the interactive logic of the App or website should be designed to be extremely simple (compared to the interface entered by travel users).

The steps for booking a property should be as few as possible to help business travelers place orders quickly. The theme color of the interface also needs to be changed to a high-end and noble one. Dark gray, black, or dark blue can give people a feeling of efficiency and convenience, and the elements on the page should be as few as possible.

The following figure briefly lists the interaction process of using Airbnb to book business travel accommodation for the first time:

From entering the App to receiving relevant housing recommendations, you only need to click 6 times and the housing results will appear on the same screen: "Enter the business trip mode page" → "Business trip city" → "Specific business district or technology park" → "Budget" → "Check-in date" → "Check-out date".

Cities with high frequency of business trips are provided with click-to-select labels. After selecting a city, the selected tags of specific business districts or science and technology parks will be automatically synchronized. Use the current scroll wheel to adjust the budget, and just click on the calendar to select the check-in date. If the entire booking process can be completed within 5 minutes, it will greatly save the time of business travel users.

Therefore, it is best for the platform to remember the company location of the business travel user and the budget set by the company. The properties are sorted by price from high to low, taking into account the distance factor.

When used again, the user will be directly directed to the business trip page by default. The default options are the city, business district, and budget of the last business trip. The user only needs to click twice to select the departure date and check-out date.

Ideally, the second reservation could take less than 5 minutes.

As for the problem that many business travelers are very worried about - invoice reimbursement, if Airbnb can achieve "all information can be automatically connected to the company after the business trip", greatly simplifying the reimbursement process, it will undoubtedly attract a large number of business travelers.

(2) Analysis of the KANO model of user satisfaction and product optimization (724 words) The originator of the KANO model is Noriaki Kano, a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He and his colleague Fumio Takahashi published the article Motivator and Hygiene Factor in Quality in 1979, which brought the standard of user satisfaction into the field of quality management.

In the article, he divided user needs into three categories: basic needs, performance needs, and delighters.

From the above figure, we can see the characteristics of these three types of needs:

Basic needs: Even if they are achieved, users will not be satisfied. However, if they cannot be achieved, users will be extremely dissatisfied.
Expected demand: If you don’t do it, you won’t be dissatisfied, and satisfaction will not be affected. If you do it, it will be better.
Exciting needs: Do something beyond user expectations, and users will be surprised and delighted.

For Airbnb users, their three types of needs during the activation (booking a home) phase are:

Basic: Find the house you want, get the necessary information, make payments smoothly, and communicate with the landlord instantly;
Expectations: Finding a house quickly, having very valuable reference information, easy payment, and having a pleasant communication with the landlord;
Excitement type: Finding the dream house, obtaining travel guide information makes users look forward to future travel vacations, and chatting with the landlord too late.

Exciting needs are the direction in which products can be optimized during the activation phase. However, this part requires heavy reliance on algorithms.

For example: how to guess what kind of house the user might like based on the user's behavior on the housing results page, including what kind of pictures they stay on the page for the longest time and what kind of pictures they directly exit after seeing; for example: what aspects of the communication process with the landlord are of greatest concern; and, calculate the average response time of each landlord, classify the landlords by response time, look at the communication between the tenants and each landlord, guess the response time that the tenants can tolerate, and provide matching landlords' housing results.

In addition, the landlord's attitude towards the tenant, the language used, etc., build a personality portrait of the host, and match the same type of people as much as possible through simple new user registration information to reduce friction in getting along...

All of these problems require a lot of user behavior analysis, and only by feeding them with data can we build a useful model to increase the guest booking rate and shorten the time it takes for guests to find their ideal property.

There are still many valuable questions that need to be defined and analyzed one by one after looking at the background data. There is a lack of data here, so I will not expand on it for now.

2.3 Retention

All operational actions that guide users to use the product multiple times fall into the category of retention. Retention is a link that needs more attention than "acquiring new users". It’s not that acquisition is not important, but the final revenue effect of growth work depends more on retention rate.

A study by Harvard Business School shows⑥ that for every 5% increase in retention rate, profit margins can increase by 25% to 95%.

We further divide the retention process into three stages: initial, mid-term, and long-term⑦.

Initial goal: to encourage users to use the product again while they are still fresh to it, so that the audience can gradually understand the core value of the product;
Mid-term goal: Users are already familiar with product functions. At this stage, the main focus is on cultivating user habits.
Long-term goal: Ensure that the product continues to bring greater value to users.

Next, we discuss specific retention actions (mainly for travel users) in stages.

(1) Initial stage

After the user successfully places the first order in the activation phase, the service of the Airbnb App or website has not actually ended. Whether or not a good impression can be left on users also depends on the quality of the housing provided by the landlord (comfort, safety, etc.) and the quality of service during the stay. This can be further subdivided into "after booking, before check-in" and "during check-in".

1) Before check-in

Based on my own experience as a host, most guests do not thoroughly search the information contained in the app. They often encounter the following questions after booking a room:

Landlord, what's your phone number? I can't find
What is your exact home address? Which neighborhood?
How far is it from XXX? How long does it take by subway?
Do I live alone in this room?
What is your home Wi-Fi password? Where do I go to look?
Can I book again for a cheaper price?

