Talk about the user growth system: A brief analysis of the user growth system of "KEEP"

1. What is the user growth system?

The user growth system is the best combination of [ operational means] and [product mechanism] . It is the embodiment of the mutual benefit of operation and product. It will make a product more complete and full. If the user growth system is successful enough, it will produce huge benefits:

• For products: improve user stickiness. So-called growth is always accompanied by "habit" and "dependence", and it also promotes the maturity of the product.
• For operations: having a set of standard classifications for users at different stages of growth will help to achieve user stratification and enable better refined operations.
• For business: a complete product with a user system will have more commercial value than an immature product. Through user operations , we can find a suitable and sustainable business model ; with high product value, we are more likely to obtain capital support.
• For users: The user growth system is the embodiment of product gamification , from which users can gain emotions and benefits.

There are many products that build growth systems for users, and inevitably some of them tend to be similar. Some product managers even think that the user growth system is nothing more than experience, level, etc., and they design them arbitrarily and "make decisions based on their own ideas". After the functions are launched, they do not bring about an increase in user volume and activity. Therefore, the user growth system should reflect the core business characteristics of the product, rather than simply applying it.

Next, I will introduce and analyze the "User Growth System" that Keep launched not long ago. There must be many things that product managers can learn from it.

2. Analysis of Keep’s “User Growth System”

1. Introduction to Keep

In this era of advocating "national fitness", waistline, abdominal muscles and buttocks have become labels of healthy and self-disciplined people, and everyone is also very keen to incorporate "fitness" into their self-growth system. In recent years, fitness software has sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and Keep has always been the leader in the fitness category.

I believe many people have used Keep Fitness. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t used it. I will give a brief introduction: Keep is a fitness APP developed for entry-level users. Users can use fragmented time to choose video courses that suit them anytime and anywhere for real-time synchronous training, and share them to the community after completion. Keep covers a variety of fitness scenarios, such as courses, running, walking and cycling. At the same time, you can find a course that suits you based on your own exercise parts, equipment types, and training difficulty. There are voice guidance movements in the course, so you can enjoy the teaching of professional fitness consultants

Through the product introduction, the main functions are summarized:

• Fitness: classes, runs, rides, walks counts;
• Community.

It has been nearly two years since I registered with Keep. Although I don’t use it often, every update allows users to see the changes and optimizations of the product. The "User Growth System" launched this time is also really surprising and worthy of further study.

2. Why does Keep need to build a “user growth system”?

I have always believed that fitness apps such as Keep, Fittime, and Hot Fitness are very suitable for user growth systems. First of all, fitness is a behavior with strong positive feedback. By persisting in fitness, we can actually obtain a healthy, firm, and pleasing body. We can also see different changes in the body at different stages. It is a manifestation of realizing self-worth.

Current product types can be divided into two types: those that solve pain points and those that realize value. Fitness apps tend to be the latter, and a large number of users are constantly looking for products that match their self-worth.

The user growth system constructed in the product can be combined with the user's own value growth. When you reach a high level in the product, it just proves that you have also achieved certain results on the road to realizing your self-worth. The higher your level in KEEP, it may mean that you are in better shape than people in lower levels. This is the main reason why Keep should develop a user growth system.

3. The Secret of Keep’s User Growth System

(1) Components of the User Growth System

In the past, Keep also had a simple growth system: training time and badges. So what changes after the upgrade? The picture below shows how Keep’s user growth system is presented - the level center. I will split it into modules.

The above figure has marked the components of the user growth system:

① Growth value: Growth value can be understood as "experience". You can gain growth value by taking corresponding actions in the product, such as:

• Keep moving – train, walk, cycle or run
• Encourage, communicate and share with others - post updates, check in, and comment
• Exploring and trying new things – doing training for the first time

②Persistence Index: The growth value obtained by the persistence index of the day x = the total growth value of the day. The minimum persistence index is 0. As long as you exercise today, it will immediately increase by 0.1, and the halo of the avatar will also be lit up by one grid. If today passes without any exercise, it will be -0.1, and the avatar halo will be dimmed by one level, up to a maximum of 2.0.

③Keep Grade: Each behavior gets a corresponding growth value. After multiplying it by the Keep index of the day, the sum is the total growth value. The total growth value corresponds to different KG levels.

