5 ways to improve new user retention rate in APP

According to the definition of Baidu Encyclopedia :

In the Internet industry, users who start using an application within a certain period of time and continue to use the application after a period of time are considered retained users. The proportion of these users to the new users at that time is the retention rate , which is counted every 1 unit of time (for example, day, week, month). As the name suggests, retention refers to "how many users stay." Retained users and retention rate reflect the quality of the application and its ability to retain users.

Since the retention rate has a certain time period concept, there must be different considerations on how to improve the retention rate of the corresponding groups from the perspective of old users (who have been active for a while) and new users ( newly attracted users). After all, new and old users have different levels of understanding of the product. Conversely, the product has different levels of understanding of the characteristics of new and old users, and what can be done and what needs to be focused on are also different. Based on this, this article mainly analyzes how to improve the retention rate of new users , which corresponds to short-term retention indicators such as next-day retention.

Screening of high retention channels

Product acquisition is not blind. Any product has its own target users , and the user characteristics of different channels are also different. How to obtain accurate target users will directly affect the new user retention rate. Therefore, retention analysis of users from different channels is extremely important.

Determine the corresponding user source channel from the product positioning. The positioning of a product includes both the characteristics of the target users and the tone of the circulating content or community atmosphere. Choosing channels with similar positioning to acquire users is undoubtedly accurate, and the corresponding new user retention rate will also be higher.

For example, judging from Chunyin’s new entrepreneurial product Maobing, its product positioning is “telling stories with short videos ”. Its target users are not ordinary users who just like to take photos casually, but users who have a sense of camera and a passion for creating stories. Therefore, during the introduction stage of seed users , we sent soft articles to the minority to introduce the powerful and free video editing function of Maobing. After all, those who use the minority are people with a spirit of exploration and a desire to express themselves. Judging from Maobing’s positioning, it will not target short video users of Miaopai and Meipai , but rather users of Douban , same, VUE and possibly even Xiaoying, because these users are more particular about the way of expression and the quality of creation, which is undoubtedly consistent with the target users defined by Chunyin.

For the short video information products that I am responsible for, which are targeted at a wide range of people, it is not very reasonable to select appropriate channels based on product positioning like Maobing did. After all, all channels seem to be of equal value. Therefore, channels with higher user retention rates will be selected as the main source of user acquisition. Judging from the product data I am responsible for, the user retention rates of Huawei and OPPO app markets are higher than those of other app markets, so we will focus our promotional resources on these two channels.

Whether it is for vertical products or general user group products, screening appropriate channels and obtaining more accurate users are the most effective steps in improving new user retention rates during marketing .

Brand awareness of APP

A good product name and slogan are undoubtedly important, because they basically represent the product positioning and are the user's first impression of the product. Let’s take the Maobing app mentioned above as an example. At first glance, the name “Maobing” doesn’t tell you what kind of app it is, but the slogan “Telling stories with videos” clearly tells users that this is an app that focuses on expressing through videos. In fact, considering the product positioning carefully, Maobing seems to be a qualified name, because it does give a feeling of exquisite life.

The name and slogan can allow users to have an initial brand awareness of a product. Through various advertising channels and more forms of marketing, more people can have a deeper understanding of the product form. These can help the product introduce a precise target user group. New users have a strong sense of brand identification. As long as the product experience is not too bad, the initial user retention rate will naturally not be too bad.

Another kind of cognition lies in the feeling of new users when using it for the first time. Users come to you hoping that your needs will be met through products. If they are confused the first time they use the product and cannot find the functions that meet their needs, or if the product has poor performance and there are bad experiences such as lags, UI misalignment, etc., then it will not only greatly reduce the brand impression, but may also create an atmosphere of bad reviews, affecting the introduction of subsequent new users. Therefore, the product must provide good usage guidance for new users and optimize access paths, provide a good core function experience, and help users meet their needs more quickly.

If users can gain a sense of satisfaction during the process of introduction and initial use, and identify with the product, then they can be expected to be willing to continue using the product.

Active user feature analysis

Facebook, Twitter and other large foreign Internet companies have discovered through long-term analysis that when new users use a certain function at a certain frequency within a certain period of time, they are more likely to stay and become loyal users. For such a function, if users are guided to use it a certain number of times, the corresponding retention rate can be improved, and the number corresponding to the number of times is called the "magic number".

For example:

• Facebook found that users who added 7 friends within 10 days had high retention;
• Twitter found that new users are likely to be active on the platform if they follow 30 friends in 30 days;
• LinkedIn found that new users who added 5 contacts within 7 days had higher retention and usage frequency.

The magic number corresponds to the behavioral difference between active users and inactive users. If the product can allow as many new users as possible to complete this key behavior through product design and operation , thereby experiencing the value of the product, it will be easy to meet the needs of users and improve retention rate.

For example, Sina Weibo , the domestic product corresponding to Twitter, not only recommends a large number of high-quality big-name users on the platform to attract new users' attention when new users first open the app, but also recommends high-quality or relevant users in real time based on various dimensions in the feed stream for users to follow. These practices are all aimed at increasing the number of users' followers, allowing new users to see more content, generate more interactions and connections, and thus improve the initial retention rate of new users.