This type of question is not asked by individual users.

The picture above is a screenshot of the conversation within the app. If we sort them from left to right (1 to 8), the guest in screenshot 1 is a customer who has used Airbnb many times. Logically speaking, old users should know where to find the landlord's contact information, but if even old users need to ask through the dialogue window, it means that this is not an isolated phenomenon.

Screenshots 3, 4, and 5 ask about the address and location; Screenshots 6 and 7 ask whether it is a separate room; Screenshot 8 asks how far a certain place is from the location of the house. The above information can still be found on the specific details page.

The leftmost image above shows the "Details" interface displayed after booking a property from the tenant's perspective. The address can be seen (I don't know why the phone number is not displayed). The two pictures in the middle and right can be the property introduction page, which explains clearly that the property is a "shared room" and the distance that users are most concerned about.

From the above phenomenon, it can be seen that the way users in China obtain key information mainly depends on questions (heavy dependence on others). They are not used to looking for information everywhere in the App. But as a host, you cannot ignore user habits.

For user satisfaction, only one-on-one message reply can be sent. Although Airbnb provides a reply template that can be copied and pasted directly, the landlord still needs to manually operate the "reply" action in a timely and manual manner.

Solutions that can improve satisfaction of both parties:

After the user makes a reservation, the system will automatically send a message on the user's "dialog window interface", including "landlord phone number", "house address" and "commuting method at airports and railway stations". Then, on the day before your check-in, the "Check-in Method" and "House Code" information will be automatically sent in the dialogue window interface. And what users are most concerned about is the distance and commuting time of the property from their destination, and the best time to automatically display it on the preview interface of the property based on the keywords searched by the user. In this way, users will have a clear idea of how far this property is from the place they want to go before placing an order.

For example: most of my users are concerned about how far away from "Beijing Sports", so the system can automatically generate "distance kilometers", "commuting time", "cost", and "suggested commuting method" when they browse all the listing results.

However, it is impossible to automatically generate without using "destination" as the search keyword.

Instead, you can leave a box to remind users when checking the specific property listing and reminding them that they can view the distance from the property listing to your specific destination. Provides an optional "Independent query of commuting time, method, and fee" function. After all, this is a question that many users are very concerned about when deciding whether to book a property.

2) During the stay

At this stage, generally speaking, users have directly contacted the landlord through WeChat or completed most of the communication offline. Airbnb's next function is mainly to resolve the irreconcilable contradictions between landlords and tenants. Because the conflict is very individual, conflicts can only be resolved by manual customer service communication. During the hosting process, I could feel that Airbnb's customer service was very considerate of landlords and tenants. In order to resolve both sides' dissatisfaction, Airbnb will take the initiative to bear the losses.

For example: if the tenant is not satisfied with the property after checking in, the platform will actively compensate the tenant and assist in finding the next place of residence; or if the tenant lacks identity verification information and the landlord feels that he is not safe, the platform can assist in canceling the order, etc. I won't repeat the advantages.

If it is not a big contradiction, then the control of the tenant's accommodation quality during the entire stay period mainly depends on the "five-star evaluation system (accuracy, occupancy, cleanliness, communication, location, value)" .

However, since the evaluation lags behind the check-in, from the perspective of the Airbnb platform, we can only make full use of the previous "evaluation" to form a comprehensive portrait and personality label for the landlord, and then match tenants with similar portraits or labels (first-time users can only speculate based on other new information) together to create a more pleasant living experience. For example: age range, preferences, study experience, etc.

Even, all landlords can be rated according to Adam Grant's Give and Take theory and evaluated their Giver (which type of guests is the least tolerant); and there are separate evaluation criteria for all tenants, such as the Respect index or the Picky index (which type of landlords are prone to conflict). The evaluation is based on the evaluation of the landlord and tenant and the language expression in the dialogue window.

To achieve this, it requires a heavy reliance on statistical analysis of "linguistics". Then give priority to the listings with high Giver index, which can effectively ensure the live experience of new users. And for users with high Respect index, blocking properties with low Giver index, etc.

The specific rules need to be discussed again. This is a very huge issue, involving how to continuously ensure the satisfaction of landlords and tenants, as well as mechanisms to encourage landlords and tenants to perform better and better.

After check-in is completed, all the steps that affect users' satisfaction with Airbnb for the first time are completed. If the user is satisfied, there is still a possibility of using Airbnb again.

But the initial action design we retain is not over yet.

3) Check out

After the user journey is over, how can first-time satisfied users remember to use Airbnb when they travel for the second time?

There are two possibilities: one is to show their presence when they plan to travel for the second time, and the other is to attract them to have the idea of traveling for the second time. The former requires a lot of money (and it is very expensive) and appears intensively in user life scenarios; the latter is relatively simple to push the content of seasonal travel (provided that the user does not uninstall the software).

But I have to admit that since travel is actually a very low-frequency demand for most people, it is estimated that it may only cost 1 to 5 times a year (the specific number of times depends on the statistical data). Nowadays, most people do not have enough memory on their mobile phones, so low-frequency software will face the fate of being uninstalled after using it for the first time.

