The best 5-step user behavior path!

The market is becoming increasingly calm, and the promotion model that relies on "burning money subsidies" to drive user growth has gradually decreased. How to maximize corporate profits with limited capital investment is a new problem that many marketing and operations personnel must face. Under the wave of the needs of the times, the concept of "fine-grained operation" came into being. Being user-centric, designing user behavior, and guiding operational decisions with user behavior data are the specific manifestations of refinement.

1. Understand users and start by designing user behavior

Simply put, refined operations are a method of combining market, channel, and user behavior data analysis to carry out targeted operations for users in order to achieve operational goals. Usually we will set up a funnel model for the conversion of key paths in the website to determine whether the design of the entire process is reasonable and whether there is room for optimization in each step. In this way, we can understand the real purpose of users coming to the website, provide them with reasonable access paths or operation processes, and improve the conversion rate scientifically and meticulously.

When we complete a behavior/action, we usually need two systems to coordinate and control it, one is the rational system, and the other is the intuitive system. Behaviors controlled by intuition often occur inadvertently. Just as when we use cash payments, we call upon the rational system to analyze and judge, mobile payments and card swiping do not make us have an obvious awareness that the banknotes are decreasing. Therefore, mobile payment is more natural and more in line with the intuitive system's judgment. Correspondingly, if we take advantage of the user's mental characteristics when designing user behavior and allow more behaviors to occur within the judgment of the intuitive system, it will have a positive impact on business growth.

Good customer acquisition methods often involve the design and perception of the intuitive system. For example, in terms of how to retain users better, we need to let users rely on rational judgment to gradually feel the value of the product. In user operations, we need to optimally combine the rational and intuitive systems. All of these require us to have a fuller understanding of the characteristics of the rational and intuitive systems, including incentives and how to develop and maintain user habits, what strategies we can use to prevent users from being disgusted by our designs, etc.

2. Three Misunderstandings When Designing User Behavior

Products and operations are the front lines of contact with users. How to better understand users and use more humane strategies to design so that users can act according to the behaviors we imagine is the only way to ultimately achieve growth and the only way to verify the conclusions of analysis. Let us look at the common misunderstandings when designing user behaviors.

1. Disrespect for facts and lack of MVP thinking

When we use product iterations to meet the analyzed user needs, we find that users are not buying it. In addition to the lack of understanding of the user's cognitive process, a more likely reason is that the design does not follow the MVP thinking, the value is not clearly communicated, and the user does not perceive that we are meeting his needs, so he is indifferent.

When we explore the value of scenarios and functions and find that the data feedback is not good, we cannot use the excuse that this is the pain of our transformation, that users have not yet realized the value of our revision, that the most core functions have not yet been designed, etc., and make operational decisions without respecting the real feedback of the data. In fact, this is essentially caused by not verifying the value with the minimum viable product. Data is not only difficult to measure and interpret user needs, but also difficult to prove that users have indeed got our design intentions. Therefore, we must do our best to design.

2. No global perspective and lack of priority judgment

In addition, PM lacks data support when judging the priority of needs. You should know that when we do user research, we usually distinguish the perspectives of expert users and novice users. This is because many functions that are valuable in the eyes of experts are usually worthless in the eyes of novice users, and novice users account for the vast majority of users. So when judging the priority of product development, the first thing to consider through functions is those users with large user scale, high frequency of use, and who can bring more value. This is the principle for judging priority.

3. Focusing on design and development without anticipating the results

When you don’t have enough understanding of user usage scenarios and get bogged down in interaction details instead of paying attention to the overall process, you may find that the data after the new function is launched is far from your expectations. At the same time, due to the lack of effect prediction in the early stage, problems are likely to occur in data collection.

3. CREATE: Behavioral Funnel Model

Regarding behavioral design, you may have heard of rules such as call to action, but in fact, many interactive techniques in behavioral design often originate from the CREATE five-step behavior funnel model, which describes the user's mental journey during the behavior, including the switch from intuition to rationality. Let us explain it in detail through a case.

The five prerequisites for action are the following psychological elements: cues and the intuitive reactions they trigger; conscious evaluation; ability to execute; and the appropriate time for the behavior to occur. Perhaps you've noticed that these five factors can be combined into one acronym: CREATE. It is because of these 5 factors that action happens.

Suppose 100 people try to manage their email better, hoping to respond more efficiently (remember, not all behavior changes are fun). They set up email reminders, so they have to re-read old emails, and only by deleting and replying to them one by one will the reminders in the inbox disappear. Most people see these reminders, but a small number of people subconsciously close them quickly because they hate dealing with these annoying tasks. Some people will get hung up on cleaning out their inboxes and then decide it’s important to do it (and the rest won’t think it’s worth it).

Every year during the Spring Festival travel rush, some great cases emerge. Let’s take ticket-grabbing acceleration as an example to see how the five-step behavior funnel model works.

- Clues prompt intuitive responses

We receive messages from friends on WeChat, which ensures the effectiveness of clue dissemination and allows users to have a preliminary understanding: this matter is related to me, and there may even be some benefits to be gained. When you sort out your thoughts, you will find that this intuitive reaction should come from the promotional creativity, including the bright red background and obvious copy such as "I have you", which makes users feel close intuitively.

-Weighing and evaluating execution capabilities

After entering the mini program, I watched the animation of "grabbing the speed-up package". At the end, the page conveyed a message: You have helped your friends grab 2 speed-up packages, and you also got 2 speed-up packages, asking you if you want to claim them. At this point, we enter the measurement and evaluation stage, evaluate the costs and benefits, and then come to a conclusion: I need it too (evaluation and consideration capabilities are a set of actions that may not be so clearly divided.)

- Right time

Go to step 4 and consider whether you have the ability to do it now. The answer is yes, because it doesn’t take much time and the timing is right now - you are on the subway. This may lead to our final actions of receiving the acceleration package, registering the product and grabbing tickets.

In summary, when we develop a function or launch an activity, we need to gain insights from clues to users’ intuitive feelings, including key moments such as the scenarios, environments, and execution capabilities when users use the function/participate in activities. By optimizing step by step, we can ultimately allow users to complete the most critical purchasing behavior according to the route you planned.

User behavior analysis allows bosses to make more accurate judgments about the market that their products are entering, allows marketing personnel to finely evaluate channel quality, allows product designers to accurately evaluate user behavior path conversion, the quality of product revisions, and the impact of a new feature on a product, and allows operations personnel to have more precise marketing strategies and achieve scientific quantification and evaluation.