The best article I've ever read about user operations: the definition, evolution and methodology of user operations

After a while, due to lack of management, I discovered a problem: the content I shared in Moments received fewer and fewer likes and comments . This deeply hit my vanity of being praised for being beautiful. Suddenly I thought, I am a native Internet operator. So I used the idea of ​​user operation to make a solution:

This is a real-life example of user operation. Although the Moments is not so utilitarian and my test was more utilitarian, it does tell us a basic methodology for user operations: " Discover problems - analyze causes - solutions - set goals - evaluate results ".

So let’s take the well-known QQ as an example to let everyone see how the position of user operation evolved (the case is purely fictitious).

Extensive operation: At this time, there were already 111 registered QQ users. Finally, Ma Huateng was too busy, so he found Zhang Zhidong and told him to stop working on new features and just focus on user services. Zhang Zhidong has a technical background and is not interested in chatting. Zeng Liqing, who was standing next to him, heard this, frowned, and came up with an idea. He said that we need to form a service team (the prototype of the user operation department). So we recruited 10 customer service staff. We started to divide the work and chat according to Ma Huateng’s service model. More and more QQ registered users are born. The users who initially registered for QQ also found their own netizens and began to downplay their interactions with QQ’s customer service. I will only consult customer service when I have questions about using QQ. After leaving the chat camp, Ma Huateng began to think about how to provide services to achieve large-scale user growth.

Fine-grained operation: After all, he comes from a technical background and has quick thinking. After analysis, he found that friends in the same city chatted the most. So we applied the city dictionary to the registration form, and users had to choose which city they were in when registering. Then, based on the user’s location information, recommend friends in the same city to the newly registered user. Ma Huateng is very fickle and is particularly aware of the principle that opposites attract, so he also uses gender as a screening factor. I registered a QQ account in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, and filled in Lindong Town as the city and male as the gender. The page that prompted me that my registration was successful listed a group of QQ registered users from Lindong Town, and I filtered out the women. Add friends one by one. Suddenly a portrait came into view, it was so pretty! Add friends quickly and get closer to them. This experience is so great.

User operation is a strategic service with business goals. Users register for your product in order to solve their own problems. If your product really captures the user's pain points, it can survive well without any operations. However, as product homogeneity becomes increasingly serious, competition in product functions has given way to competition in product experience. In this experience, there are product experience factors, but the one with the greatest weight is service. The services provided by operations include personalized services (user operations), high-quality content (content operations), and activities (activity operations).

1. Find the problem first

My WeChat account coo108 often receives questions like this: How to do user operations? I usually ask him back: What is your current shortcoming or biggest problem in user operations?

Because if there is no problem, there is no operation. All positions are solving different business problems. Product managers optimize products by solving product problems encountered by users

So what problems does operations solve?

Operations solve the problem of the entire product user ecosystem: how to balance user needs and business needs throughout the entire life cycle of users of the Internet products you operate.

2. User operations should minimize the loss of user interests

It sounds good, but sometimes we have to cater to the big capital strategy of enterprises and sacrifice the interests of users. You can review your work and see whether you have done a lot of rough operational behaviors under the tyranny of your leader. For example, in the process of switching from PC to mobile products, in order to quickly seize the conceptual commanding heights, they used all means to attract the first batch of users from the PC side. In fact, this is an inevitable competitive situation.

2. User Operation Methodology

What operations need to do is to minimize the loss of user interests. This is the same as the era where traffic wins. I remember in 2010, a colleague of mine was invited to be a guest at the Press Office. When he came back, he said that editors from Douban, 58.com and other companies were present. Because in the era of traffic, SEO is king. It is said that the number of users searching for pornographic keywords is so huge that it has been ranked first in the search index rankings for many years. With such a huge treasure trove of traffic, no one with a bit of capital ambition will give up. It also gave birth to several successful products. Of course, products like Douban will not display this information on the front end of the website. This is the high end of SEO.

Let me explain this in two parts. How to do user operations is a methodological issue. That is, discover problems, analyze problems, propose solutions, and preset evaluation indicators. It has a bit of a Taoist meaning; what are the current operational shortcomings, and the focus is on analysis. That is, analyze which part of your product as a whole is the weak point in user operation. The weaker places are likely to be the most risky places. Your competitor's intelligence center is watching you closely and may take advantage of you. There is an element of art to this: identify the riskiest parts of your operation, lay out your specific plan, and systematically test your plan until you address the shortcomings.