Therefore, we also need to provide services and product functions other than booking listings: a powerful content system that supports users to prepare for long-term travel; a one-stop schedule for travel planning (attractions, listings, food, and play experience) can also be formed; agenda can be formulated with friends.

Record memories of past trips (land you have set foot on, scenery you have seen, and food you have tasted).

Action design to avoid being uninstalled:

Users are encouraged to take simple photos and attach a line of words to record their feelings on the way during the trip, and preserve the beautiful moments. Then the photos and words automatically generate exquisite postcards for users to share on social networks. If you successfully share them, you can get the coupons for the next experience. In this way, even if the user uninstalls the software later, at least it will leave a mark on the social network, and there will be an anchor for memory when using it next time.
On the day after the journey is over (user is encouraged to make full use of large amounts of time on the journey) and within a week, remind users to publish a log (or automatically string together the posters posted in the past few days to automatically generate a long picture), and give coupons for booking listings. After completing the log (set the minimum number of pictures and the lower limit of word count, for example: 5 pictures, each picture has at least 10 characters, which can be public, visible, and private) you can see your footprint map illuminating the location of this tour.
According to the consumption type and destination preferences this time, we recommend a destination with similar tone three months before the next long holiday to plant grass for users, so that we will be given priority to come here to take a look if you want to go out next time. It's like having a treasure box of your own wishes. It gives users the meaning of yearning. No matter how tired or hard the work is, you can immediately overcome any worries and difficulties.
Create a travel footprint map with the places you have been to and want to go, and light up the places you have been to. The places you want to go are Airbnb theme waiting to be lit. Visualize your idea of exploring the world, and drive people to fully enjoy the world when going out during the holidays. Every time I go to a place, I leave a mark on Airbnb. As a corner where good memories are stored, people will be even more reluctant to delete them.

For example, this is my current wish map (need to give another poetic name).

In this way, combining the content system's data analysis such as "number of readings", "reading duration", "attraction favorites", and "schedule use" will more accurately count the "retention rate", "activity", and "churn rate". This will allow users to more accurately perceive the user's satisfaction with product functions, and no longer only the re-reservation rate can be used as a reference as before. After all, the second time to re-reservation may not necessarily be when.

From booking a listing for the first time to prepare a new weeding list for the next trip (making your own travel wish), users have fully used all the features of Airbnb. The next step we have to do is how to cultivate users' habit of being addicted to Airbnb.

(2) Mid-term

In the middle of retention, the main goal is to cultivate user habits. Although Airbnb's main business is housing listings and experience booking, which are very low-frequency needs, if users want to have a high-quality travel experience, the necessary conditions are not only the good housing listings and interesting experiences provided on the Airbnb platform, but also the users need to accumulate a certain understanding of their wishes before leaving. In this way, you can have more insights during the journey.

And the homework corresponding to this understanding can be provided to users regularly by Airbnb. First, it adjusts and relaxes daily work and life, and second, it also enriches users' horizons and satisfies users' curiosity to explore the world.

How can this be done?

Referring to the addictive mechanism mentioned in Nir Eyal's Hooked: Building Habit-Forming Products book, it takes 4 steps in total - trigger, action, reward, investment.

1) Trigger

Triggers can be divided into external factors and internal factors, while short-term marketing activities or discount promotions belong to the former, and internal factors are generally related to the emotional level of the user.

What we need to do is to understand what users have on the emotional level and what our products can do to eliminate or alleviate this part of the problem.

How can we understand the emotions of users in daily life?

Nir, the author of the book, suggested adopting the famous "5 questions" in the Toyota production system. These five questions are formally the basis of scientific management methods. By asking 5 whys, people can discover the essence of the problem and the solution.

Q1: Why do people book homestays or experiences?

Because people want to live comfortably and distinctively, they are cheaper than hotels; let locals take themselves to visit local attractions and cultures.

Q2: Why do people want to live in a unique way? Why do you want locals to host the experience?

Because people want to leave special memories of the journey, want to reach out to locals and feel their lifestyle and listen to their ideas and opinions.

Q3: Why do you want to leave special memories? Why feel the local lifestyle and understand their ideas?

When people are old and unable to walk, they hope to reminisce about their life with beautiful memories and mark a certain period of time in their lives.

Because people hope to learn the advantages and wisdom of other cultures by comparing and comparing their differences with themselves, constantly upgrade their understanding and views on the world, and gradually become more inclusive. It is also possible to input new materials to help your future work and life creation burst into unprecedented inspiration.

Q4: Why do people need good memories to recall their lives, and why do people need to learn the advantages and wisdom of other cultures?

Because people hope that their lives will be meaningful, it is worth it to come to this world, and they will not waste their time.

Because people hope to have a more positive and optimistic perspective to look at the problems they are facing in their current lives, and by absorbing the advantages and wisdom of other cultures, they can inspire more possibilities and find better solutions.

Q5: Why do people want their lives to be meaningful, and why do people want to inspire more possibilities to find better solutions?

Because people are afraid of their own failure, afraid of their own ignorance, and afraid that they cannot solve the problem.

Living a good life makes them feel full of accomplishment. A memorable journey witnesses one stage of your efforts and is also a reward for yourself. The broad vision of solving problems makes them feel that they are valuable and can be recognized and needed by society.

