Three important factors that determine user retention: products, user channels and operation strategies!

In today's era of APP explosion, both glory and decline have become unexpected. You may become famous overnight, or disappear overnight; how to improve the retention of APP has become the winning magic weapon in this battle.

In 2010, with the rise of smartphones and 3G networks, mobile Internet began to take shape. After more than five years of development, the mobile Internet has undergone tremendous changes, with applications in various vertical fields blossoming everywhere. After a period of competition and development, super APPs represented by WeChat, QQ, Alipay, and Sina Weibo have emerged to dominate the world, and APPs in other fields are catching up fiercely.

We say that in the first two years of the mobile Internet, no matter how bad your product was, there would be users using it because there was no other option available except yours. Today, with the full development of mobile Internet, it may take 10 points of effort to acquire a user, but the user may uninstall your app in minutes because of a little dissatisfaction. When an APP develops to a certain stage, improving retention becomes particularly important, because the cost of spending money or resources during this period will be lower.

Next, let’s discuss this issue from the three crucial factors: “product”, “user channel” and “ operation strategy”.

product

The most important of the three factors is the product. A good blacksmith must have strong tools. For users, the first impression of a product is very important.

1) UI

As the face of the app, the UI doesn’t have to be flashy, but it must fit the app’s positioning. If it is a tool , make it simple and elegant; if it is news, make it serious and clear; if it is a technology product, make it high-end. Don't make it too exaggerated, just make users feel comfortable at first glance.

2) Product performance

Product performance can be summed up in one word: stable. This is the second very intuitive experience besides the facade. If the page suddenly crashes when the user visits your homepage, then he basically doesn't want to start it a second time. Of course, in addition to avoiding such frequent crashes, you should also pay attention to power consumption and data consumption, because these are very basic issues that users can easily perceive. Imagine that if a user plays your app for 10 minutes, his phone can be used as a hand warmer. If he is optimistic, he will choose to play for a shorter time, but how many optimistic users are there?

3) Simple process

The process is simple, convenient and easy to use, and this is also a link that users can easily access after installing the application. For example, some inhumane applications require users to register before they can be used, which can easily cause user disgust. It is too naive to want to get user information before the users have even experienced the product. Before basic trust is established, do not try to influence users’ behavior. If users enjoy using the product, they will naturally register so that they can better explore the more interesting and valuable aspects of the product.

4) Interesting or useful

This is a deep spiritual feeling. The meaning of any product's existence must be useful or interesting to users, otherwise it can only stay on users' phones for 10 minutes. As for whether it is interesting or useful, it depends on the positioning of the product. If the product is positioned as useful, then consider all scenarios comprehensively and surprise users with why you understand their thoughts; if the product is positioned as interesting, then work hard on content and user experience to make users feel refreshed visually or mentally.

5) Positive Incentives

Any good product should have a link, that is to make users feel involved. For example, mobile games have sign-in rewards, allowing users to get virtual rewards; the comments, pictures, and videos in the Moments help users build social behaviors, satisfy their vanity, and create a sense of presence; and Zhihu’s likes and thanks are an affirmation of an excellent answerer, bringing a sense of honor from the heart. The above cases are sufficient to illustrate that interactive elements must be added to the product to satisfy the most basic desires of human nature and effectively drive users to participate more in the product.

The above is about the problems of the product itself. Another factor that affects retention data is user quality. The quality of users will also largely determine the level of retention data.

User channels

As the main body of product use, users are also a very important factor affecting retention data. Therefore, you need to put more effort into choosing user acquisition channels. Once the wrong channel is chosen, even if the product is perfect, it will lower the overall retention data.

At present, the main promotion channels are: app stores , point walls , advertising networks, social networks, exchange promotions, mobile phone pre-installation and other channels. As the first entry point for acquiring apps, app stores are certainly crucial for data acquisition. However, as competition among app stores becomes increasingly fierce, some app stores have begun to engage in data-brushing. The end result is that the data on new users is very good, but the retention data is not, so the quality is much lower than in the early days. Points walls and advertising networks, as platforms for paid downloads and installations, are more likely to inflate the volume. Some users often uninstall after installation, and there is no retention at all. As for mobile phone pre-installation channels, the quality of users acquired will naturally not be particularly high because they do not understand users' preferences. However, it is easy to acquire users with the same interests through promotion through social networks and exchange of traffic. In addition, due to the celebrity effect and acquaintance effect of social networks, promotion will naturally be more effective.

Therefore, when improving retention data and selecting promotion channels, you should also spend more time to understand the quality of these channels before making a decision. Carefully selected data is bound to be much better than unselected data.

If you can do the above points, at least your daily retention and short-term retention will not be a problem. However, once the novelty period is over, users are still easy to lose. Therefore, in order to maintain long-term user retention, we need to focus on operational strategies.

Operational Strategy

There is indeed a reason why good products are produced through operations. Because the value of any product must be obtained from loyal users. In order to turn new users into long-term retained users, we need to put in enough effort in product operations. Good product operations can not only improve user activity and retention, but also realize product monetization and profitability. Next, let’s talk about what methods can be used to improve daily activity data in daily product operations.

1) Message push

After users have used the product for a period of time and the novelty has worn off, it is easy for them to get tired of it. Therefore, we must continue to provide users with effective and useful things to wake them up, and message push is the best way to do that. Whether it is product promotion, event promotion or the launch of a new function, it can be sent to the user's mobile phone through message push. Once the user's interest is triggered, it will inevitably drive the user to launch the APP again, and then the retention data will also increase. Of course, there are many techniques and methods in push. Accurate push is one point, and push frequency is also a point. If a certain link is not done well enough, it may not only fail to drive user growth, but may also produce negative effects, so it needs to be done with caution.

2) User portrait analysis

User portrait data is already very familiar to today's developers. To study user portraits is to study the attributes and behavioral characteristics of each user, including gender, age, occupation, purchasing power, interests and hobbies, behavioral patterns, etc. Once this data is fully mastered, user behavior can be predicted, which not only lays a solid foundation for accurate message push, but also provides the necessary information support for product decision-making.

3) Social network promotion

For any promotion, whether it is event promotion or application promotion , social networks are one of the best ways, because social networks, as a super entrance for user traffic, can easily produce chemical reactions, thereby causing large-scale growth. Xiaokaxiu is the best example. Moreover, the celebrity effect and acquaintance effect can enable the product to quickly establish trust with users, thereby effectively driving the growth of user data. But at present, the promotion of WeChat, Weibo, and Moments will keep user traffic on these social networks. If combined with deep linking, the effect will be immediate. Because deep links can help users launch specified pages within the app from social networks with one click, thus directing social network traffic directly into the app, retention data will naturally improve.

The above are some suggestions on improving product retention data. In short, when we have done our job perfectly, I believe that improving data performance is a natural result.