So how do you find the magic number? It is usually determined through behavioral data analysis of platform users or user surveys. The former records and analyzes users’ behavioral data in the application and corresponds to their respective retention situations, so as to compare and confirm the behavioral differences between active and inactive users. The latter determines the differences between them by surveying active and inactive users and understanding their basic social attributes, usage purposes, access paths and operational behavior characteristics through chatting.

After finding the difference, you need to use AB testing to verify whether the retention effect of the difference exists and the extent of the effect, so as to determine the final magic number. Generally speaking, a product may have more than one magic number, so more verification is needed to adjust the product optimization direction according to the priority of positive impact. When users start using the application, guide and promote new users to achieve differentiated behaviors from the product design and operation level, thereby improving their initial retention rate.

Establishment of user operation system

When users use a product, they definitely hope to satisfy some of their needs. If the product provides users with material or spiritual rewards while satisfying their core needs, users will surely have a greater favorable impression of the product. The purpose of establishing a user operation system is to make users happier while meeting their needs. If this system attracts new users at the very beginning of using the product, it will naturally effectively improve their retention rate.

The most common user operation system is the user incentive system, which uses points, levels, rankings, medals, etc. to attract users to continue using the application in order to achieve certain achievements or obtain certain material and spiritual rewards. This method of using games to stimulate users to participate in interactions with the platform and users fully exploits the human tendency to compare and show off. It is worth noting that the establishment of a user reward system must be tied to the core needs of users, so that users can receive recognition and rewards in the process of meeting their needs, so that they will have a continuous motivation to participate.

Operating activities targeting target users and core functions is also an effective way to enable new users to understand and participate in the platform ecosystem as quickly as possible. For example, e-commerce apps often use or create festivals to hold promotional activities to attract user participation, financial apps often use new user rewards to attract new users to bind cards and invest , and shared bicycles often use new user first charge or card collection activities to stimulate users' continued use. These activities combined with the characteristics of the product themselves are effective ways to allow new users to participate in the platform's functional processes as soon as possible and improve the short-term retention rate of new users through benefits.

In addition, during the user process, better guiding users to perform functional operations and timely responding to and resolving user feedback are all part of the user operation system, which enhances users' product favorability and thus encourages their continued activity.

Continuous recall through push

Nowadays, there are more and more APPs on users' mobile phones, and functional homogeneity is becoming more and more serious. How to make new users remember the product again after using it for the first time? In addition to the above-mentioned methods of using a good user experience and reward system to recall it, another particularly important method is to wake up users through message notifications.

Effective message recall methods may vary for different products.

For example:

• Social apps usually try to get the user's phone number, so they often use text messages to call back users using relationship links.
• Some products were initially provided by WeChat public accounts, so activities or content were used to recall users through public account messages;
• Some products also use emails to recall users because they have email registration methods at the beginning, but this method is more suitable for PC.
• For mobile products, using push messages to recall users is the most effective and most commonly used method.

In this way, we must first pay attention to the fact that the pushed messages must be in line with the scenario. For example, the product I am responsible for mainly pushes hot video news to users, trying to meet the needs of users for using the product, rather than other messages that are not related to the core functions of the product.

Then, you need to pay attention to the time and frequency of message push to avoid disturbing users and causing uninstallation. This requires product and operations colleagues to continuously adjust and formulate appropriate push strategies based on the message click data of platform users.

Finally, given the large number of push messages, how can we increase the attractiveness of our own messages to users? The author recommends that refined operational push notifications be made for different users, and personalized push notifications be made based on the user's social attributes (age, location, education, occupation, etc.) and user preferences to ensure that the push messages can attract more user attention.

In addition, to ensure that users can receive push messages from the application, in-depth consideration is required from the product and technical levels. As mentioned above, nowadays there are more and more APPs for users, and every company wants to push messages to users. Therefore, many users now habitually turn off application notification permissions. This requires product personnel to use product means to reasonably remind and guide users to enable notification permissions based on user behavior paths. As for the chaos in the push mechanism at the Android system level today, technical means can be used to reasonably make it compatible with some third-party push systems, such as Huawei and Xiaomi's push, to increase the reach of push messages.

at last

The above five points basically consider how to improve the retention rate of new users according to the sequence of channel acquisition of target users, brand attraction and usage experience, behavioral analysis of active users, improvement of user engagement, and user recall process. The last three items also help to improve the retention rate of old users, especially the reminders of push messages to users, which are also applicable to the recall of lost users. From the perspective of the user usage process, if the first four points can be done well, new users can develop continuous dependence on the product from the very beginning, thus remaining active.

In addition, using high-frequency functions to drive low-frequency functions is also a common practice for many products, especially for tool -type products, such as the addition of content information to UC Browser and limited-time flash sales on e-commerce apps. There are also some products that maintain continuous growth by constantly expanding user usage scenarios, such as WeChat's search and view, and Momo's live short video dating. Of course, these practices are precisely aimed at continuously improving the retention of old users and avoiding the loss of active users.

In general, the key to improving new user retention is to give users a good first impression, to effectively meet user needs, and to bring extra surprises; and the key to improving old user retention is to continuously expand scenarios on the basis of retaining new users to meet branch needs beyond the core needs of users (I will not elaborate on this point, as many articles have discussed this in detail). It can be seen from this that improving user retention rate still needs to be considered around the core needs of target users.

The title image comes from PEXELS, based on the CCO protocol