After 5 soul-searching questions, we found the trigger inside the travel user's psychology. Or a more appropriate word is motivation, driving force that drives users to travel. After finding the user's motivation, the second step of the addiction mechanism is reached: action.

2) Action

Faced with the scene that evokes the above emotions/motivations, design the action path that allows users to return to the App. Find ways to minimize user action costs/hindrances and facilitate execution. The corresponding scenes are roughly divided into three categories: fake, rich, and emotional.

For most people, before the long holiday;
A small number of people who use projects or cases as a work cycle can save up and adjust their leave;
The year-end bonus was given out;
When you encounter some major setbacks in work or life, you need to stop and let go;
Creation lacks material, and I hope to supplement inspiration and regain creative passion.

For type 1) users, you should use the user's previous travel frequency, such as once a year. Then send a push before preparing for planning, reminding the user to start doing homework, and then send another push when it is almost time to book a property and experience it, reminding the user to place an order in advance to avoid the list of favorites or experiences.

The frequency of push can no longer be too high, and you cannot show your presence when the user does not need it, otherwise the user will only get bored. And 2) 4) 5) user platform perspective cannot be judged, and can only wait for the user to log in to the App.

If you have been away from the last trip and you have actively logged in, you can try increasing the push frequency to see the effect. If the attractions are also used frequently and the itinerary starts to be installed, it means that the user has a demand for content information, then you can try to increase the push frequency.

However, the specific number of times should be determined based on the historical time interval of the user's active login. The principle is that the user's other living habits cannot be disturbed and harassment cannot be caused. In addition, you must also pay attention to the push time, preferably when the user is not working during the non-working period and has finished all the things in his hands. This way users can get into in-depth reading better.

How to determine the user's non-working time period and finish everything he has done?

When the longest time period for the historical browsing page is (for example, it may be from 11:30 to 12:00 pm), and combined with the number of times this stay period occurs, select the time period that accounts for the largest proportion of the total login times.

It is speculated that this user usually doesn’t have to be busy with other things during this period of time, and has time to read Airbnb’s content.

3) Type user push needs to analyze the personal profile filled in by the user. Employees from Internet technology companies with good market conditions can try to push. If the market is not good or the traditional industries, don’t recommend it. This is only applicable to companies whose information is publicly verified, and it is best to try it in a small way to see user reactions. If the user being pushed does not click, then do not push this date in the future to avoid users' disgust.

After talking about the points to pay attention to when pushing, let’s mention it by the way: The above 5 scenarios can also be used in the process of acquiring new users. You can extend your thinking about which channels have these 5 types of users.

At the same time, it is also a very good copywriting mood to lay the foundation. After the user enters the App from push, it is best to divide the information on the first screen of the App into two halves: favorite the attractions you collected last time, so that users can continue to watch half of the content topics you saw last time, or related recommendations.

Recommend seasonal tourist cities in the next three months, and guess the user's interests based on the past browsing records, and randomly push the sub-topic content of that city.

The remaining action paths are no different from the first time user: the search box is topped on the home page, and users can pick out the content of the browsing topics at any time, check the city they are going to, or double-click or long-press the currently browsing attractions to put them in their favorites, and then wait until the necessary information is collected to go to the favorites and drag the attractions to develop an itinerary. Finally, the system recommends the most recent listings that meet users' expectations based on the location and time of the itinerary.

3) Rewards and investment

When users have motivation in a certain situation, the App sends a push to guide users to do a series of behaviors. Next, you need to design rewards, and you must be the best unpredictable.

Rewards belong to the third stage in the addiction mechanism. After users browse some special content, several new attractions may be added to the favorites. If these newly added points are visualized on the aforementioned wish map, and there are text prompts, your straw list has added X new places to go. Give users instant satisfaction. Similar to the pleasure you feel just after making a long-term plan.

I even had hallucinations that I wanted to go halfway.

After using "Spot Favorites", the next step is to fill in the "Schedule". This step requires users to spend more time and effort than before to think about the itinerary they want, so it can be regarded as the last link of the addiction mechanism and investment .

The workload of the schedule is quite large, and it is unlikely to be formed at once. If you are not traveling alone, you have to discuss it with your friends or family, and it will have to go through several rounds of modification. Therefore, it must be very convenient to drag in and out in the design, and allow collaborative editing online, and it is best to share favorites. It would be even better if there is a historical version that can be viewed. It would be easier for people with difficulty to come up with several plans and let friends decide which one to choose.

When users first start filling out the "schedule", they can remind users to publish it in the Airbnb community, and invite peers with similar wish lists publicly or targetedly. It is equivalent to competing for housing or experience. This can also increase Airbnb's social attributes and uncertainty in response, and is also an unpredictable reward.

It can also play a role for others to refer to, allowing other users to vote, like or comment to give better suggestions, and is also a very virtuous cycle of interaction. After making my own schedule, I spent my hard work and time on my emotional investment. Even if you haven’t started booking a room yet, looking at the filled schedule, users can get a full sense of accomplishment and begin to look forward to future travel.

