APP operation and promotion: Not user-centric, beware of fake user demands that will make you cry

Since 2014, with the rise of "Internet thinking" in China, foresighted companies have begun to discover that user needs have become diverse. Faced with long-tail distribution, infinite extremes, and rapid iterations, our own products are becoming less and less popular with users.

Under pressure, companies have to once again shout "the user is God", but this is no different in substance from the slogan they shouted in the industrial economy era, and there is nothing special about their actions. If they are lucky enough, individual companies may discover sporadic "blind spots in user needs" and make corresponding product adjustments. However, if the company always relies on accidental events such as the boss going down to the grassroots to understand user needs, it is still not a "user-centric organization" that conforms to the business logic of the Internet era.

User-centered organization

What is a true user-centered organization? This means that all activities of the enterprise are initiated based on user needs. In the words of Zhang Ruimin, "Any production that is not based on user interaction should be stopped." Because blind production without obtaining user demand may become inventory. In the words of Ren Zhengfei, enterprises should strive to achieve "end-to-end" delivery, that is, obtain demand from the user end and then organize delivery back to the user end.

This idea sounds extremely reasonable, but most companies will not adopt it. Traditional companies prefer to "design" a product from the top down and then imagine what kind of users this product will have. As for what kind of product to design, it depends on the resources the company has. To put it in a more vivid way, if you have a hammer in your hand, you will imagine everything as a nail. Leaders with industrial economic thinking have made repeated mistakes in the Internet age, which makes us question the business elitism we once believed in.

User-centered organizations have two characteristics:

First, artillery fire could be heard along the front line;

Second, the front line can direct the artillery fire.

These two characteristics are simply impossible to achieve in a bureaucratic system. In a truly user-centric organization, decision-making power lies not with senior management but with those at the front line who can interact with users. If an enterprise truly wants to transform itself into a user-centric organization, it must break down the bureaucracy. This is the reality.

Why reform doesn't work

The challenge of breaking the bureaucracy is too great, and most companies still prefer to "improve" along the logic of the bureaucracy. As a result, companies have set up a number of functions within the bureaucracy to explore the real needs of users, but the results are far from satisfactory. In the Internet age, this inefficient way of interaction has even been forced into a desperate situation.

For C-end (individual) users, traditional marketing departments, on the one hand, directly study users through surveys and other methods, and on the other hand, form an integrated relationship by controlling distribution channels , allowing retail and circulation to convey the needs of end users. However, this type of practice presents increasingly serious problems - directly distributing questionnaires and channel feedback themselves have a strong sense of presupposition and cannot ensure that real needs are met. Ford has a classic quote: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse." The implication is that this method will never reveal people's demand for cars .

For B-side (enterprise) users, a strong marketing department is responsible for interacting with users, forming integrated relationships, and outputting high-quality demand packages, which becomes the basis for the enterprise to organize production and services. But the reality is that the Sales Department drags the Marketing Department along, and the Marketing Department becomes a logistics department that cooperates with the Sales Department to get orders. This short-sighted approach makes orders entirely based on a few top sales.

The relationship between users and businesses is extremely fragile. Once the super salesmen leave, the orders will naturally leave as well. In fact, the marketing department is responsible for building roads, and the sales department is responsible for driving sports cars. If the road is well built, it doesn't matter if your driving skills are poor; but if the road is not good, no matter how strong your driving skills are, you can't make full use of them; even if you can barely control the road section with your driving skills, it is the driver's ability. If the good driver is gone, everything will be back to zero.

To take a step back, even if a company facing B-end users has a strong marketing department that dominates the interaction with users, it is easy to fall into a trap. ZTE is the country's leading mobile phone manufacturer and has been in this field longer than many current mainstream mobile phone brands. However, due to its long-term provision of customized mobile phones to operators (the temptation brought by centralized procurement), it has not directly faced end users, resulting in a lack of market sense. Another example is BOE , a semiconductor display giant that has absolute advantages in technology and also provides components to many electronic product manufacturers. However, its embarrassment lies in the fact that it is difficult to guide the manufacturers' needs. To maintain a cooperation, it can only follow the manufacturers. Because the user demands on the C-end are constantly changing, but the to B genes of these types of companies make them distant from users, making it difficult for them to perceive such changes.

Therefore, whether it is a to B or to C enterprise, if it still "puts itself first" to guess the needs of users and fits users into its own thinking framework, it will never be able to obtain the real needs of users. Those companies that are isolated from B-end users and cannot reach the terminals have lost the feeling of C-end market. Essentially, it is not because of their position (they cannot reach C-end users), but because they pay more attention to "selling goods" rather than discovering user needs.

Build a user interaction interface

So, how can we humble ourselves and stop trying to guide users; let go of our utilitarianism and not just pursue selling goods, so as to build an "interactive user" interface?

The first step is to become a fan of the user (admire the user).

Listen and observe carefully instead of asking questions in an overbearing manner. When an enterprise does not have the conditions to contact real users, it must not adopt the so-called "sampling" and let the samples play the role of users in a set situation. Because no matter how you design it, you can never simulate the user's mentality, and the result you get will naturally be wrong.

A typical scenario is that companies like to ask users: "Would you like it if we did this?" Users often answer: "That's great." But when it comes to reality, they will find that there is no usage scenario for what the company provides.

The author once coached a company engaged in the construction Internet to develop products. They hoped to establish a platform to help migrant workers find jobs and help construction companies find people. When they entered the construction site for research, they asked the migrant workers (users): "If there is an App that can help you get jobs, just like Didi Taxi , would you be willing to use it?" The migrant workers of course answered "That's great." But back to reality, migrant workers still introduce jobs through offline interpersonal relationships, and they never worry about not getting jobs.

