User retention: Talk about the psychological routines that make users unable to stop

The strategic essence of an effective business model is to provide users with value that solves their needs, which in turn leads to sustainable value realization. This is the relationship between "1" and "0".

When it comes to the topic of "retaining users", it can be said that it is a common proposition regardless of industry, market, or economic form.

Previously, people talked more about the user value created by the products and services themselves, but if we change the perspective and think about the causal relationship of retention from the user's psychology and behavior, it is not difficult to find that the factors affecting user retention are not only the objective existence of the product, but also the subjective existence of self-sensitivity .

First, let me quote two sentences related to emotions:

1. It’s not that you can’t let go of someone, but that you can’t let go of the part of yourself that misses that person.
2. I like you, but it has nothing to do with you.

The above two sentences should be well known to everyone. Even if you have not seen the original sentences, you must have seen variants with similar meanings. They all express a common feature: your emotional sustenance is not on the other person, but on yourself.

What does it mean?

For example, we often hear that some people still can't let go of each other after breaking up, and the accompanying argument is often "I have dedicated so many years of my youth to each other", and the consideration of their own investment accounts for a greater proportion. This is a typical sunk cost that causes psychological imbalance.

Furthermore, a boy pursues a girl relentlessly and his persistence for many years finally wins her favor, but the boy is not interested because he is obsessed with the "pursuit" itself and the feeling he has at that time.

When it comes to user retention of the product or customer maintenance, it means temporarily weakening or even abandoning the hard indicators of rational judgment such as quality, service, and solving needs, understanding the cognitive behavioral patterns of users under different environmental stimulations, allowing users to develop habits or even become addicted to them , in order to achieve the goal of high retention. Games are the most convincing representative.

Currently, the mobile game with the largest market share in the domestic market is " Honor of Kings ", with a daily turnover of 150 million for a single set of skins. What has it done in terms of user retention?

For example, by lowering the entry threshold, if a novice dies quickly in the first few games, the player will feel strongly frustrated and will easily escape from the game. Therefore, the system will consciously match you with some weaker players.

For example, many games favor RMB players in terms of combat capabilities. Whoever spends more money can crush the other players. This makes it unfair to ordinary players. "Honor of Kings" will weaken the improvement of rich players and instead sell skins and other experience improvements. Users will then flock in and will not easily leave.

1. Gamification

Looking at business problems with a gamification mindset is a way of operating that taps into the user's own characteristics. Its essence is to allow users to have fun through voluntary behavior through clear guidance.

For example, Alipay, as a payment product with financial attributes, is closely related to money and can inherently stimulate users' "comparison psychology." As a result, we often see activities that trigger user self-propagation:

• Alipay’s ten-year bill is out!
• The value of my Alipay account is equivalent to a villa by the West Lake. What about yours?

Another example is the "Ant Forest" launched by Alipay, which accumulates energy through shopping, paying bills, walking and donating. When the collected energy reaches 17.9kg, the platform will plant a real Haloxylon ammodendron tree in the desertified area of ​​Alxa.

From the perspective of user psychology, the design of this function is only a small part of stimulating users' sense of social responsibility through charity. If we do not introduce rankings and friend interactions similar to the "farm stealing" (collecting each other's energy), users who can only harvest energy will quickly lose enthusiasm for this section until they forget it.

There is a very classic and easy-to-use method in time management - the Pomodoro timer, which means staying fully focused for 25 minutes, and then relaxing for 5 minutes. Completing one cycle is one Pomodoro timer.

There is a time management app that plants a tomato in the vegetable garden after the user completes an effective 25 minutes, and sets up a global ranking for stimulating comparison.

Some people may question how such an unpopular and niche application can have any retention? This is related to the market size and is not the focus of this article. Moreover, in a horizontal comparison among time management products, this is an effective activation method.