For example:

(3) Long-term

The previous part is the medium-term goal of retaining, responsible for cultivating users' habits of using Airbnb. More specifically, it is to make users accustomed to using Airbnb's travel to formulate the entire service, including "content recommendation system", "attraction favorites", "schedule", and "house reservation" functions. In the next step, Airbnb should consider the long-term retention goal that it should "continue to bring greater value to users"⑦.

How to define or find "greater value"?

In addition to traveling, what other needs similar to traveling are not met? The previous analysis of the part that retains the medium-term goals uses the "5 questions" to explore the motivations of users for travel .

But this motivation, or desire, needs not only to be achieved through travel, but also to travel spiritually when people cannot move. Based on the above analysis, I propose two long-term solutions (or products) to satisfy users who can also get similar satisfaction in travel when their bodies cannot travel far away.

Digital Monthly;
VR virtual tour.

The following are the values of these two solutions:

1) Digital Monthly

The content here is not the same as the content mentioned earlier. The first "Seasonal Travel City Recommendations" and "Interest-related Topics" mentioned on the website or app homepage are prepared for users who have just developed the idea of going out to play. The purpose is to ensure the depth and attractiveness of the recommendations, while helping users decide which city and which attractions to go to as quickly as possible.

Digital monthly magazines are more systematic in terms of content depth than the former, in order to satisfy users' long-term curiosity about the world. This product gives users the same feeling as people were looking forward to the paper version of the travel monthly magazine before. But the content is a combination that users can choose to combine. And there are some restrictions.

For example: An old user who has successfully booked N trips with Airbnb has the opportunity to generate a customized travel monthly magazine once a month. He can only choose one city at a time and two topics and interests. The monthly content reading time is controlled within 4 to 8 hours. At the beginning, try it in 4 hours to see how the user completes it. The reason for this is 4 hours is that the user needs to consume new content every weekend, with a budget of 1 hour.

The editorial team of these contents must strictly screen the qualifications. It is best to stay in the editorial site for a period of time, have an in-depth understanding of the local customs and peoples, or actively communicate with local residents in depth, and be able to raise the recommended attractions to a certain level based on the historical, cultural and religious background, and introduce them in a time-based framework. Rather than just introducing the attractions themselves.

As for the quality standards of this content, it is necessary to conduct research on existing competitors, see the opinions and suggestions of current hard-core travel enthusiasts on existing products, and ask the opinions of CP experts who have been deeply involved in this field, and see how to produce content that is more suitable for readers' expectations, while creating a tourism content system with Airbnb's characteristics.

Principles of content provision:

The supply must be less than the user's demand. The concept refers to the most willful bookstore in Japan that only sells one book in a week, "Morioka Bookstore" .
All content must be produced for a certain amount of time, and I also hope that users can immerse themselves in it and enjoy the joy of the content reading process. The outline of the content edited must cover certain points, do enough homework, slowly accumulate valuable material libraries, and then combine them according to the user's previous browsing and interest points, so that they can be seen in a thousand faces.
Limited-time and available. Users also need to reach a certain level before they are eligible to subscribe.
The generation of this digital monthly magazine is not automatic. It requires users to take the initiative to obtain it. The user can choose the city and topic of interest (the number is also limited, and you can choose one city and one point of interest).
Although it can be shared, the content after being shared is also limited. If you finish reading, you can have it forever. However, if you don’t finish reading within a limited time, it will disappear forever, so that users can cherish it.

Q: What is the difference between this digital monthly and the recommended content that previously asked users to plan travel plans?

For example, the reading experience of the former is like an article on a public account, with promotion links (lists of recommended attractions appear). The latter's immersion feels like reading one of the chapters of a paper book. It does not guide you to consume or buy (the attractions are not the main line of content), allowing you to concentrate on understanding the city or culture behind you that interest you.

Q: Since it is a product that serves the long-term retention goal, why is the permission not open to all users? Users’ perception or understanding of a product has a climbing process.

You can only slowly guide users to complete small goals that are easy to achieve, meet users’ most urgent needs, and then gradually transition to similar, but not urgent but important needs, and finally recognize the greatest value of the product step by step.

Therefore, the functions must not be fully visible and provided to all users. Use functions one by one. And gradually add.

Just like we know a friend. It is not about pouring the advantages over others, but slowly building trust and multiple contacts and cooperation are the normal process of cultivating feelings.

As for how many levels have passed, this permission will be opened. You can explore slowly. However, you can also regularly track the number of logins of newly registered users, and gradually release new features (new features for them) for them to explore based on their interest in the content. Create freshness. But you must give it a little bit, and it must be unpredictable, so that you can have the sense of accomplishment of gaining rewarding.

2) VR virtual travel

Due to physical limitations, you may only be able to go once a year, or there are very limited places to go. But our hearts are always eager to contact the world more. Online tourism projects can break the limitations of time and space. For users, they can spend a little money, save traffic time, and instantly shuttle to a certain space at a certain point in time. For tourist cities, tourist attractions, museums and other places, the ability to accommodate customers is infinitely magnified. This is a win-win solution.

It can be seen as an extension of the current live broadcast. The difference is that it is shot at 360° panoramic views, and the route and itinerary displayed can be selected according to interests, just like the Black Mirror: Bandersnatch VR movie has 5 finale.

