What keeps users in your product?

Introduction

I once used a canvas belt for six years. I bought it from Semir for 29 yuan. Later it looked too worn out, so I bought a new one. However, I have kept this canvas belt at home for three years and I have never been willing to throw it away.

The Japanese minimalist lifestyle, which has always been very popular, generally starts with getting rid of things and reducing material things, one category at a time, and pursuing low-key and high-quality material enjoyment. But when you actually start to tidy up your room and prepare to throw away things you don't use often one by one, what you think about is, it took me a long time to find this bottle; this booklet contains my memories of high school days; this painting took me three months to create. You will find that there are many things you can’t throw away.

This reflects a common psychological effect, loss aversion! I have used the belt for so many years and have developed feelings for it. In this case, the sunk cost of the belt becomes high. How can I abandon such feelings all of a sudden?

In the American political campaign enlightenment book "Hardball", such a view is expressed that if you want to win a voter's vote, the best way is not to promise him something, but to eat his food, use his things, and sleep on his sofa. As the late Ted Sorensen, an aide to President Kennedy, said, "How can you vote against a man who sleeps on your couch?"

If two men pursue you and you are asked to reject one of them, and you have never paid anything for A but have paid 100 yuan for B, most people will of course reject A.

I have paid so much, how can I just give up?

This aversion to loss is reflected in products by making users have a certain silent cost on the product, and there are things in the product that users are reluctant to throw away.

Sense of dedication

Many software products are charged, and there is usually a free trial period before charging, such as PS and OFFICE365, the trial period is 30 days. Why 30 days? Because 30 days is enough time for you to get used to the new version of PS and become dependent on it. It will be difficult to abandon PS when you are already very familiar with it, so the payment ratio is naturally very high.

I have been using Snail Reading , which provides one hour of free reading time every day. However, users need to manually click on a pop-up box every day to claim the free time, rather than having it delivered directly. This operation is troublesome for users. I thought the experience was bad at first, but after thinking about it carefully, I felt that it was right. Only with dedication and a sense of ritual can there be respect, and only then will you feel that this hour is precious, and only then will you read books and use Snail Reading.

The sense of contribution is even more necessary for large-scale promotional activities. For example, during JD.com’s “618” event day, a large number of coupons will be given out before and after. However, JD.com does not completely adopt the method of directly receiving coupons. Instead, it designs a certain threshold for receiving coupons (as shown in the figure below). You need to overcome levels and complete some tasks before you can get the coupons.

New Apple mobile phones, hurry up and buy them!

Be the first to own limited edition Nike sneakers, hurry up and buy now!

There is a queue at Shanghai Disney’s Crossing the Horizon. Disney’s queuing system is very advanced, but you still have to queue!

Ele.me previously offered a free delivery service for paid members at a price of 20 yuan per month. In addition to increasing product revenue, this strategy was more importantly to allow paid members to consider the fact that they had paid on Ele.me and that there was a delivery discount every time they ordered takeout, thus choosing Ele.me.

Although this membership policy has been removed from the shelves, Ele.me’s latest super membership event, as shown below, is similar in nature.

What is the sense of contribution? It can be time, energy, or money. You worked so hard to pursue the goddess back then, and only then will you cherish her in the future.

My personal content

QQ, this app is probably not opened by many people in the workplace for several months. However, if you are asked to delete it, would you be willing to do so? No one wants to, right? Why? A very important reason: I have a lot of friends on it (this is a very core point for retention of all social products).

Have you ever found that it is actually quite difficult to change the music app in your phone, like NetEase Cloud Music ? You may think it is much better than QQ Music, but most people will download Cloud Music first to try it out, and then slowly change it. They will not uninstall QQ Music all at once if they think Cloud Music is good. After all, there are still a lot of stocks in QQ Music, including favorite playlists, collections, and even downloaded music.

The same goes for browsers . If you want to completely avoid using a browser with a good bookmark system, it will take time. When changing browsers, you need to actively transfer your past favorites to the new browser one by one. Also, many browsers have quick entrances to websites that users frequently visit (as shown below), which will also increase the threshold for change. URL favorites and URL quick entrances are the accumulation of users' long-term usage records, which will cause the browser change to require a relatively long adaptation period, or take a long time to do a complete migration. In fact, it is quite difficult.

