App facing difficulties? ! Let’s gamify your product

As a typical representative of Internet products, App has experienced rapid growth and development since 2009. A large number of mobile apps emerge one after another, affecting and serving people's work, life and study in all aspects. In recent years, mobile Internet startups have focused on developing, promoting and operating an app. Although the emergence of mini-programs once made everyone say that the good days of apps are over, apps are still favored by many entrepreneurs and users for their powerful native functions and practicality.

Nowadays, apps meet the needs of users from all walks of life, and there are countless scenes of dozens or even hundreds of similar apps competing in one field. For example, in the past, there were travel, food delivery, and group buying, and now there are news information, shared bicycles , etc. These apps have one thing in common, which is that they meet rigid needs and solve the most important things in people’s lives. For example, Didi and shared bikes solve users' travel problems, e-commerce products such as food delivery and group buying solve people's problems of eating and playing, and news information solves the need to obtain information.

Therefore, these are the needs that people will definitely have, and the areas where these rigid demands are located have basically been dominated by giants represented by BAT . Later entrepreneurs need to enter outside these areas, that is, vertical fields that the giants do not pay much attention to. For example, many tool products, game products, etc. are the areas where many latecomers focus on starting businesses.

However, with the development of apps, all the areas that should be discovered have been discovered. Therefore, current apps are facing difficulties.

The current apps are facing the following difficulties

1. Traffic problem

Last year, Luo Zhenyu mentioned a term "national total time", which roughly means that the current mobile Internet dividend has passed, the growth rate of Internet users has slowed down, and the time users can spend on apps is limited. However, the number of apps is increasing endlessly, and the same amount of user time is divided into more apps, so the time users stay in each app will become shorter. The most obvious thing is that the opening rate of official accounts is getting lower and lower.

Therefore, the problem that every entrepreneur will face is the lack of traffic, especially when you enter a field where there are already many competing products. If your team simply imitates your competitors and makes an app, the chance of survival is almost zero, because the first comers have the advantages of user awareness and time, so it is difficult to make a breakthrough.

2. User churn

With the increase in the number of apps and the concentration of app store entrances, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a single app to acquire users. At the same time, the cost of acquiring users is also increasing.

For example, an APP once had the opportunity to gain a large number of users through its first launch on the market. Now the number of users acquired in the first launch is also decreasing. In today's mobile Internet environment, many apps are constantly exploring new channel resources and introducing new entry traffic. It is obvious that this resource will soon be exhausted. From offline advertising, TV advertising, bus bodies, etc., the scope of App promotion is getting wider and wider, and App advertisements are everywhere. All these show that the central entrance effect of App is decreasing.

3. Policy tightening

In the era of mobile Internet, the development of the smartphone industry has led to the rise and rapid development of the APP application industry, but APP security issues have also become increasingly prominent. Faced with industry chaos, relevant departments have also introduced many policies to manage these chaos. The most obvious ones are the recent cleanup of WeChat and Weibo, as well as the large-scale investigation of the live broadcast industry, etc.

4. Market saturation

The real rigid demands of users are limited, but the tools to meet user demands are diverse. Take the music listening APP as an example, the ones we can choose from are: Kugou, QQ, Kuwo, NetEase Cloud, Xiami , Duomi, Baidu, etc. Therefore, in today's era of rampant APPs, there is no shortage of products that can meet our needs. I could use QQ Music today, but after a friend recommended it to me, I thought NetEase Cloud Music was very good, so I will use NetEase Cloud Music to listen to music tomorrow.

To explain it from an economic perspective, supply exceeds demand and it is completely a buyer's market. Users can freely choose what tools to use today. You, the sellers of these tools, should serve me well. I will use the one with the best service attitude and the most powerful functions.

So, as of now, if you want to start a business and make an app, you should think twice, especially when you are entering a field where there are already market giants. There are very few people who can break through the siege of giants. Faced with such a dilemma, is there any way out?

I think there is, and that is to gamify your product. This gamification does not mean that you can reverse the trend as long as your product is as playable as a game. Instead, it means that your product should meet certain user needs, including a rough interface design and product functions that are neither complicated nor simple, and you should try to make your product like a game.

Five mechanisms to build highly gamified products

The essence of gamification thinking is to influence user behavior by designing the emotions generated at each stage of interaction between users and products. It is not entertainment, it is the fusion of humanity and design. It makes the product interesting and fun, increases its appeal to users, explores user needs beyond core needs, strengthens the user's emotional experience and the product's added value, gamifies the product, and completes the transformation from tool to toy. Of course, all of this is achieved without compromising the experience of meeting the core needs of users.

Gamification is a complete system that requires the ingenious and organic combination of multiple mechanisms, rather than the single application of a single mechanism. This system includes challenges, opportunities, competition, cooperation, feedback, resource acquisition, rewards, transactions, rounds, win-lose system, etc., forming a complete gamification system, allowing users to find the fun of using this APP.