However, the product design workload in this part is quite huge, so you can consider acquiring the existing VR online travel platform. Including cooperation with museums.

Q: How to judge the effect of the above long-term retention action?

MVP principle: look at the most searched keywords and where is the location, and then choose a destination that is most suitable for editing and editing, and start from food (one of the most basic desires and needs of people).

Look at the monthly active rate, sharing rate, conversion rate brought by shared links, as well as the stay time and browsing completion of page reading, compare the search records of the same user, see whether the city selected by the digital monthly magazine is related to the future favorites, as well as the schedule destination, and counting whether the order rate has increased after a period of time.

You can start with digital weekly with the smallest workload and the greatest impact on the results, assuming that the weekend starts once a week. And pilot data performance for small-scale users.

2.4 Revenue

Although the "acquisition", "activation" and "retention" links in growth work are all crucial, but determining the life and death of the team or the company is revenue capabilities, which is the "revenue" link. Even if you do a good job of "acquisition", such as Pechoin's advertisements, if the sales of real money cannot be converted into real money (either in the long term or short term), it will be meaningless to the company.

Even if the "activation" link is designed to be interesting, when the final order or payment step is at the end and the conversion rate is touchingly low, the company can only watch the potential customers flow away with pain. Therefore, the "income" link is about survival.

Then there are two things to do in this link. Find two points from the action path of the entire user using the product:

Profit point
Grip point ⑦, or nodes that hinder profitability

(1) Profit Point

The first thing is to find profitable opportunities. A long time ago, Airbnb was already a mature software and had learned to collect service fees by itself (JK, in terms of property reservations, starting from October 10 last year, it has been changed to a one-way charge of 10% of the landlord's service fee. It is no longer a 13% charge on the tenant's side, and a 3% charge on the landlord's side. This is a consumption mental habit that caters to Chinese consumers. Most consumers are only used to paying the room fee itself, and are reluctant to pay service fees to third-party platforms, especially hate merchants of similar nature on the intermediary platform.)

In addition, in terms of experience, a 20% service fee is charged to host. This is currently known Airbnb's revenue method.

However, based on my personal host experience, I think it is better to set a gradient than to charge a 10% service fee for all orders for one size fits all.

How to set the gradient?

Here is a rough example (the specific numbers need to be carefully priced), for example: the service fee for each property at the 1st to 10th night is charged 10%, the service fee for 11 to 20 is charged 8%, and the late 21 to 30 is charged 6%. For long-term orders, the first ten will be charged 10% at night, the second ten will be charged 8% at night, and the third ten will be charged 6% at night. The fourth ten nights are 4%, and no matter how long it lasts after 40 nights, it will be 3%.

There are three benefits to setting gradients:

1) Distinguish between other domestic competitors

At the starting line of everyone's 10% service fee, many landlords have their own properties on many platforms for traffic reasons, and they are oversold from time to time.

At this time, you need to reject more orders from other platforms.

If Airbnb launches a gradient service fee collection mechanism, it can indirectly encourage landlords to take orders on Airbnb, and it is also possible to direct traffic on other platforms to the Airbnb platform to make orders. If Airbnb is not only in addition to the gradient mechanism, combined with the evaluation order cumulative reward mechanism, landlords will cherish and cultivate their labor achievements on Airbnb more.

2) Encourage landlords to accept as many orders as possible, reduce landlords’ rejections for personal reasons, and increase transaction volume

Similar to the difficulty of playing games, when you are very close to the next goal, your human nature will have a greater chance of achieving your goal as soon as possible.

If Airbnb shows that "there are 2 orders to be left to the 5% service fee", it is very likely that those orders that were originally dissatisfied with the customer's attitude and didn't want to accept (for example, I... I once refused the price because the tenant bargained with me...), or some orders that were too short for a while and worried that it would affect the subsequent long orders and other non-principle reasons.

3) Avoid repeat customers running orders

For many well-off landlords, receiving repeat customers is common.

However, after the first online transaction, both of them obtained offline contact information. In order to reduce service fee costs, landlords may prefer to switch to offline for the second transaction. This is a huge invisible loss for Airbnb.

For tenants and landlords, without the constraints of third parties, the risk of transactions is also increased invisibly, which is not a good thing for three parties. If the above-mentioned long-term gradient reduction mechanism is used, then the lowest 3% is likely to increase the acceptance of landlords, and they are unwilling to take this risk to trade offline. If you give 3%, you can also buy a 3% discount and safe.

(2) Pinch Points

The grip point can be understood as the troublesome points that users encounter all possible problems before booking the property to paying. In other words, we need to find out the reasons why users do not place orders.

Possible causes:

I can't find the house I want. The search results do not understand enough what the user wants.
Payment methods are very cumbersome and unfriendly to users.
You must be in the App to pay, and the mini program does not support the order payment function.
The information that should be reminded before payment is not clearly reminded, such as: the cancellation policy; for example: the number of occupants is not emphasized to be filled in truth; for example: if the tenant is not told to book on behalf of the tenant, the identity information of the actual occupant should be clearly filled in, and finally, the refund is irresistible, or it is directly deducted.