④ Special privileges: Each KG level will have corresponding exclusive privileges, which are mainly divided into functional privileges and peripheral gifts.

⑤Historical settlement: In order to let users clearly understand the changes in indicators during their fitness process, Keep has refined data indicators such as fitness duration, type, number of times, exercise diversity, body data, badges, and communication and sharing into a settlement report.

⑥ Upgrade Guide: Answer users’ questions about the Level Center in the form of Q&A.

⑦ Score record: The historical record of each score of the user, including the score items and specific scores.

(2) User types divided by Keep: KG1, KG2, KG3-KG20. The higher the level, the more attractive the privileges.

(3) Keep ’s user growth path - forming a closed growth loop

(4) Keep 's expected behavior

The indicators defined in the growth system should be instructive, and the purpose of each indicator is to guide users to complete the actions that the product manager wants them to complete.

• Growth value: As data for classifying users, it is an indispensable part of a growth system. At the same time, the growth value quantifies the user's behavior in the APP, uses core functions (fitness and social networking ) as bonus indicators, and strengthens the user's awareness of usage.
• Persistence Index: The persistence index can be understood as a "check-in", which can increase the growth value exponentially. The purpose is to make users persist in using the product and not "fish for three days and dry the net for two days". The persistence index is also reflected in the halo of the avatar. That is to say, anyone can see from the halo of the avatar whether the other party is persistent, which stimulates people's "comparison" consciousness and plays a huge role in improving the user activity and retention rate of the product.
• Exclusive privileges: Privileges are mainly divided into functional privileges and peripheral gifts. Functional privileges such as fitness voice packages, fitness-exclusive music, etc. stimulate users to engage in fitness behaviors, while dynamic skins, cheering expressions, etc. stimulate users' social behaviors. Peripheral gifts include peripheral merchandise (card holders, handbags, T-shirts, etc.) and mall coupons, which stimulate consumption and realize user monetization; at the same time, peripheral products use the special Keep logo, shaping the image of the sports brand , forming a brand effect, and making Keep no longer just a sports software.

3. The “attractiveness” of the user growth system

The growth system itself introduces gamification elements to create good, interesting and fun feedback for users' behavior in the product, satisfying their vanity.

HOOKED is an "addiction" model established based on game research, which includes 8 different core driving forces.

The essence of a growth system is to motivate users, allowing them to operate the product spontaneously or even dependently, and the user growth system serves as a fulcrum to make users feel "hooked". Next, we will talk about how Keep "attracts" users based on the 8 core driving forces of the HOOKED model.

1. Epic Meaning & Calling/Epic Meaning & Emotional Calling, Sense of Mission: What you do can make you feel a sense of mission and has strong contemporary and emotional attributes.

In this era, most people have solved the problem of food and clothing and have entered an era of realizing self-worth. Fitness is a symbol of self-discipline, and has also become a characteristic of the times and a sense of superiority for some people. Keep's user growth system uses a "ritualistic" design approach to strengthen users' understanding of words such as self-discipline, fitness, and growth. At the same time, the introduction of social media and the role of the persistence index also bring considerable emotional constraints to users.

2. Development & Accomplishment : Achievements gained from completing goals

• The increase in growth value and level in Keep means that users have stronger bodies and minds, allowing users to feel the effects of the product and form dependence.
• The user growth system must provide rewards after the user takes action. The exclusive privileges unlocked by the level are a kind of reward. The rewards must be attractive and varied enough.
• After fitness, the changes in the user's body are the greatest achievement.

3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback / Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback : Allows users to DIY , reconstruct and redesign, and provide timely feedback.

• Exclusive privileges include personalized skins, voice packs, music, photo stickers, dynamic skins, cheering expressions, video dynamics, etc., allowing users to choose their favorite skins, music and voice packs according to their preferences during training, while guiding users to share high-quality content. For example, QQ Show and QQ Space, which were very popular in the early years of QQ, mobilized the creativity of users and accumulated countless excellent contents.
• The feedback in Keep and the upgrade guide in the level center can reduce users' confusion during use and allow users to achieve clearer fitness and growth goals.
• Of course, the feedback in this core driving force does not mean that there needs to be a feedback channel , but that users can get timely feedback from it. For example, if a user has worked hard for a year and only got promoted to the next level, then such feedback is too insignificant. In Keep, the training content ranges from easy to difficult, and the level is improved from simple to difficult, from fast to slow, so that users can get timely positive and negative feedback after hard work in the early stage, which helps to quickly develop user habits.