Let’s take Honor of Kings as an example. Why do so many people play Honor of Kings? Because it takes gamification to the extreme. As of May 2017, the penetration rate of "Honor of Kings" reached 22.3%, the user scale reached 201 million people, and the average daily active users (DAU) was 54.128 million, which is twice the data in December 2016. Some people may say that Honor of Kings relies on the powerful traffic from Tencent for reverse flow. It is undeniable that Honor of Kings, which grew up with the golden key, is more or less affected by Tencent's huge traffic, but it is not the core factor for it to become a national game. Because there are many products within Tencent, there will be a certain amount of traffic that can flow back to you in the early stage, but in the later stage, the key lies in whether the product quality is strong enough and whether it can continue to meet user needs.

Honor of Kings satisfies users' needs for challenges, opportunities, competition, cooperation, feedback, resource acquisition, rewards, transactions, rounds, and a win-lose system, making users addicted.

1. Competition mechanism

The form of presentation is a ranking list. Users like to get feedback about the gap between themselves and others. This feedback can arouse the user's competitive psychology, so that they can complete more tasks to enrich themselves and surpass others. Users who are far ahead enjoy showing off and hate losses, and will continue to complete tasks to consolidate their leading position.

2. Cooperation Mechanism

"Honor of Kings" is very similar to a basketball game. It is a team competition game where team cooperation is more important than individual cooperation. The game requires tanks, assassins, mages, shooters and warriors. If these different roles are matched together, if the team roles are repeated due to personal preference or expertise, they will lose the upper hand in team battles. For example, if no one chooses the tank role, there will be no meat shield to support the team in a team fight, and the team will be crushed by the opponent. This is just like there is no center role in basketball. If everyone on a team is a shooter, who will defend?

3. Feedback Mechanism

Whether it is Honor of Kings, or other online games, mobile games , etc., one of the factors that makes it easier for players to become addicted is that the game is designed with a mechanism for timely feedback. This includes the score display after you pass the game, the title display when your level increases, etc. It is a process of giving players positive feedback.

4. Reward Mechanism

Every player who plays "Honor of Kings" has a heart that wants to be a king. Some people have succeeded, while others are still working hard. It must be a long and arduous process to go from bronze to king step by step. But the desire to be the king will never stop. When you use a mage to easily kill the enemy in seconds, or use a tank to help your teammates bear damage, or every time you get a pentakill, every bit of it is growth, and every level of improvement is a compliment to you.

5. Winning and losing mechanism

The performance form is team PK. Everyone likes to win. Winning or losing brings excitement, and everyone can give full play to their skills during the confrontation. The win-lose mechanism is actually a mechanism that provides feedback on the gap between users and other users. It can also motivate users to complete tasks and even become addicted.

Of course, for products like games, in addition to the closed-loop character settings and incentive systems, the most important thing is the interface design, including whether the overall style is cool enough, whether it can represent the attitude of the players, and most importantly, whether my character's skin is unique enough, etc. Because character skins can be used not only to show off and display to friends, but also have other functions. For example, there are many rare and limited skins that ordinary people cannot have. To be a couple, you have to use couple skins together. The handsome skins can also attract girls, and the cool special effects are like wearing the halo of the protagonist, making killing people easier. For example, Han Xin's "White Dragon Song" and Li Bai's "Thousand-Year Fox".

Therefore, I think that in addition to satisfying users' needs to a certain extent, a product must also integrate the product and the users, including attracting users through interface design, giving users a strong sense of involvement, and constantly cultivating players' sense of virtual honor, so that the cost of users leaving you continues to increase.

How can we make an ordinary product have the sense of immersion and timely feedback of playing games?

So how can we make an ordinary product have the same sense of immersion and timely feedback as playing games?

1. Interface design represents the quality of a product

Users who are new to your product don’t know you. They may have heard about your product from friends but have never experienced it. Once they download the product to experience it, their first impression will 100% be focused on the product’s interface design and interaction. If a product is well-made or doesn’t feel rough or tacky, it can basically make users want to stay and study the app. Otherwise, they will uninstall it directly.

For example, these are both stock trading apps, and the interface designs of Cowboy.com and Moore Finance. Before you come into contact with both of them, when you download these two apps at the same time, which one will you choose to browse first? I believe that most people will choose an APP with a neat and elegant interface design and a certain degree of ornamental value to browse. Because when users don’t know you well enough, they will give priority to those with good-looking interfaces. It's like when you go on a blind date and the person you're dating is a beautiful lady with a very good appearance. Even if you don't know much about her, you are still willing to sit down and get to know her better. But if the person sitting opposite you is an ugly girl who looks like she hasn’t washed her hair for some days, would you be likely to stay and get to know her? I guess most people don't have this interest. Although this metaphor is a bit "appearance-oriented", the reality is that users like beautiful things, which is an eternal truth.