This has caused a very poor user experience and greatly reduced the impression of Airbnb. Even if the landlord cooperates with the full refund or the platform assists in the refund, the users with actual needs are lost and the opportunity to get them to place an order again.

There is a problem with the price reminder. The result page shows one price, and another price is on the way to pay, and it feels like I was cheated.
Seeing that the landlord’s price was lower at other times, he felt that it was silly that he bought a high price, and it felt bad, so he changed to another app to book a room. I don't want to be slaughtered as a water fish.

The reasons for all these guesses are given below solutions one by one. The first one is unable to see the data of the backend user's actions, so it is difficult to give a solution. The second payment method, I think it should not be a big problem after supporting Alipay and WeChat payments. Unless there are users who do not use WeChat or Alipay, they either have a lifestyle that is not as fashionable as they are old or they are too young to have independent financial capabilities. Then the last two types of users can consult the landlord and transfer to the WeChat link and ask others to pay for it. At present, Airbnb does not seem to support payment function.

The third question is that it still existed before the Spring Festival in 2019. However, when I wrote this, I had already solved it. I admire Airbnb's function to achieve speed.

The fourth question is what I have experienced the most. I hope Airbnb can put it on the agenda to pay pre-payment reminder.

Before the user finally pays, tell them:

The difference between separate studios, shared spaces, entire apartments;
Explain the differences between different unsubscription policies;
There are also possible consequences of failing to truthfully fill in the number of occupants and not providing the actual occupants’ identity information.

I found different explanations about 1) three, but they are very vague.

This "sharing some public spaces" and "common lounges" are really too ambiguous for those who use B&Bs for the first time. If I weren't doing the host myself, I couldn't understand the difference between a separate room and a shared room after reading this explanation.

The fact is true, many of the co-located guests who came here were confused after placing the order after placing the order. However, this is just caused by translation problems. It is enough to organize all similar issues on the entire App or website and express them suitable for Chinese people's understanding. There are no technical difficulties in this.

The fifth problem is the most serious and has the widest impact. The price displayed in the search results is inconsistent with the actual price that was finally booked. There are two situations:

The first one is "search>actual". In this case, the tenant is quite happy, but it is a loss to the landlord.

It was around the end of 2018 that Airbnb launched various marketing activities. After landlords participated, they could have an additional screening tag to be exposed by tenants for the exposure of the property. But the price on the result page is not the price after the discount, but the price before the discount.

After the tenant has selected the check-in date and check-out date, you can see the price details and see what the discounted room price is. Although the actual reservation price is lower than the first impression point, it seems that it is a bargain from the perspective of tenants. This means that before the tenants click in, there is no advantage in price compared with the list of properties that participated in the marketing activities compared to those that did not participate.

This is actually very unscientific.

The second type is "search < actual". If the tenant finally plans to pay, he will be crazy when he sees this.

我是春節后發現的這種情況。因為參與了智能定價的房源，會有一個最低價。然后有一天房客問我，為什么看到是一個價，付款的時候價格反而變高了？

于是我意識到，可能從房客視角看，搜索結果里看到的價格就是這個最低價，等到房客選定了日期之后，可能會看到房東特意在日歷里設定某段日期（特別是旺季）更高的價格。

房客不理解為什么要預定之后反而價格變高了，以為自己被什么平臺算法算計了，平臺故意在最后下訂單的時候提高了價格，非常有可能一生氣就轉頭去別的平臺了。

我認為如果想要讓房東房客雙方都高興，那最后搜索結果的價格和最后實際預定的價格一致。房東達到了降低價格吸引客戶流量，提高成交量的目的，房客也不至于會產生被騙的感覺。如果想讓用戶產生「這個訂單我下得超值，我賺到了」，那可以在最后支付的頁面，顯示本來的價格多少，然后強調放大字體，體現出房客省下的錢。讓房客高興一下。

最后一種情況，不顯示給用戶看不同時間的房價也不太可能，這個無法隱藏。愛彼迎能做的只有提醒房東在設定價格的時候，不管是升價還是降價的幅度都不能太大，需要逐漸過度，以免引起房客不適。

關于「收入」可優化的切入點還有很多，但是因為看不到數據情況，無法更多地分組用戶群組。所以這里只討論兩個我作為用戶能看到的兩個優化建議。

2.5 Referral 推薦

在談最后一個環節「推薦」以前，我想先分享一段聊天記錄。

這個朋友是一起上三節課增長黑客的課認識的，本來之前寫渠道打分的時候卡殼了想向她請教，不過后來有聊到我在寫愛彼迎的AARRR 分析，她也很主動地分享了她使用愛彼迎的經歷。于是有了以上對話。對話大致的主題是，這位朋友總體來講對愛彼迎還是非常有好感的。

唯三吐槽的地方有：

尾款支付入口不好找，通知提醒支付尾款卻沒有順便給支付的鏈接，還要自己從詳情頁里找，非常不科學（這點補充一下，我自己遇到的情況是客人最近好像挺順利支付完了更改日期后的尾款支付，但是因為我看不到用戶實際操作所以無法判斷是什么原因）；
人工客服等待的時間有點久（ host 接入的時間還是挺快的？為啥呢）；
篩選房源的時候，標簽給的不太符合國人的角度，對聯排別墅還是獨棟別墅無感。