I have seen a postmodern restaurant with a pirate theme. There is a special area inside for throwing darts. Every table of diners has three chances to throw. As long as they throw 8 rings or above, they can enjoy a 50% discount on the consumption. If they throw 10 rings, it will be a free meal.

For consumers, throwing darts is an additional activity that fits the tone of the environment. Regardless of whether it results in discounts or free meals, it is itself an additional form of entertainment.

Therefore, many educational training institutions focus their publicity on "learning through entertainment", such as the promotional copy of DaDa English:

Children learn English through “playing”, easy and worry-free!

The above are the most direct application examples of gamification. If we further refine the operational ideas in the game, we can also find ways to use the common characteristics of users to guide stickiness.

For example, is Xiaomi’s sales method just the well-known hunger marketing ?

The mechanism of grabbing the F code actually serves to distinguish between general users and die-hard fans. Therefore, those who are qualified will think that the value of this mobile phone is not just 1999, but the additional time cost, scarcity and other unexpected premium factors, which trigger a sense of superiority and create the phenomenon of "buying is making a profit" through self-propagation.

In the early days, Xiaomi attracted a large number of fans by quickly iterating MIUI, and with an open and sharing attitude, allowed many fans to join in the system design and optimization process, planned the "Mi Fan Festival", announced the user IDs of those who contributed at the press conference, and expressed the most sincere thanks "Because of Mi fans, so Xiaomi", etc. The so-called "sense of participation" is nothing but a gamified experience.

2. Inertial Dependence

As mentioned above, allowing users to develop habits themselves is an important factor in protecting retention rate .

Just like you are used to buying 3C products on JD.com , even if JD.com doesn’t give you the credit limit, as Tmall ’s authenticity rate, after-sales and logistics services are all good, you will not go to the latter, at least it will not be your first choice.

The characteristic of inertia is that it requires external force to change the state. You will not start something for no reason, nor will you stop something for no reason. The formation of habits requires a tacit understanding between the product and the user.

For example, Keep will push a message around 7:55 every night saying "Keep reminds you that it's time to exercise, persistence is victory."

This time point is definitely not decided by the operation team on a whim. It must be based on a large amount of user behavior data as a reference. If it is more detailed, different content will be pushed to different user groups at different time points.

But for individual users, there must be a fixed time node , which is a form of guiding habits and establishing tacit understanding.

This also explains why most people will not easily give up on a TV series we are following when the plot becomes sluggish and unreasonable in the later stages.

Because people are used to dividing their daily lives into familiar segments, once they start watching a TV series, they will regularly reserve a time period in advance. If they give up the series, they will need to find other things to fill this sudden free time.

Similarly, professional new media operators will strictly implement fixed-point push, such as Luo Pang’s voice at 6:30 every day and He Caitou’s sky photos at 8:20. In addition to the habits they have developed themselves, they have also established a tacit understanding with users.

Otherwise, like Schrödinger-style push (not knowing whether/when it will be pushed), no matter how good the content is, it will easily be forgotten because it does not meet the user's deterministic expectations and there is no tacit understanding.

I am a negative example in this regard, as I don’t have a fixed publishing cycle. Some people may say that Wang Wusi has not achieved certainty, and sometimes it is even difficult to tell which public account is his (the account may be blocked at any time). However, his fans still search for him and follow him one after another, as if there is no need for tacit understanding.

Is it really not necessary?

In fact, it is quite the opposite. Wang Wusiba and his true fans are dealing with the so-called "political correctness" as a community. This is clearly a high-level form of tacit understanding.

It is worth mentioning that the difficulty of forming a habit depends on the frequency of the demand itself. For example, the market capacity and growth potential of medical service apps are considerable, but think about who would register, make appointments, and check diseases every day?

Ultimately, it is because the demand frequency is low, so what we need to do is not to stimulate user demand from low frequency to high frequency, but to meet their existing high-frequency needs. For example, pushing a piece of content related to health, wellness, and nutritious meals every morning can encourage some users to form a habit.