At this point, companies should look for "traces of user needs." For example, some Internet companies will let test users use the demo version of the app without informing them and conduct video surveillance to find out which designs may mislead users. For example, when designing the Thunder gaming laptop, the company carefully read and analyzed more than 30,000 user complaints about similar products on JD.com and Tmall , thereby discovering the real user needs.

The second step is to become the user’s friend (someone like the user).

In The Consumer Dynasty, Prahalad mentioned that after 2000, the competitiveness of enterprises will come from consumers and consumer communities. This means that in order to obtain the real needs of users, companies must establish communities and form integrated relationships with users. At this point, the user becomes the company's asset, and the company is able to obtain the user's lifetime value.

In fact, it is difficult to become a user's friend unless you are the same person as the user. At Thunder, the people who actually interact with users and understand their needs are three people born after 1985. They are game fans themselves, so they can communicate with game fans in the same context.

The third step is to make yourself a part of the user (build a community with the user), that is, to perceive changes in user needs through data.

At this point, users don’t feel that anyone is watching them, but their needs are fully under the control of the company. For example, when users use e-commerce apps, data will be deposited on the platform, allowing companies to infer their preferences and push corresponding products without users having to actively search for them. For example, a company that sells equipment loads sensors on its products. When the data shows that a product will expire tomorrow, the spare parts will be on the way today. The user does not need to adjust the goods or stock them in advance.

Beware of three types of interaction errors

However, user needs are unlimited, but corporate resources are limited. How to mobilize corporate resources to meet user core needs to the greatest extent is a science.

The scale of demand

Some user needs are real, but they are not common needs, or the scale is not large enough to support a business model . Therefore, companies should be wary of being influenced by the needs of some users and imagine a vast market space. Countless apps have emerged in this way. The correct approach is to conduct user interactions on a larger scale. The more people participate in the interaction, the more we can see whether there is an "effective scale" of demand.

The hierarchy of needs

Although some user needs are common, they are not indispensable. To put it more intuitively, these demands are "itch points" rather than "pain points". He Chang and Ma Jiajia can make users laugh with clever tricks, and even spread them across the entire network, but they cannot get users to continue buying. Essentially, this is because they are hitting the "itchy points" rather than the "pain points."

The reality is that the experience brought by satisfying the "itch points" is of diminishing marginal utility, while the experience brought by satisfying the "pain points" is at least of unchanged marginal utility. Huang Taiji can ask the beautiful boss lady to drive a Mercedes-Benz to deliver pancakes to the door, which made users unable to help but post on Weibo. However, if the same thing happens the second time, users will be greatly disappointed. Therefore, you have to come up with more unexpected tricks, but how can a company have so many "clever tricks" to use? Instead of putting so much thought into being clever, why not make a truly good product? From the perspective of input-output ratio, the latter is definitely more cost-effective.

The possibility of realizing demand

Users' demands vary. Some users have very high demands and are willing to pay a high premium; some users have very low demands and hope to get a low price. On the surface, this is a question of choosing between differentiation and low-cost products, but the reality is often more complicated, and targeting which type of user needs is not a simple binary decision.

The traditional S ( Structure , Structure) -C (Conduct, Behavior) -P (Performance) paradigm analyzes how companies should choose their "track" more from the perspective of market structure, but its default user needs are relatively standardized and cannot effectively decompose the complex user needs in the Internet era and select the appropriate "track". So, I think the decision to choose a track should follow these steps:

1. Lock in the general direction - what common needs and pain points do users have?

2. Take inventory of the resource pool - how many resources can you afford for this direction?

3. Search user groups - Which types of user segments can be satisfied by paid resources?

4. Plan the "moat" - For each type of user group that can be captured, how wide a "moat" can be built by configuring the available resources (providing a unique experience that cannot be replaced)?

5. Select the strategic pole - Consider your own and competitors' factors, and choose which specific user group to form a strategic "growth pole" and win the largest market space?

"Heart-to-heart" is the underlying intersection

Finally, let’s get back to the most fundamental question: should we interact with users?

Ever since Steve Jobs became a god, many people have been enjoying imitating him . They believe in the crude "product view" - "users don't understand the product, only I do." As a result, "pretending to be aloof and looking down on users" has become a trend, and every product manager hopes to use god-level products to educate and slap users in the face.

However, it is not that Jobs does not pay attention to user needs, but that he has his own logic when dealing with user needs; it is not that he does not interact with users, but that he turns himself into a super user. The so-called super user is one who pushes the user's needs to the extreme and takes this as the standard. For example, when reviewing internal apps, if they can’t find something they like within three clicks, it will be deleted. This harshness makes Apple’s product managers terrified.

Jobs was so demanding because he was the "leader in no man's land." On the one hand, he dares to enter the uncharted territory and has the passion to make a disruptive product; on the other hand, he also has enough time and resources to make a disruptive product. The latter is a matter of chance and cannot be chosen; the former is persistence, which comes from choice and his philosophy of life. He is using product philosophy to find suitable users. If this philosophy happens to be universally applicable to the times, it will become a god-level product.

Another example is MUJI , which is simple and cool, but has many fans. Such products do not require interaction with users. Users will smile knowingly when they see the product. It has gone beyond the function itself, and users feel that this product "understands them." This is the humanistic spirit of the product, and this is the "underlying intersection" between the enterprise and the users.

There are so many product gurus who imitate Steve Jobs, but how many of them truly have a consistent philosophy of life? When utilitarian product managers try their best to figure out user demands, they will always be a step behind. Because they are always pretending to be friends with the target users , always trying to cater to them, and never getting to the point. So they will never get into the hearts of users.

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

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