但即使這樣，這位朋友還是安利給了身邊的其他朋友，而且她自己本人也是吃下了她leader 的安利。通過這件事，就可以看出來愛彼迎新增用戶最強大卻容易被忽視的拉新力量，實際上是用戶的口碑了。而這一塊，實際上愛彼迎可以優化的地方還有很多。

除了現有的2 個政策——推薦新用戶注冊（如果朋友成功下訂單后，推薦人可以獲得75 元旅游基金）、推薦新房東（以前是新房東上新房源后，推薦人也可以獲得相應的旅游基金，但是現在頁面沒有了）之外，我認為，還有8 種還沒有開辟、卻有助于referral 的方式。

旅游推薦專題內容分享；
景點收藏夾分享；
日程表分享；
旅游日志分享；
心愿地圖旅游足跡分享；
年度復盤——房客可以分享自己的年度心愿達成，給房客一個展示自己執行力的機會，也是讓外界看到自己興趣愛好，滿足房客的社會身份認同的渴求，同時，也是一個非常好的社交互動話題。房東可以分享自己一共接待了多少客人，獲得多少個好評，獲得房客稱贊最多的關鍵詞是什么，對于房東來說也是一種努力了一年的肯定證書；
每個房源形成外鏈分享的時候，摘取每個房源最好的那個評價重點突出，促進成單；
對于細節生動，字數驚人（最后能給人沖擊力的文字）的評價review ，可以生成好圖片式的海報方便用戶一鍵分享，host 端的話方便宣傳自己的房源或體驗，房客端的話方便推薦自己的朋友再次預定，也是展示自己生活豐富的一個機會。

1）可以讓1 個已經知道愛彼迎的用戶，鼓動上身邊不知道愛彼迎但是有一起出去玩的想法的朋友入圈。擴大愛彼迎的branding 范圍。而且如果專題內容的質量好，那么傳播轉發的可能性越大，用戶對提供了高質出行建議的愛彼迎也會培養起信任感來，等到真正決定出去玩的時候想起來用愛彼迎的可能性越大，這個相當于「潛在用戶長期養成」計劃。

2）這個分享功能非常適合伸手黨，或者說好朋友情侶之間比較懶癌的那一方驚呼好用的功能，他們可以隨時看到小蜜蜂的一方辛苦篩選好玩的點，懶癌要做的只是欽定確定要去的地方就好了。也能極大地促進成單。畢竟景點都是在這上面選的，很難再流失到別的平臺上了。

3）日程表的分享，適用于拼驢友的場景。還可以非常方便地AA 房源、體驗的費用（如果愛彼迎提供AA 付款的功能的話，會更加抓住用戶的心）。

4）5）6）都是滿足用戶成就感、社會身份認同感的需求。

其中，4）適合用戶旅游結束后展示個人情感波動和感觸，是個人特色非常強的一個作品，愛彼迎要做的就是負責好日志圖片的排版，提供簡潔的格式，就像形成一張明信片那樣簡單并且高逼格，這一塊可以參考「留白」App 的優點。

5）的話適合已經累計去了不少地方的資深驢友展示，帶有一定的show off 的性質。不過這個show off 是自己hard earned 的。所以對于分享的人來說有成就感達成，對于看的人來說，也不會覺得自己被offensed 到，只會激勵他們也努力去開拓自己的旅行足跡和規劃好自己的心愿地圖。

6）年度復盤，我比較建議在全年的最后一個長假最后一天集中推這個線上分享活動，盡可能種下一種意識，讓大眾對于旅游的認知上一個更高的臺階，而不在停留于網紅地著名景點打卡，旅游是為了豐富自己對世界的認識，嘗試了解其他地方有趣有意思的地方，而不是為了向身邊的人證明自己去過某個地方，或者說證明自己身份的一種方式。并且盡可能把這個種下的意識轉化為新型過年的方式，為過年旅游蓄勢，拉動一波新的出行增長。

7）等于是促成訂單的一個細節，也是幫助潛在用戶快速獲取有價值信息（這個房源或體驗到底好不好）的方式，給他一個有力度的下單的理由。也是幫助了host 盡到了宣傳方面的力，突出了一個賣點。

8）這個不適宜大量的鋪，只適合每個城市的頂級host，這個屬于Top host 特有的宣傳工具，也是鼓勵大家爭當Top Host 的一個福利吸引。只有量少，房客或者說用戶端看來才珍貴特別，以及可信度高。作用類似于愛彼迎給高端房源打的標plus 。

in conclusion

最后，用一張表總結一下。在「用戶增長的5 步工作AARRR 」中，愛彼迎現有的對應功能模塊，以及整理一下全文提議過有助于用戶增長工作的待增加功能模塊。

當然，以上所有的優化建議都是在有限的信息和了解下推出的。究竟有沒有用，具體怎么操作，得根據后臺數據表現來一步一步微調或者完全棄用。這需要我們做用戶增長的人不斷地修煉。探索的路還很漫長呢。

作者：不甜，授權青瓜傳媒發布。

來源：不甜

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