How to build an operation system?

When I wrote this title, I actually felt a little insecure. To be honest, there is no fixed methodology to follow in building an operation system. It depends more on the operation personnel to constantly explore in work practice and then build an operation system suitable for the product itself. Moreover, the operation systems constructed are often very different depending on the product type and the industry.

Even if the operating system is successfully built and achieved stable operation. This is not the end point of an operator’s work. We must continue to optimize the interactive relationship between each link in the system to improve the overall work efficiency of the system. Therefore, when it comes to working on the operating system, we are always on the road. Any opinion in this regard is just one person's opinion, and what matters most is whether it can ultimately achieve real results in actual work.

Nevertheless, there are still some underlying logic and methods worth exploring regarding the construction of the operating system. I hope this article can inspire you in this regard.

Let’s first take a look at what exactly the operating system we are talking about here is?

1. What exactly is the operating system?

Generally speaking, any business organization that has achieved stable profits must have an operating system. Because business profits do not come out of thin air; they are the result of the operation of the operating system. In the Internet industry, the operating system is much more complicated than that of traditional industries. It generally covers three aspects: key user behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies. These three links complement each other.

Let's take a look at a simple example from the education and training industry. Before 2012, Internet traffic was very cheap, only a few cents. At that time, Baidu bidding was the main customer acquisition channel for most education and training companies. Their operating system was also extremely streamlined, covering roughly five key links:

1. First, reach potential users through Baidu's SEM advertising ;
2. Then, the customer service staff communicates with the potential user, obtains their contact information, and gives it to the sales staff;
3. Sales then convert users to pay through various means such as online sales and telephone sales;
4. After users pay to register for a course, we provide them with high-quality courses and services to improve their satisfaction and create a good reputation;
5. Users form recognition of the organization's brand , which in turn drives word-of-mouth communication.

These five links together constitute a relatively complete operating system. In such an operating system, the growth strategy is actually very simple, which is to acquire users through SEM advertising; the user operation strategy is also very simple, which is the customer service's speech design for the purpose of obtaining user contact information and sales conversion ; the definition of user's key behavior is even clearer - paid registration for courses.

The essence of this system is a traffic funnel with layers of screening . If we want to improve the effectiveness of this system, we can start from two aspects:

• On the one hand, SEM delivery can be optimized. As the first layer of the funnel, the quantity and quality of traffic obtained by SEM plays a decisive role in the conversion efficiency of the entire funnel. We can reach more users by increasing SEM investment, or improve the accuracy of users reached by optimizing keyword investment and creative description.
• On the other hand, we can also start from the interactive relationship between these five links to enhance the connection between the links. For example: By continuously optimizing the customer service reception language, we can reduce the loss rate from the first link to the second link of the funnel, thereby improving the overall operation effect of this funnel system.

The operating system can ensure the normal operation of the company's core business. We can even understand it this way: the operating system is equivalent to a money printing machine of the company. As long as it can operate normally, it can continuously create benefits for the company. But the problem is that the operating system is very fragile. It is an organic combination of multiple links. Once a problem occurs in one of the links, it will often lead to the paralysis of the entire system, causing a fatal blow to the company's business.

This is particularly evident in the rapidly changing Internet industry. As in the education and training example mentioned above, in the early days when SEM customer acquisition costs were low, this operating system was very efficient. Companies such as Dana and Qianfeng were the beneficiaries of this operating system. They relied on the traffic dividends of SEM to complete their initial accumulation in the early days. However, the current SEM customer acquisition costs are already high, and not all organizations can afford this operating system.

To avoid this situation, we should always be sensitive at work. On the one hand, we should continuously adjust and optimize user operation strategies based on user data feedback, thereby enhancing the conversion rate of this strategy. What is more important is to establish multiple growth strategies for the product. Growth strategies are often closely related to channel promotion . When the traffic dividend of a certain channel is gradually disappearing, multiple growth strategies can ensure that our business will not be greatly affected.

2. How to build an operation system?

From the perspective of the operation system, we can divide the daily work of operations into three major parts:

1. Build a new operating system;
2. Improve and supplement the existing operating system;
3. Maintain the normal operation of the existing operating system.

Among these, building an operation system is undoubtedly the most valuable and challenging work content. So how should the operation system be built? We can start from three levels: key user behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies.

1. Define key user behaviors

For any product, there is a key user behavior. In the user growth process, the occurrence of this behavior is a turning point in user growth. Its occurrence rate often represents the user's recognition of the product and also determines the product value to a certain extent.

It should be noted that the occurrence of this key behavior is not necessarily equivalent to the KPI, but is one or two factors that have a greater impact on the completion of the KPI. For example: GMV is the KPI indicator that e-commerce platforms care about most, and GMV is highly correlated with the number of users' orders and order amounts. Therefore, users placing orders can be regarded as the most critical user behavior .

In knowledge-based paid products, the key user behavior is generally to pay to sign up for a course or column, while in community products such as Zhihu and Weibo, this key behavior is often the first status message sent by the user. In any case, only after we have defined the key user behaviors can we clarify the direction of building the operation system. The key user behaviors are the basic link in building the operation system. Once we have defined this behavior, we must ensure the occurrence of this behavior to the greatest extent in the subsequent user operation strategies.

2. Develop user operation strategies

After attracting a group of users to the product through various operational means, how do we guide these users, ensure the occurrence of key behaviors, and encourage them to deeply experience the value of our product? This is exactly the problem that user operation strategy aims to solve.