3. Gain and Loss Psychology

By taking advantage of the user's pursuit of gain and aversion to loss, people can unknowingly fall into a pre-set framework.

Socializing with strangers will always be a rigid demand, because it is driven by "sex", "emptiness" and "curiosity". Therefore, " Tantan ", which has emerged as a new force in the social field in the past two years, has a high-frequency push notification - someone nearby likes you, come and see who it is!

This very short sentence covers almost all the thoughts of users who download this app, effectively awakening users' need to be liked by others. There will definitely be people who will say that they are not affected by it. If that is true, why did they download it out of curiosity? People's needs change in stages . People who wear luxury watches for a long time may also want to try the high-tech iWatch, so we often download and uninstall unfamiliar social software periodically, which is not contradictory.

Why has the waterfall flow pioneered by Pinterest become so popular all over the world? Today, this layout form has been widely used. In fact, it also takes advantage of the "pursuit" psychology. It automatically loads unlimited content without turning pages. When the data is rich enough, it is almost impossible to scroll to the bottom. Users can easily immerse themselves in it and ignore the concept of time and browsing length.

If you think about it carefully, although the operating methods of products are complex and numerous, they are essentially guided by a few rules.

For example, when watching online videos, once the video reaches the end, it will automatically skip the ending song and go directly to the next episode. As long as the user does nothing, the video will play endlessly. The result of reducing the operating cost to zero is that the boundaries between individual videos are blurred, and the originally cut fragments are connected into a whole, so users can easily watch a whole night without realizing it.

Loss aversion proves that people feel more strongly about loss than gain , so operating around the psychology of "loss" is sometimes more effective than positive stimulation.

For example, during the Double Eleven shopping festival every year, all kinds of businesses have to work hard on their posters. If we only design the copy based on the psychology of gain and loss, there are the following cases:

• Buy it and earn it!
• If you miss today, you will have to wait another year!

Obviously, the second sentence is more effective than the first one.

From a psychological point of view, "earning" may not be necessary, and it may also be redundant/idle, but "missing" gives users the feeling of loss, and it also includes a year's time cost. Obviously, the latter is more stimulating to users.

Lyft is the second largest taxi-hailing app in the United States. In order to achieve growth on the "driver side", drivers were originally prompted with how much money they had earned after driving for a period of time. However, the app later changed the prompts to how much less money they had earned, shifting the focus from "gains" to "losses" and stimulating drivers' desires.

Influenced by this, Uber also made adjustments to guide driver behavior. For example, when a driver clicks to leave after earning $80, the driver will be reminded that he is still $20 away from $100, and the focus is on "keep driving."

The characteristic is that this is not a fixed value, but is always suspended not far from the current point. It is a goal that can be seen but is never reached, which allows the driver to continue to look forward to it and be willing to drive for a while longer even if he is very tired.

What would happen if this tactic was used in the media?

For example, the clickbait headlines we are all familiar with include "You'll regret it if you don't read" and "Worth a million" series. Although we know that they are likely to be vulgar marketing tactics, it does not prevent people from pursuing them out of curiosity. The valuation of Toutiao at tens of billions of US dollars proves the commercial value of human weaknesses.

Final Thoughts

Whether to leave or stay does not depend on the will of experts. The user's self-perception is the key to retention, activity and even loyalty. Through design ideas such as gamification, inertial dependence, and gain and loss psychology, we can understand the behavioral psychology that makes users self-driven and active.

For example, many games use a feminine tone to provide guidance during the novice tutorial period, so it is easy to understand why Amap has Lin Chiling’s sexy navigation voice pack.

It should be stated that although this article has been discussing how to guide user behavior by grasping human characteristics, which seems to be somewhat detached from user value from a tactical level, it does not mean that we can ignore user value and talk about original sin-style methodology.

The strategic essence of an effective business model is to provide users with value that solves their needs, which in turn leads to sustainable value realization. This is the relationship between "1" and "0".

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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