How to achieve product growth, grasp these two points!

In the second half of the Internet market, polishing products and carrying out refined operations of users are more in line with the current "cold winter" economic situation. To speed up product growth, we mainly focus on user behavior and user emotions.

In the second half of the Internet market, polishing products and carrying out refined operations of users are more in line with the current "cold winter" economic situation. To speed up product growth, we mainly focus on user behavior and user emotions.

In most cases, users take actions based on subconscious triggers. If a product can conform to the user's subconscious mind in its design, it will definitely make the user feel comfortable or even happy. "Comfortable" is the feeling it brings to users.

The subconscious mind here is the thinking system mentioned by psychologist Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow", which is System 1 that reacts quickly without thinking.

This kind of thinking is consistent with instinctive thinking and is related to past memories and experiences. Most of us cannot think about a product as systematically as a product manager . When judging the advantages and disadvantages of a product, we often start from the most superficial feelings and think about whether the product is good or not and whether it is enjoyable to use. It's that simple.

Corresponding to System 1 is System 2, which requires deep thinking. If a product requires users to think like they are solving a math problem, then there is basically no hope for the product to grow.

(Figure: Thinking, Fast and Slow)

The user's subconscious behavior and the user feelings evoked by the subconscious behavior complement each other and have an impact on the product's growth rate.

(Figure: "Accelerating product growth, grasping two points" framework)

1. Pay attention to the user’s original behavioral response

When users use the product, it is like they are walking into a forest with many forked roads. If there is no clear , fast main road, users will be confused and lost in the forest. Of course, users are not so stupid as to give up and look for another forest if this forest is not feasible. The corresponding product is uninstall. Neither product nor operations personnel want to see this kind of situation.

1. Reduce the number of steps or use a progress bar to register

When designing a product, we focus on user behavior from the very beginning, implement it into the user's original behavior flow chart and through data tracking for subsequent verification.

Taking registration as an example, among the domestic users, the registration completion rate is email registration > mobile phone registration > third-party login. This simple registration and login design model was not known by the product planners at the beginning. Instead, it was simplified to the current registration and login form after several years of exploration.

Why is the registration rate of email registration > mobile phone registration > third-party login?

Email was a very important communication tool in the early days of China's Internet . It became a tool that everyone used frequently in daily life. Obtaining email addresses that could be used to contact users was a priority in the design of that generation of products. This means that users have to fill in both numbers and @ and letters. After a few years, fewer and fewer people used email, and mobile phone registration became everyone's first choice. You can complete the registration by receiving a verification code. It is much more convenient than registering by email.

After that, smartphones rose rapidly, and a number of social tools led by Facebook opened interfaces to support users' Facebook account authorization to log in to third-party applications. Users can almost "seamlessly" log in to an application they have never used. The fewer steps users take to complete registration, the higher the registration completion rate will be.

Reducing the number of user operation steps has a very good effect in increasing registration rate.

(Figure: Commonly used mobile phone registration and third-party login)

Let’s go back to the user’s original behavior to look at this change. Early Homo sapiens did not need to work to survive. When they were hungry, they would go hunting and pick wild fruits for food. This kind of survival is very simple, and you can get results immediately without paying any cost first. This behavior has remained in human genes. Humans just like things that can get instant feedback.

From email registration to mobile phone registration, and then to third-party login, all we do is comply with primitive human behavior. The less the cost of user actions, the more likely users are to try. This linear correlation, even without looking at the data, can lead to a conclusion based on the user's original behavior. If we design products based on this user behavior, the proportion of users completing registration will be greatly improved.

Currently, the mini-programs on WeChat are more convenient than registered applications (APPs). Not only do they save the process of downloading the application, but they can also be authorized for use by scanning the code or searching and clicking. This form has changed the way users register, making registration simpler and bringing the registration completion rate to a new level.

(Picture: Hunting Era)

In addition, during the product registration process, not only the form of the login account has changed, but other information forms have also been simplified, including user nickname, age, password, avatar and other user information. These user information filling steps are either guided in steps, postponed to other steps, or directly removed. This can be called a progress bar design or a hidden design. It’s not that this information is not important, but compared to increasing the user registration rate, this information is really not important.

From the perspective of the entire process, the progress bar design may not reduce the number of registration steps, but it is effective in increasing the user registration rate.

From the registration process, we can see that understanding the user’s original behavior will bring predictable effects on product growth. The method of studying users' original behavior and increasing registration rate is also applicable to other aspects of users' use of the APP, such as: clicks on the homepage, user subscription behavior, etc.

Pay attention not only to the user's original behavior, but also to the user's regular behavior. For the design of users' regular behavior, it is necessary to draw a user behavior path map and conduct data statistics, and finally let the user data speak for itself.

In the user funnel model , the funnel model gives us a very intuitive data description. The planning of each link of the product will increase or reduce the number of users in the next link. In terms of product growth, the number of users in the previous link is the lever for user growth in the next link. The final number of users is the lever that drives the growth of the entire product.

This is the charm of studying user behavior and increasing product growth.

(Figure: Sensors Data Behavior Data Monitoring)

2. 3 steps to optimize the experience

How to be more compliant with user behavior and simplify the steps for users to achieve their goals? Dennis Hauptli broke it down into three steps in "Something Really New: Three Simple Steps to Creating Truly Innovative Products ". They are to understand the reasons why users use the product, list the necessary steps for users to use the product, and remove all unnecessary steps in the user's use process and simplify it to the simplest level.

