How can tool-type products achieve long-term user growth and retention?

How can tool products break through the dilemma of weak growth and inability to retain users?

I believe that friends who have made tool-based products have had this experience: a product is finally developed from 0 to 1 and launched online, but if you want to develop it further, you will always encounter many obstacles. User growth is weak, activity is low, and most importantly, the user churn rate is faster than the growth rate. Let’s discuss today how to break through the dilemma of weak growth of tool products and inability to retain users.

First, let’s analyze why tool-based products cannot retain users, and why user growth becomes extremely difficult after a period of development?

First of all, this is closely related to the product characteristics. Tools, as the name suggests, are used and discarded, and will only be used again when needed next time. Therefore, tool products naturally have the characteristic that users will not use them all the time. When users need to use them next time, a long time may have passed or they may even forget about our products. For example: products such as Blue Rhino and Lianjia will have such situations.

So how should this problem be solved?

1. Cultivate users' usage habits.

Internet products have always had a very famous principle: cultivate user usage habits.

Only when users use your product for a long time and form habits, will they have a good impression of your product, build trust, and then recommend it to others.

Therefore, the way for many tool-based products to break out now is often to add "high-frequency" elements such as social interaction , information, or attract users through games . In essence, they hope that users will use them more and develop habits.

2. How effective is this type of “breakout” gameplay?

Moji Weather once added information content to the weather interface, but the user activity and retention data have hardly changed much. Super Course Schedule has always hoped that the product could add more social attributes, but there are very few people who actually socialize and chat in it, and there are only some operational data.

What happens after the once popular sliding screen software adds information and games?

The entire industry is now dying, and there is no company with any bright spots.

Why can't these once successful tool products stand out again? What's wrong with their thinking? Everyone can think carefully from the user's perspective: why do they use products like Moji Weather and Super Class Schedule?

The essence of using Moji Weather is to check the weather and then prepare for your travel, nothing more. If users want to read information, they will use more information software.

Most products nowadays like to add information or push functions. Users’ attention and mobile phone memory are limited. Faced with dense messages in the notification bar every day, even if they do not uninstall the app, users will choose to cancel notification permissions more often. This not only fails to accumulate user favorability, but has the opposite effect.

This is even more true for the class schedule. Students have a bunch of social products such as WeChat , QQ, and campus BBS, which are all very convenient to use. Who would use the class schedule to socialize?

To sum up, you must have understood that the most important thing for a product is to meet the user's usage habits and characteristics, rather than satisfying the company's own. I have always believed that the idea of ​​tool products embracing high frequency and expanding usage scenarios is correct. Only by cultivating users' usage habits can we further win their trust and get them to actively recommend our products. The key is to grasp the correct expansion point, grasp the user's core psychology, and let the user take the initiative to do it.

For example: I have recently been thinking about how to build and operate blockchain wallet products, because there are so many wallet products in the entire industry, but no product stands out. Most of the functions they can provide are storage and security, so it is difficult to judge which wallet is better. At the same time, wallets are typical tool products, and the core demand of users is safe storage, let alone activity.

3. How can we achieve long-term user growth and retention?

First of all, in the blockchain industry, transactions are still the core demand of current users. Even if they are kept in a wallet, it is to ensure the security of assets or to "control their hands" in long-term transactions. Once users see a good opportunity, they still hope to trade in a timely manner. At this time, the traditional approach is to withdraw funds from the wallet to the exchange, and then buy and sell. The whole process is relatively long and there is a high probability of missing out on market opportunities.

So why don't we develop a wallet function that can make transactions in real time?

Users can trade immediately when they see good market conditions, just like an exchange. With the trading function, the next step is to consider how to help users make better trading decisions. Therefore, the project's information, circle and product itself are indispensable. Only when users truly understand the project can they decide whether to invest .

In addition, even if you understand a project, you may not be able to determine whether it is good or bad. The advice of experts or other friends is crucial. Therefore, timely introduction of expert market interpretation, interactive question-and-answer sessions (somewhat similar to the Knowledge Planet) and project social circles will play a very good role.

Since then, a wallet that was originally used for safe storage has evolved into a "storage + transaction" wallet ecosystem. People look at project information and learn about project products in order to make trading decisions. People interact with industry experts and actively engage in targeted social networking in order to make trading decisions.

Furthermore, trading and financial management functions can be launched online, just like custody in the traditional financial field. A series of gameplays such as coin-to-coin generation can also be designed, so that users can achieve their own goals of attracting new users (for example: attracting new users for mining and creating residents) while helping them make money. Wouldn’t users use such a wallet product frequently?

More importantly, at the product and operation level, the project itself only needs to do a good job of its own wallet design and exchange functions. Transaction data can be directly crawled by hundreds of exchanges such as Huobi and Binance; news and other information can be provided by thousands of independent media information; decision-making experts will actively embrace the platform for their own interests and reputation, users will actively socialize for their own trading decisions, and will actively grow with the platform for their own interests.

The key to designing a good product model is that every element directly targets what users intuitively want to do. The key to designing a good operating model is to allow each party in it to take the initiative to achieve what the platform itself wants him to do for his own benefit.

The reason why tool-based products cannot retain users lies in the characteristics of the tools themselves. Users do not need so much time and so much frequency to complete a task. However, by extending the upstream and downstream of the product itself and by reasonably connecting more high-frequency real-use scenarios, users will still love your product.

For example: For Moji Weather, users use it to check the weather, so what comes next? If it is a cloudy day, do I need to buy an umbrella or find a shared umbrella nearby? ( E-commerce or another tool) Do you need some precautions for rainy days (information)? If it is a hot summer, do you need products such as parasols, skin care creams, mung bean soup, or precautions against heatstroke?

Furthermore, the check-in function is just an action that the platform wants users to complete. Wouldn’t it be better if it was replaced with a gameplay like “Guess the weather every day”?

In short, it is to extend the upstream and downstream of user usage scenarios and cut into high-frequency characteristics. Only in this way will users be willing to actively accept and use your product for a long time. A core principle here is to control the key links yourself, and the other links should consider more forms of resource cooperation. Users can exchange volume , and users can also take the initiative to help you do things for their own interests.

The idea remains consistent, but the form can be changed frequently to maintain freshness for users. In this way, long-term user growth and retention will be possible.