The user just left and left, leaving me alone in the mess of the App!

What is the reason why users leave without saying goodbye? How to retain your users? As a product manager, have you ever thought about these? This article approaches the issue from the perspective of page information and its layout, hoping it will be of some inspiration to you.

This topic was actually decided in mid-June. Why did I think of writing this article? The reason was the process and feelings of writing a travel guide in mid-June:

After returning from Hong Kong in mid-June, I tried to write a 5-day travel guide to Hong Kong. It was actually quite difficult to write, and I turned it into a rigid guide rather than a relaxing travelogue. This satisfied my own perverted sense of satisfaction with putting together a “solid guide”, haha.

After writing and posting it on the voting circle, everyone's reaction was as expected:

"I pulled two pages full of words, I'm dead, sighing face"

"Why do you keep scratching and writing words!!!"

Please give my guide a "Best Failure Case Award", thank you ~ because it makes this article possible. It was also because of that article that I clearly felt:

Make interesting things boring, make light things heavy, and make natural things complicated and difficult to understand. This may seem silly, but it is found in many products:

• The user downloaded the app with great interest, opened it, switched between several pages, and wondered, "How do I use this?"
• The user used the app with great interest for a while and wondered, “Why can’t I xxxxx…?”
• The user tries a new feature with great interest, turns it on, fiddles with it, and after a minute, yells, “Is this for human use?”

The above also has a "full of interest" as a premise. If the user is just trying it out, then I think this App will be rejected directly.

Reasons why users leave

Why do the above situations occur? Based on my own experience, I guess there may be the following reasons: (This does not involve the situation where the user itself is not the target user group)

1. The information on the page is not focused enough and is roundabout.

What is unquestionable is that users download apps for a purpose, whether that purpose is an essential need or a non-essential need, or it’s just that the advertisements are so popular that they want to try it.

When users first enter an App, they are in the trial stage. At this time, I will quickly browse the general contents of several main pages. If there is nothing that interests me or attracts my attention, I will exit.

They may not uninstall you immediately, but it will definitely be considered a "suspended death sentence" for you.

Take A-shares as an example:

• Some software focuses on the timeliness of news, and the homepage is directly based on the news timeline;
• Some software focuses on discussion communities, and you can see a large number of user recommendations when you enter the app;
• Some software focuses on market conditions, and when you enter the app, you will see various market data;

It’s not that there’s something wrong with the above apps, but if you ask a few more whys, you’ll find that no matter A-share investors listen to acquaintances, experts, or they discover buying and selling opportunities through the news themselves, what they’re ultimately doing is for two words - “stocks.”

What various apps on the market are doing is to help users screen out stocks that are ok in various logical dimensions from more than 2,000 stocks through different dimensions.

Most presentation methods put logic first and stocks second. However, I personally believe that the stock itself is the lightest, most intuitive, and most easily accepted by most users, followed by the logic of screening out the stock.

(Of course, the statement here does not take into account compliance and other issues)

Rather than trying to give users what they want in a roundabout way, it’s better to give it to them directly. Why are there still so many roundabout ways? Maybe we didn’t ask deeply enough about what users want.

At this time, we should be persistent and ask more questions, and maybe we will find the answer.

2. Page information is not layered and intuitive

Not all users need the same content. In other words, the information needed will differ depending on the time and angle of use and the differences in the users themselves.

For example:

Just like the article about the Hong Kong guide, the list of places to visit in Hong Kong and the things to pay attention to in each specific place are written together. In fact, the content structure is quite confusing. Why? For interested readers:

Before I went to Hong Kong, I wanted to know roughly what I could eat and do in Hong Kong;

Before I go somewhere, such as to watch horse racing, I want to know what to look out for and what strategies I can refer to;

For people who don’t go to a certain place to travel, those guides are actually a waste of their time.

3. The quality of page information is not up to standard

I won’t say much about this. Whether you are running a community or providing information, content is the most important thing. How can you survive without content that attracts users?

Of course, some tool applications may be able to survive.

4. There are problems with the page layout, which makes it difficult to operate or confusing

Page layout generally includes the following:

Information layout

1. Quickly browse information and explore and discover information;
2. High-frequency reading information and low-frequency reading information;
3. Important information, unimportant information;
4. Dynamic information, static information;

Button layout: follow user operation habits

The above points need to be considered comprehensively, and I have recently paid special attention to this problem after discovering that my products generally have this problem. I won’t go into details for now, because this topic is actually quite broad and I can’t fill the gap for now. I’ll talk about it later.

Let’s take a small example:

General information apps will place the content that users are interested in in a relatively in-depth place, such as [Me] - [My Interests].

As for Xuangubao, considering the reading habits of A-share users, there are two reading modes on the [Message] page:

• Default mode: The latest news of the topics you follow are displayed in full, similar to the feeling of browsing Weibo;
• Global mode: List of followed topics, with the latest news of the followed topics displayed in units of topics;

It cannot be said that this choice is necessarily correct, but judging from the data feedback and communication with users, this choice is much more correct than the one hidden in the path [Me] - [My Focus].

Moreover, there is still a lot of room for optimization in this area.

Regarding the above points, I would like to mention an angle that is largely the root of the problem: the product team is too self-involved.

You are too familiar with your product, from understanding the meaning of some copy to understanding some operational processes. When you have a strong sense of immersion, it is very easy to overlook the fact that your users are not as familiar with the product as you are.

Yes, the “users” are really “confused”.

You are familiar with finding corresponding information on corresponding pages according to different needs;

You are familiar with how to use apps every day to maximize your time;

You are familiar with which hidden features are very useful;

...wait, wait, you are familiar with...

However, new users may not know or feel these. Old users may need to continue to discover and explore before they can feel it.

So, what to do?

How to retain advocates

1. Self-examination

When determining the requirements for a certain version, please abandon your sense of involvement in the product first, and then consider the page information and page layout issues involved;

After completing the requirements analysis for a certain version, please abandon the sense of substitution again, just like entering the app for the first time, and review it again to feel whether it is easy to understand for new users;

2. Strengthen communication with users

You can often have one-on-one or one-on-many communication with users around you and users on the Internet to discover problems from the communication. In this regard, you can also get a sense of what the core user group is talking about and what the user feedback group is talking about.

3. Frequent “ ground promotion ”

I am a talkative person and I often start chatting with others when I need to wait, such as waiting for a bus or a meal. If the other party is investing in stocks, I will recommend him to use the stock selection tool, and then I will see how he plays it. This is very different from chatting online. You can see the user's expression, what their eyes are looking at, how their hands are moving, etc., and you can often find many interesting situations.

As for other methods, you are also welcome to communicate with each other.