Here is the third step:

After clarifying the product's user groups and core functions, list the steps that users take to use the core functions. Think from the user's perspective, help users save effort, and remove steps that users don't need.

Let’s continue with the registration process as an example: when users use the product for the first time, some products will guide users to register in the form of a guide page, while some products allow users to directly enter the homepage and use some functions without registration. These are all strategies to simplify steps.

In the first case, guiding users to register and log in through a third party may be the simplest way. Of course, this kind of platform cannot obtain any user information, so it is necessary to collect user information in a progress bar or hidden manner in subsequent links.

In the second case, the user goes directly to the home page. This registration method may achieve better results for some products that concern user safety or have sufficient confidence in their product experience. If the user feels the need to register, he/she can continue to complete the registration.

In actual situations, both of these registration scenarios may not necessarily be suitable, but it is also a fact that the simpler the steps are to help users achieve their goals, the more likely they are to attract users to complete registration. Because what users want is not to use this product, but to use the product to help them complete a project.

2. Study the emotional changes of users in usage behavior

The user's usage behavior brings different feelings to the user, which may be positive or negative. Positivity will bring positive feedback, and users will be happy; negativity will drive users away, and users will be unhappy. There are also most products that are neither important nor itchy, and the emotions of these users are directly related to the performance of the product's growth rate.

(Figure: User Emotion Flowchart)

In Daniel Kahneman's two thinking systems, System 1 thinking is happy, while System 2 thinking consumes energy and is unhappy. Product design follows human nature and brings them happiness. To understand their happiness, you need to pay attention to their emotional changes. Going further, the unhappiness lies in the fact that the problem has not been solved. These problems have caused distress to users.

The user's emotional changes can be expressed from three dimensions: the user's usage experience, the problems encountered, and the user's original expectations.

1. User experience

Users have two sets of cognitive modes: one is the emotional cognitive mode, and the other is the rational cognitive mode.

Most user actions, including product experience, use the perceptual mode of cognition. Based on the user's own feelings, judge whether it is easy to use or not, and whether to continue using it or give up using it. When studying user behavior, you can list the user usage path links. Each link can have an emotional score, and finally convert the score into visual data for product planners to further optimize the product.

2. Problems encountered by users during use

There is a problem only when you are unhappy, but unfortunately, even if the user has a problem, he will not tell you. Even if it can be used normally, but the user just doesn’t want to use it, this is also a problem. Therefore, try to recommend others as much as possible, or communicate with users one-on-one to understand their actual problems.

3. User’s original expectations

Understanding target users not only means understanding user attributes, but also understanding user expectations and needs. This expectation represents the user's more real needs, and this expectation may be the trend of the future.

In the early days, the enterprise office software DingTalk had a feature that allowed free calls directly to contacts in the mobile phone address book. This feature prompted many individual users to download it on their own initiative. These users did not download it for the purpose of using this collaboration tool, but simply to make free calls. Afterwards, the optimized WeChat phone was sought after by users, and WeChat phone has largely replaced telecom operators. Even though the DingTalk APP still supports making calls to contacts in the address book for free, I guess not many people will use it.

The changes in this process reflect the real needs of users and the changes in their real needs. Therefore, in addition to understanding the problems encountered by users, we must also understand their original expectations in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of user emotions and increase the rate of product growth.

B=MAT

After studying user behavior and user emotions, Fogg's research results provided another theoretical research support for improving product growth rate, namely the Fogg (FOGG) behavior model. Expressed in formula B=MAT, where B is behavior, M is motivation, A is cost, and T is trigger. When users use the product, every action is accompanied by these three elements.

(Figure: FOGG behavior model)

Still taking the product registration process as an example, in most cases, the user’s purpose of using the product is relatively clear, which is to experience the product.

Next, let’s focus on the two items of user cost and trigger:

1. User input costs

When users use a product for the first time, their mental account will calculate the cost and decide whether to register for the app. The ease and convenience of registration and whether or not there is an Aha moment are all influencing factors. By breaking down these two factors into user behavior and user emotion, and eliminating all links that need to be reduced and immediately optimizing links where obstacles exist, it is very likely that the user's cost investment will be reduced, thereby increasing the registration rate. It’s like users entering a forest. The main roads are clear and the road is easy to walk on, so users are more willing to go in and experience it.

2. Trigger user actions

But it is not enough for the road to be clear, as users may still be unwilling to complete it. The “trigger” of the FOGG behavior model reminds product developers that when users are in the forest, they still need someone to lead the way or let the users be curious and explore on their own.

In the registration process, in addition to fast registration or direct product experience, using other external rewards to trigger user registration is also something that the product can consider in order to increase registration rates. For example, displaying a guide page to promote the core selling points of the product , or directly promising users rewards for registration, are ways to increase user registration rates. Similarly, Fogg's behavior model is also applicable to other aspects of user use of the product.

IV. Conclusion

From paying attention to user behavior, studying user emotions, to using a combination of methods, all are aimed at satisfying users and ultimately improving product growth. This approach, which focuses on the product itself, will not only naturally accelerate product growth, but will also result in higher user retention rates than other methods.

Source: "Feng Shan Kai Dao"