4. Ownership and Possession: Satisfy the user's desire for control and possession

• The "rank" title of Honor of Kings is a symbol of the user's level. It can truly reflect the user's gaming level and is related to the winning rate. There is a difference between the rank and the user's experience level. Playing games for a long time can get you a high level, but it does not mean you can get a high rank. In Keep, the avatar halo reflects the user's persistence index. The persistence index has nothing to do with the level or the time the user has joined the product. It is only related to the number of days the user persists. Therefore, new users who have just joined the product will not feel discouraged because of the high level that old users cannot reach.
• Exclusive privileges are things that users can actually possess and control.

5. Social Influence & Relatedness/Social Influence & Relationships, Connections: The manifestation of a certain status in society and the relationship with others.

The social circle constructed in Keep dynamics can truly reflect the user's social status and influence. There are two types of representative users in the Keep social circle. The first type is a group similar to KOL . They are fitness enthusiasts with enviable figures, abs and muscles. Usually, as long as they post updates, hundreds of people will like or comment. Here they can gain social status and good reviews.

The second category is ordinary users, who occasionally use Keep to lose weight. They generally do not post photos to show themselves, but occasionally they will check out popular updates to motivate themselves. At this time, ordinary users can choose to "cheer" for others. By having the privilege of cheering expressions, they can show that their social status is different from others.

6. Scarcity & Impatience : The rarer something is, the more people cherish it. People will always be in turmoil over what they cannot get.

• The user systems of most products use scarcity to influence users, such as common premium members and high-level players. These scarce users have already obtained certain resources in the product and are more likely to become dependent on the product.
• The persistence index can double the growth index. It is a scarce and impatient item in Keep. What is impatience? The product will not wait for you for one more day. As long as you do not exercise for one day, the persistence index will drop, guiding users to continue using it to maintain the persistence index.

7. Unpredictability & Curiosity : Curiosity and the unknown drive humans to explore

Do you want to know what you would look like if you lost weight? Do you want to know how attractive you will be when you lose weight? Regardless of whether you can stick to it, most people who want to lose weight will have such curiosity and imagination. Therefore, in the process of continuous exploration, users discovered the fun of fitness, persistence and self-discipline.

In the Keep user growth system, exclusive privileges have a certain degree of unpredictability, because they cannot be tried out and there is no detailed introduction, which will inevitably bring a certain appeal.

8. Loss&Avoidance/Loss, Loss& Avoidance : A successful user system will make users feel a sense of crisis.

The negative emotions of a product actually stem from the user's subconscious "comparison psychology", such as comparing themselves with others or comparing themselves with themselves. If you always win in a game, you will find the game unchallenging. But when your rank is lower than others and you start losing streak, you will feel frustrated and eager to surpass others. So the frustration when working out comes from when you see others have a good figure while you still have a fat belly.

When you don't stick to fitness, although the growth value will not decrease, the persistence index will decrease or even be zero, so the user will feel negative emotions, and such emotions will inevitably be substituted into the user himself, just like people with procrastination will feel lost and in a bad mood after procrastination. Only in this way can the user's desire for achievement be stimulated.

Therefore, a growth system should appropriately (appropriateness is very important) allow users to lose some resources and bring some negative emotions to users. Just like a fighting game, blindly giving will inevitably exhaust the user's enthusiasm for exploration.

Summarize

In "About User Growth System, a Note You Can't Miss", the author Douding summarizes 5 "can be", which I think are of great reference value to the designers of user growth system:

The system can be expanded, thresholds can be entered, incentives can be perceived, levels can be expected, and fake transactions can be prevented.

Finally, if you ask me what is the greatest significance of the user growth system, I would answer: the user growth system is able to enhance the value of the product itself, allowing users to gain corresponding "social status" and at the same time become more dependent on the product.

The author of this article @有填儿的丸子 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!

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