Why do users keep churning? Teach you 3 stages of user retention methods

Product retention is similar to product onboarding, and the reasons for short-term retention, mid-term retention, and long-term retention are very different.

New users usually enter the direct product understanding stage after downloading the app. At this stage, if the product itself does not have any particularly eye-catching highlights (which can be understood as hooks) or something that hooks them at once in the product's main function interface, there is a high possibility of user loss . After all, most users are just trying out new products. For this type of loss problem, generally intelligent (algorithm) or selected recommendation content-based products have advantages, whether it is information, short video , shopping mall, or live broadcast, they can use highly hot content recommendations to hook most users' desire to use.

For example, Douyin , which I have recently been trying to understand, has great advantages that determine that the short-term retention rate of the app will be higher than other similar short videos. There are three reasons for this. First, Douyin’s own music attributes and product user positioning determine that its videos are more distinctive; second, Douyin’s shooting threshold, high production standards and video processing advantages determine the high quality of the video; third, the homepage selection mechanism lowers the user’s selection threshold. We can play short videos when we open the APP, and from my viewing experience over the past few days, the quality is quite high. (I haven’t found any content related to the recommendation algorithm on the Douyin homepage, but judging from the quality of the content, there should be a large manual intervention mechanism).

These three characteristics of Douyin determine that after opening the app, users can quickly immerse themselves in high-quality short videos, which means that it can quickly hook users. I think this is better than Kuaishou . Kuaishou has a very difficult time choosing short videos. Recall a boring afternoon when you wanted to find a good movie to watch, and the struggles and complaints you felt during the movie selection process.

As for content products that do not have distinctive features like TikTok, we can start from another perspective. According to the 2016 mobile information industry segmentation report released by Toutiao, Toutiao's entertainment interest users accounted for 68.29% of the total number of users on the entire platform, ranking first. The second largest category is social information, accounting for 67.29%, and the third largest category is comedy, accounting for 46.56%. In other words, if only these three points are combined, the retention rate for early adopters will be extremely high in the short term.

Of course, for non-content products, strong visual and interactive forms are generally adopted. In other words, users can understand the focus of the product and the usage features of the product at a glance, so that users can easily get started, which means quickly forming a first impression that the product is of good quality and that the product functions look good.

This also explains why a good onboarding guide is very important for many new products. It is a shortcut for users to quickly understand the product. The onboarding process may not only include the use of product functions, but also the presentation of the core highlights of the product (which may include some concepts, such as ingenuity, high quality, etc.).

In the medium term, more appropriate content and more comfortable functional use become more important. For any product, we will gradually transition from the wow stage (or the trial stage) to the calm stage. When we are accustomed to most of the functions of the product, we will make the functions of the product more delicate and convenient. For example, we can better understand the current users and make the recommendation algorithm more accurate. For example, the operation is more convenient, and the original three clicks can be turned into one step. Just like when we use the computer for a long time, we tend to use shortcut keys instead of the mouse for many functions. For example, we can provide a more personalized visual solution and change the design style of the app. In other words, this is a step from a good product to a pleasant one.

The song comment module of NetEase Cloud Music is not a very necessary function in itself, but it is very effective as the icing on the cake. Many pinned comments directly drive the emotions of users and enhance the appeal of the song itself.

Go a step further and provide more interesting content even if it is only weakly related to the core functionality of the product. I found that I had unconsciously spent a lot of time on the "Friends" module of NetEase Cloud Music. It contains interesting short videos, funny GIF animations, good music, and some celebrity gossip. In itself, this module has no direct relationship with music, but it starts from the people who listen to music and celebrities, in the form of a circle of friends (of course, its recommendation mechanism is not the circle of friends, but a mechanism with intelligent and hot recommendations. After all, most of the friend relationships in Cloud Music are weak relationships, which is slightly different from WeChat ). As a retention module of Cloud Music, I think this can be used as a reference for mid-term retention.

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Let’s talk about the long term, that is, the retention of senior users. When users get used to the content and functions of the product, there will actually be an "itchy" stage. No matter how well WeChat does, after using it for one or two years, you may feel that it is just so-so. After reading too many humorous jokes, you can often guess some routines, and humor becomes boring. Papi Jiang, are you still watching it now? In the words of many netizens, it’s just the same old routine.

Let's talk about Tik Tok. It also has the same problem now. Tik Tok started out as a music short video, which means that many of its videos will have a fixed music rhythm and content. This determines that many of its videos are shot and edited in the same way. Many of the users around me who use it intensively say that the video repetition rate is too high, and they often see similar formats, and the sense of freshness gradually decreases.

At this stage, general products will raise three banners. The first is social , the second is user growth system, and the third is continuous operational stimulation (including various topics, hot spots, and communities ).

Social networking is easy to understand. The reason why we don’t give up WeChat is because we have a large number of social relationships on it. What we focus on is not WeChat, but the people on WeChat. It’s just that there is currently no product that can achieve the strong relationship chain characteristics of WeChat.

YY Live and Momo for live broadcasts, and Kuaishou and Douyin for short videos, cannot establish strong relationships like WeChat as the freshness of their products decreases, but there is still great potential for tapping into weak relationships.

Whether it is live broadcast or short video, as an outlet for loneliness and boredom, we can see interesting strangers through the screen. Since they are human beings, they naturally have personality.

Then the mining of weak relationships can be changed from liking content to liking personality, which can be understood as a similar development to AKB48. The difference is that maybe I used to like your excellent works, but after becoming a fan, I like your personality and fun as a person. Then the work is only a part of your personality. In the later stage, the anchor you follow may not need very eye-catching content, and you may even like him more and feel that he is real.

This is the part of weak social relationships that can be deeply explored in content-based products.

To put it simply, the growth system is "honor, privileges and benefits after working for a few years." I won't go into detail about this because it is very broad.

Continuous operational stimulation can generally be divided into two situations. Information and media products generally tend to create controversial topics. The content of the topic is often unexpected. After all, it is not just one person's opinion. If the topic is well chosen, the following replies may be full of explosive points.

Mall products tend to create festivals, whether it is Double Eleven or 618, they all belong to this category. Of course, continuous operational stimulation and the creation of festivals are regular, but also irregular, such as Didi and Mobike giving out coupons and discounts for no reason.

Second, the product features I mentioned do not necessarily have to be ranked in order. They may be developed in parallel. After all, some retention features are applicable to all three stages. It’s just a matter of which stage has the best effect. Low cost and high output are the most efficient ways to do things.

Just like a college graduate, no matter how high-quality the business information you tell him about the Fortune 500 companies is, it will be of no use to him. It would be better to teach him how to improve his interview success rate. The same is true for the use of retention strategy.

The above are some small thoughts on retention, I hope they are useful.

The author of this article @操作鹤手 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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