User operation strategy is the most core link in the operation system. Without a stable and reliable user operation strategy, the formulation of a growth strategy is meaningless, and the occurrence of key user behaviors is out of the question.

User operation strategies generally include three aspects: new user guidance, user growth system and lost user recall .

(1) Newbie Guide

Once we have defined the key user behaviors, we need to ensure the probability of this behavior occurring during the onboarding process. For example, if a website defines registration as the key user behavior, then a more reasonable user guidance design is that when a user visits the website for the first time, a new user gift package will pop up. After the user clicks to receive it, he or she needs to complete the registration, thereby increasing the probability of the user's key behavior occurring.

Of course, the occurrence of key user behaviors sometimes cannot rely solely on onboarding. In many cases, the design of onboarding is just to let users complete certain actions, and the completion of these actions will be conducive to the occurrence of key behaviors. For example, after new users complete registration, communities such as Zhihu and Weibo will guide them to follow other high-quality answerers or recommend some high-quality content to users, because only in this way can users publish their first status in the subsequent growth system.

(2) Build a user growth system

The goal of the user growth system is to allow users to "voluntarily" complete our preset actions. This action may be the occurrence of key behaviors, or it may be an in-depth experience of our products, guiding them to grow into fan users.

It should be noted that not all products require a user growth system. For some products with extremely strong demand, such as WeChat , 12306, etc., we do not need to deliberately build a growth system to motivate users. Products that are suitable for building a user growth system are more likely to be high-frequency products with less strong demand.

Generally, the construction of user growth systems adopts a gamification design, which is to let users complete some tasks and give them some incentives accordingly. These tasks generally include three aspects: novice tasks, regular tasks and unconventional tasks.

Novice tasks generally require users to complete their personal information, bind their mobile phone numbers, etc.; routine tasks can increase daily activity, the most typical of which is daily sign-in; non-routine tasks often accompany some operational activities, and are not tasks that appear at fixed intervals. Users can often get some extra benefits by completing non-routine tasks. As for user incentives, the most common practice is to issue virtual currency or coupons that can be circulated within the platform to users who complete certain tasks.

(3) Recalling lost users

Regarding user churn , we should make two points clear:

1. User loss is inevitable. Regardless of any product, users have a certain life cycle, and what we need to do is to extend this cycle as much as possible.
2. It is very difficult to win back a user who has completely lost, but it is much easier to win back a user who is about to lose than to add a new user.

After clarifying the above two points, we can clearly see that the key to recalling lost users is to establish a user loss early warning mechanism. The premise for establishing this early warning mechanism is the user churn model . The most important point in the user churn model is to clarify what characteristics users will show before churn (such as the user's access frequency drops from twice a day to once every two days), and to analyze the reasons for showing these characteristics.

Knowing this, we can use various operational methods to give special care to these users after they show these characteristics and try our best to win them back.

3. Growth Strategy

The growth strategy solves the problem of how to obtain traffic. It is a key link in the construction of the operation system. No matter how perfect the operation system is, it can only operate after obtaining a part of the traffic. Moreover, in the operation of a relatively mature Internet product, there will not be just one growth strategy, but rather multiple parallel tracks of paid growth strategies and free growth strategies that intersect with each other. Only in this way can the entire operation system become more efficient, mature and stable while operating rapidly.

Growth strategies can be divided into two types: productized growth strategies and external growth strategies.

(1) Product-based growth strategy

A productized growth strategy refers to a growth strategy that is integrated into the internal design of the product. The execution of this growth strategy basically does not require human participation. We can understand that this growth strategy is carried out spontaneously by users and is more closely related to the reputation of the product itself.

For example, the “old users bring new users” strategy of a certain product encourages users to recommend the product to their friends. If a friend uses the product through his recommendation, both the user and his friend will receive certain rewards. For example: Most knowledge-based paid products will incorporate distribution and group-buying designs into their products. Users can sign up for a course with their friends, and users can also act as distributors. After successfully distributing a user, they will receive a certain commission reward.

These are actually productized growth strategies. The effectiveness of this strategy is closely related to the value and reputation of the product itself. It generally does not produce explosive growth effects and is a strategy that can achieve stable growth.

(2) External growth strategy

External growth strategies cannot be integrated into product design, but their importance is self-evident.

Because if we only rely on productized growth strategies to achieve growth, sooner or later the traffic will dry up. Because the productized growth strategy is a spontaneous participation of users, but not all users will actively participate in product promotion . And among these users who actively participate in the promotion, there is also a 28th law , that is, most of the growth is brought by a small number of users. Once these core users stop promoting, the traffic will quickly dry up.

Therefore, a relatively mature product requires operators to obtain external traffic through various means. On the one hand, this can enhance the popularity of the product, and on the other hand, it can maintain the metabolism of the product itself. Such means generally include various growth activities, channel placement and marketing event planning, etc. The implementation of this strategy often requires deep involvement of operations personnel.

3. Conclusion

The above is our discussion on the operation system. Through the article, we have clarified the concept of the operation system. To summarize in one sentence: the operation system is an organic combination of three major links: user key behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies. The stable operation of the operation system can bring continuous benefits to the company.

To build an operation system, we need to start from three aspects: user key behaviors, user operation strategies and growth strategies. Among them, defining user key behaviors is the basis, formulating user operation strategies is the core, and formulating growth strategies is the key.

The construction of the operation system relies on the continuous exploration and practice of operators. There is no absolutely correct view. If you have some thoughts and ideas about the operation system, you are welcome to leave a message in the comment area.

Source: Su Tanbin