2. Enhance users’ sense of identity with the product, so that users have a strong sense of belonging when using the product

To make users feel a sense of belonging, you need to tell them stories. We all know that brands like to tell stories. The purpose of telling stories is to make users identify with the ideas you convey. For application products, in addition to providing basic functions and becoming an "easy-to-use" product, you can also try to tell users a story and create a situation so that they can identify with the product emotionally in addition to its functions, thus forming an emotional bond that keeps users in the product. You know, in today's increasingly fierce competition in the application product market, it is extremely easy to copy or expand a product function. In the end, if you want to retain users, emotional bonds are the most important card.

For example, in the early days of Alipay , there was an advertisement like this: there was a "Key Auntie" whose more than 30 keys carried the heavy trust between neighbors. No matter the small or big things, annoying or trivial matters between neighbors, as long as help was needed, "Key Auntie" would appear. However, this may be a microcosm of society, turning a kind of entrustment into responsibility and commitment. Although Alipay is not mentioned in the film, "Auntie Key", as the protagonist of the film, has become the representative of the brand spirit of "knowing entrustment" advocated by Alipay. At the end of the film, after "Alipay Knows Entrustment", the first appearance of "a third-party payment platform that carries the trust of 600 million users" seems to reveal the attitude that Alipay is trying to express more directly through this promotional video - for Alipay's more than 600 million registered users, this key is even more important.

Because for the early Internet financial market, trust was the biggest obstacle for ordinary people to use Internet products, and Alipay was telling a true story to the audience and conveying an idea. For third-party payment platforms, since the issuance of third-party payment licenses in my country, licensed payment companies have increased their resource investment in talent, capital, system construction, etc., and the service market segments have become more diversified. This has led to serious homogeneity of online payment products and fierce market competition. Faced with a market environment full of fierce competition and challenges, it will take time for third-party payment platforms to gain recognition and approval from consumers, so this film can also enable users to trust Alipay to a greater extent.

For example, when Luo Yonghao was making the Hammer phone, he said: I don’t care about winning or losing, I only pursue seriousness. This is what is called sentiment, which is used to attract people who agree with your grand goals. In fact, the Hammer phone is not particularly perfect, but users will tell it: just be serious, we will be responsible for your win or loss, and we will support it no matter how bad the product is.

Another way to enhance users’ sense of identity and belonging is to make the product more social . I have seen many products that have functions such as private messaging and communities, but very few users actually use them. So what are they really missing? I think there is a lack of interaction. Humans are social animals. We need to interact with our own kind. No one in the world can endure absolute loneliness. If a function is just a simple function, it will not actively interact with users because the function is dead. What should we do with the “dead” function? We need to make it “alive”.

For example, when users enter the community, they can be given a simple guide on how to interact with other users in the community. This guidance needs to be the most positive one, and the goal of this guidance is also very clear, which is to get as many users as possible to use this function, thereby achieving the effect of interaction. In addition, in some communities, users need to be made clear what should and should not be posted. For example, when users use the community's speaking function, a prompt or a test can pop up first. This is because in current Internet communities, people gather together because of certain interests or hobbies. For example, Hupu's community and bzhan's barrage, they will let users take a test before speaking. Some communities will give you a prompt first, and you can only speak if you agree to the prompt, such as Xiao Enai .

In fact, to enhance the user's sense of identity, we must eventually reach a state where users become part of the product and think that this product is mine, not yours, nor the product of a certain team, but ours.

3. Continuously cultivate users’ virtual sense of honor and increase the cost of users leaving

This virtual sense of honor is actually supported by the user incentive mechanism within the APP, including rankings, medals, points, certification and other mechanisms. These virtual incentive mechanisms are most common in games, and they are also present in some apps, but not in some apps. However, when a product develops to a certain stage, it is necessary to establish a user incentive system, because it plays an important role in retaining and activating users.

The rankings can refer to the reward rankings of various live broadcast platforms , the task rankings of games, and of course the daily step rankings of Weibo and WeChat. The medals can refer to the medals of the Duoduo APP and the medal system of Sogou Input Method . The points can refer to the points system of NetEase News , Taobao Tmall, etc., and there are more products that can be referenced for certification, especially content products, including Zhihu, Weibo, Jianshu , etc.

It is not difficult for every product to have such a user incentive system, because there are too many products to learn from, and many mature products are doing better. What needs to be noted is that there are two things that need to be kept in mind when making these incentive systems. One is that even if there is feedback, I think the knowledge-based paid product APP is very well done here. He has a medal system, but this medal is not "dead" but "alive". For example, if I have studied for 100 hours today and have met the requirements for a certain medal, a message similar to “You have studied for 100 hours and can receive a certain medal” will pop up immediately. Users can receive the medal by simply clicking on it. The page after receiving the medal is high-end and has a high chance of being shared by users. This creates a closed loop in which users gain virtual honors and also achieve the effect of communication, killing two birds with one stone.

Another thing to note is that the setting of this honor must be challenged and consider the complete emotional experience, master the psychological principles behind various mechanisms, understand why people are attracted to them, and then grasp the matching of game mechanisms and game elements, and what mechanism is applicable in what situation. Because humans are naturally attracted to interesting things, if you can make a product interesting and more attractive, so that users have a pleasant emotional experience, then this product can create surprises for users.