The concept of growth has a long history in Silicon Valley, and the book "Growth Hacker" has popularized this concept in China. Many people think that the concept of growth hacking is very mysterious, and concepts such as viral marketing and exponential growth are often mentioned; in fact, growth is very practical in Silicon Valley. In addition to the concept, most companies are exploring and practicing it very seriously.

1. Challenges and opportunities of mobile growth

1. Challenges of Mobile Growth

Although both are growth, there are huge differences between PC and Mobile. From a technical perspective, it is more difficult to achieve growth on mobile. Why?

First point: it is difficult to make cross-links on mobile, and the content is relatively closed;

Second point: Mobile needs to be reviewed and released in the app store , which makes it difficult to quickly iterate and A/B test;

Third point: Mobile needs to be downloaded, and users cannot update to the latest version in real time.

2. Opportunities for Mobile Growth

Although there are technical barriers, the unique attributes of APP also bring some benefits to products and operations , making it easier for us to reach users more quickly.

First point: Mobile means positioning

Mobile is a device with strong personal attributes. By opening an APP, your basic personal information and geographic location can be basically determined.

Second point: Mobile is the entry point

With Mobile, users can directly access your products and services without being restricted by Web search engines. The difficulty lies in cultivating user habits.

The third point: Mobile is the channel

Enterprises can interact and communicate with users directly through Mobile, such as pop-up windows, in-site messages, etc., which does not exist on the Web.

2. Top-level ideas for Mobile Growth

User Onboarding is very important. User Onboarding starts from the moment the user starts downloading your app. After downloading, we need to guide users to use your APP step by step; activate, retain, and finally pay for monetization.

1. User Onboarding Process

Let’s take a game app as an example and analyze the User Onboarding process in detail. If you have a basic understanding of funnel analysis, it is easy to understand the meaning of the following picture.

Figure 1: Funnel model to monitor User Onboarding efficiency

Let’s say we initially have 100% of new users downloading our app, and then 82% of them register or use a third-party shortcut to sign up for the game. Then they logged into their accounts and selected their game characters, which resulted in a small number of users leaving again. After that, we will encourage users to participate in the game, the first time, the second time, the third time... to make them loyal users: in this process, users will continue to lose and continue to pay.

During this process, users are constantly lost; a basic idea of ​​Mobile Growth at this time is to look at the churn rate of each link in the funnel and selectively optimize some links.

2. User Behavior Data Analysis and Mobile Optimization

User Onboarding has two major optimization directions: one is to reduce operational barriers and improve user experience; the other is to transmit value and make users identify with our products. If you do these two things well, User Onboarding will have great growth.

Figure 2: Two approaches to mobile optimization

I have also been in charge of Mobile Growth, and have summarized some practical techniques in this regard. The optimization of User Onboarding must start from the user's perspective and be based on user behavior data, so that you can be targeted.

Tip 1: ASO (App Store Optimization)

Optimized for app store searches. Mobile Growth may need to test what kind of pictures, titles, annotations, and even the size of the APP will affect users' willingness to download.

Tip 2: Optimize the registration process

If users need to register when using your app for the first time, the churn rate will definitely be high because users don’t see the value of the app at all. You can postpone registration, quickly register with a third-party account ( WeChat , Weibo, QQ, etc.), register via email on the APP, or fill in a large amount of information.

Tip 3: Optimize access to the startup page

Clearly explain the value of the product on the login page, include the referrer’s information, and turn the referrer’s social trust into a new attraction for the APP.

Tip 4: Encourage Users to Reach an Aha Moment

Users are constantly lost during the onboarding process. Aha Moment can increase user interest and improve user stickiness and retention.

Figure 3: Retention curve

I will use the retention chart to introduce you to the Aha! Moment. An accounting app made a push notification to remind users every night to update today's income and expenditure. They conducted an A/B test and found that the next-month retention rate of users who received the push notification was three times that of users who did not receive the push notification. This reminds us that we must present the core value of the product to users, so that users themselves feel that the product is cool, user-friendly and valuable.

Tip 5: Accurate recommendations

Recommend the right content to the right users at the right time; only in this way can the user experience not be destroyed and they will be interested in continuing to use it.

3. Three key technologies to achieve Mobile Growth

Although there are many natural obstacles to growth in mobile, with the continuous development of technology, people have explored many "black technologies" for mobile growth, such as Mobile A/B Testing components, Deep-Link, dynamic content, etc.

1. A/B Testing

If the APP wants to conduct A/B testing systematically, it is necessary to build a grouper mechanism; this grouper will tell Mobile which users to conduct A test and which users to conduct B test. Then conduct data analysis on the test results to determine which product solution is better. This is the most basic A/B Test.

Figure 4: Final results of two registration schemes

Taking mobile registration as an example, we prepared two different solutions and then tested the effectiveness of the two solutions. We used data analysis tools to monitor the conversion rates of the two different registration processes. It is not difficult to find that Plan B has better overall effect, and the difference is concentrated in the first step of the registration process.

2. Deep-link

Sometimes when we read news on mobile, we click on it and end up opening a content information APP, and directly jump to a specific page: This is actually what I mentioned as Deep-link. That is to say, you can jump directly to a content page of the APP from outside the APP.

This solves the cross-link problem very well and to a certain extent reduces the closed nature of APP content. Deep is also a very good user growth engine. Users share the content pages in your app to their friends, which is actually a form of viral transmission. The following formula can be used to measure every link of virus transmission:

Viral coefficient K = user recommends APP content to N new users * click rate of recommended content * conversion rate of users entering the page to download

3. Dynamic content

There are many ways to implement content dynamics, such as function switches, filling static templates with dynamic content, pages built with dynamically adjustable components, and so on. However, it should be noted that excessive dynamism may sacrifice the performance of Mobile, and the cost of the initial development process is also very high.

Growth is about improving efficiency, and dynamicization is also about efficiency. The dynamic content of mobile requires weighing the costs and benefits, and trying to do the most effective thing with the lowest cost.

Figure 5: Heat map showing the effect of mobile content clicks

Especially for content-based and media-based apps, where content is updated quickly, it is crucial to have a good content dynamic mechanism at this time. Use tools (such as the heat map tool in the picture above) to find the most popular sections or content in your product, and set up content dynamic mechanisms in a targeted manner.

From the user's perspective, the most important thing about Growth is retention; the value your product can provide and the user experience determine the user's stickiness and retention rate.

From a company's perspective, Growth requires a top-down strategy; the company needs to have a data-driven and technology-driven culture, as well as a suitable growth organization.

From the perspective of mobile products, rapid iteration is essential. No one dares to make any rash statements before the final data comes out. We need small experiments to promote APP Growth.

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

This article was compiled and published by @邵震you ( Qinggua Media ). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!