1. Horizontal explanation of user operation workflow

Whether in life or at work, we are actually unconsciously following the above process: discovering problems - analyzing problems - problem-solving solutions - setting evaluation indicators - implementing solutions. The other process nodes are easy to understand, let’s talk about “setting evaluation indicators”. It means that when we do anything, we have a psychological expectation that we will always need a return for the time, money and other labor costs we pay. This return is the evaluation indicator.

2. Explain the solution to the problem vertically

Users are the foundation of a website or product, and all business departments are working around users. User operations play a go-between role here, coordinating resources between departments for my use.

User operations do not require you to do everything yourself. One of the most important job responsibilities is to explore and control user needs.

Some people say that controlling user needs is the job of product managers. I believe there are many people who have this idea. Moreover, 80% of companies are product-driven in their operations. Such companies always think that problems in product development are a matter of product experience itself. This is the conclusion that determines product success. Most startups fail because of this awareness. In today's world where product homogeneity is so serious, coupled with the presence of Tables. If you want to win with your product, the consequences will be disastrous. Therefore, successful products generally set competitive barriers in the market and operational services.

Therefore, after user operations discover problems and analyze the causes, they should distribute the needs to relevant business departments. Product problems should be solved by the product department, and market problems should be solved by the market. If joint efforts are required from multiple parties, User Operations will coordinate resources and relationships between departments. Another extremely important task is to monitor the program implementation process and results, and to provide reasonable suggestions for improvement of the program. Everyone thinks that user operations seems to have taken over the work of the data department. In fact, user operations is an analyst with a strong sense of data, because he needs to discover problems, understand user needs, and be able to get to the root of the problem.

When I was operating the WeChat account, since it was a newly opened service account, the number of followers was very small. Every time I spend a lot of time organizing the article style, but after publishing the article, I find that the number of readers is very small. 70% of the content readings on WeChat accounts come from Moments. The reason for the low number of readings is because the number of shares is low (the sharing rate is actually not low, which shows that the content is good), and the reason for the low number of shares is because the fan base is low.

Therefore, during the initial operation period of the WeChat account, the focus of work shifted from content quality to fan base. This should be the responsibility of the marketing department, but the marketing department is very busy, and it seems a bit of a waste of talent to promote a small WeChat account. So I considered how to attract fans to the product: I sent the request to the product manager and made a tip on the relevant page of the website to guide users to follow the WeChat account. Later, WeChat QR codes were also added to the related promotional materials made by colleagues for online promotion. The fan base was created in a very short time. The number of fans reached 20W. When I was doing content operations later, the number of shares really increased.

The fact that you can find this problem proves that you ideologically equate content operation with user operation. I guess the concept of event operation is also stirring in your mind.

Ask a question: The ultimate goal of user operation is the number of active users. So, what are the goals of content operation and event operation? Page views? Average time on site? How many people will attend the event? Conversion rate? …In fact, these are all specific analysis indicators, which are at most the goals of operating behavior in a small area, but not the ultimate goals.

The so-called ultimate goal is the indicator that best reflects your business purpose. Therefore, we can understand it this way: content operation and event operation are both means, and their purpose is to enhance the ultimate goal of user operation, which is to retain users, promote activity, and increase the number of active users.

For example, when we look at e-commerce websites, there are always some activity recommendations in the focus image area. The purpose is to stimulate visitors who enter from the homepage or aimlessly browse to make impulse buying decisions. There are also some product offers that are recommended on the homepage, generally called good products or dry goods, which are used to promote user activity and retention through high-quality content. In real work, we usually do this: user operations screen out a group of users with typical characteristics and hand them over to content operations or activity operations personnel. The demand is to promote the activity or attract back these users through content or activities.

Another working idea is that when a content or event operator has a good idea, he needs to find a group of users with relevant characteristics or interests to receive content or event information in order to test whether the idea is effective. After a period of experience accumulation and finding good results, it will be included in the content or event operator's regular work list. For example, during every major holiday, you will always see promotional information on e-commerce websites such as Taobao Tmall or JD.com. It was very cost-effective to buy goods at that time. Or some experienced buyers always pay attention to the financing or listing information of some large shopping websites, because once the financing is successful, they will definitely hold a store celebration. This has become a standard model for event operations.

Therefore, establishing a target system for user operations is of great importance. The ultimate goal of user operation is to increase the number of active users.