I use a calendar software. Looking back now, it doesn’t have the best experience and design, but I have been using it all the time. I have too many records and reminders on this calendar. Although I have seen calendar software that caught my eye several times and wanted to change the original one, I ended up keeping it. After all, it is too troublesome to move all the past records and reminders over here.

I found that many reading apps have a function called reading notes or reading annotations, but most reading apps do not fully utilize this function. Notes are a very good thing that can attract users. You immediately get up and search around the house. Maybe you can find the notebook from two or three years ago. Did you forget to lose it? No, it’s because you can’t bear to let him go. You will know when you need him.

Strengthen guidance for users to write annotations, notes, highlight key points, and make marks, so that users can leave concise records of their reading on the APP. The reading software contains users' time, energy, and thoughts, so it is naturally not that easy for users to delete the APP when they want to.

privilege

What is privilege? It is a unique right.

Under what circumstances will users have unique features? For loyal users who have crossed a certain threshold, privileges are often tied to the membership system . Privileges are rights that can only be obtained after investing step by step to a certain position. This characteristic is exactly similar to sunk costs.

The following table shows the privilege attributes of JD.com membership at different levels. Gold members and diamond members have almost all the privileges, including high discounts, free after-sales service, and exclusive gift packages. With such great discounts for gold and diamond members, would you switch to other e-commerce platforms?

If your Alipay Sesame Credit score reaches 650, you can use ofo, Yonganxing , and YouBike without paying a deposit. This is the only one, no other branches.

The most common use of privileges is in gaming products. When it comes to skins, equipment, and weapons, veteran and novice players are on completely different tracks. Just like a friend of mine who plays Zhengtu , I am at such a high level, almost at the top, with such awesome equipment. Although my friends around me no longer play the game, I also say I won’t play it because I can’t bear to.

Give users special rights that distinguish them from other platforms and ordinary users, and users will naturally stay for your product.

Strengthen the sense of ownership and contribution

Users have a sense of contribution to the product, accumulate personal content, and have privileges. We have done all of these things. However, there are still some situations where, although we have paid the cost and obtained some discounts or privileges, we often don’t use them immediately. Sometimes we are delayed by other things, or sometimes we don’t need them temporarily, and we may forget about them later.

Many products will issue a large number of coupons, and users have received a lot of them, but a large proportion of users do not use them in the end. I didn’t know that I had 3 10-yuan coupons for shoes on Taobao that were about to expire. If I had known, I would have bought the shoes I had been hesitating about.

At this time, the product needs to constantly evoke the user's memories of their hard work and constantly emphasize what you have in the product.

Strengthening the sense of presence can be achieved through enhanced visual means . For example, the picture below is 360's super user badge, which strengthens your sense of privilege by enhancing your vision.

For example, the coupons for many products are placed deep inside the product (many are placed in the third-level interface of the personal center), which is not easy for users to find. At this time, we can improve the display position and form of the coupons to make it easy for users to see them, which can form a certain visual stimulation and thus guide consumption.

It can also be done through timely reminders . Sometimes, I will receive notifications from JD.com about my coupons that are about to expire, and sometimes I can’t help but check to see if they are useful.

A female friend of mine once told me that she saw a text message from Xiaohongshu saying that a 50-yuan beauty coupon was about to expire. She had gotten it with great difficulty and really wanted to buy something with it.

Or enhance functionality . Many people think that the notes they take on reading apps are useful, but they may not necessarily look at them later. On the one hand, some reminders should be made to attract users' attention. On the other hand, the note-taking function should be enhanced to make it more convenient to consult and use, and even present reading notes and thoughts in more personalized styles to enhance expressiveness, that is, to strengthen the presence of notes.

Strengthen the sense of ownership and contribution, so that users can more easily and intuitively perceive the benefits and past contributions, and can also pay more attention to the product.

at last

When making products, we are always talking about user experience , hoping that users can use it easily, but this is not the only goal, there is also product stickiness. Let users pay for the product; let users have their own things in the product; let users have different feelings (privileges) about the product; strengthen the user's awareness of ownership and investment in the product.

It is not easy for users to abandon or uninstall products with these characteristics.