The hot operating strategy of Daodao Accounting APP

In the past two years, an accounting software called Daodao Accounting has become popular.

It has been widely screened on Weibo, Bilibili, fan circles, Zhihu, QQ Space and many other places where post-00s users gather. Even many "post-90s old ladies" around me are crazily recommending this APP.

Later, I went to learn about this APP and got some basic information: Daodao Accounting is an accounting software for users born after 2000, focusing on chat accounting, and is an accounting book that can chat with users; its slogan is "accounting software that can chat", combining cultivation and game elements. Users can set chat roles (boyfriend, girlfriend, brother, sister, etc.) according to their preferences, and can trigger different conversation content according to the accounting scenario, making accounting interesting and fun.

After checking the download volume and monthly active data of Daodao Accounting, it is indeed an app that became popular in March 2019. The total download volume on the Android App Market is 53.4 million, the average daily download volume on IOS is over 3,000, and the average monthly active users have reached more than 1.6 million since July 2019. It has quickly stood out in the fierce competition among accounting tools and occupied the fourth place among similar tools.

Data source: Qimai Data

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

Users' evaluation of Daodao Accounting is also surprisingly high. The overall score on the APP store has reached 4.7 points, with a five-star rate of up to 90%. Users' evaluation of it is very real and contains true feelings. It seems that Daodao Accounting has really attracted a large number of user fans.

Data source: Qimai data, IOS user comments

What is so special about Daodao Accounting? What are the tricks and reasons for its popularity? Let me analyze it below!

1. User Demand Analysis

1. User Group

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

It is said that Daodao Accounting is an "accounting software" mainly for those born after 2000; according to data from Analysys Qianfan, the users of Daodao Accounting are mainly women, accounting for as high as 86.7%. The user group tends to be younger, with users under 24 years old accounting for 59.1% and those aged 25 to 30 accounting for 10.6%, which is in line with the product positioning.

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

From the perspective of urban location and consumption capacity, the users of Daodao Accounting are mainly distributed in first- and second-tier cities in the eastern provinces. They are mainly users with medium consumption capacity and strong consumption capacity. These users have high educational levels and certain financial management knowledge. Their economic strength and financial management awareness are more likely to stimulate the demand for accounting and financial management.

According to the above analysis, the main users of Daodao Accounting are:

• Young female group: mainly college students or new employees under the age of 24, with female users accounting for 86.7%.
• Have financial management awareness, high economic and consumption capacity: focus on quality of life and pay attention to details of life.
• There are favorite star idols and star-chasing groups.

2. Demand Analysis

Based on the KANO model, users' needs can be divided into basic needs, expectation needs, and excitement needs.

Analyzing Daodao Accounting from these three perspectives, we can conclude that:

Basic requirements:

For the statistics of daily income and expenditure, users can count each income and expenditure to understand how much money is spent every day/month and where it is spent.

Expected demand:

The analysis of income and expenditure situations is carried out by collecting statistics on users’ income and expenditure data, displaying the data in a graphical manner, and providing early warning functions, so that users can adjust their consumption and help improve user behavior.

Excitement needs:

• It can meet the income and expenditure statistics of different accounts and different scenarios, such as the statistics of credit card, Huabei and other consumption and the income of fund stocks.
• An interesting way of accounting can make this high-frequency, boring and tedious activity simple and fun. By setting idols as chat characters and triggering different chat contents according to different scenarios, accounting can be made more interesting.
• The unique and novel chatting with idols satisfies the users' desire to communicate and interact with idol stars in a genuine way.

Therefore, the main users of Daodao Accounting are young female users. Its main purpose is to make the high-frequency, boring and tedious accounting action interesting and fun by chatting with the "idol" character, thus satisfying the needs of young star-chasing groups for "real conversations" with idols and making users love accounting more.

2. Product highlights analysis

Daodao Accounting is positioned as a chat-based account book, so its main functional highlight is that it breaks through the traditional list-style accounting tools and adopts an accounting method that simulates character chat. You can choose a character to keep accounts with you, and let him or her accompany you to develop the awareness of accounting and financial management. The character selection is very rich and diverse, including domestic and foreign celebrities, two-dimensional idols, well-known game characters, animation characters, film and television characters, and even pets, etc., which completely meet the needs of young users.

1. Chat Accounting

When registering for the APP, you can set your gender and name, confirm your identity, and then set the person who will accompany you to keep accounts. After selecting the role, you can customize the role's avatar and the name between you and him/her, and establish the relationship between you and the role. After setting these, the object will give you a few "sweet words" to guide you to start keeping accounts.

After some guidance, users are guided to establish a relationship with the character, and then they can start daily accounting under the guidance and companionship of the character. The accounting process is the process of chatting, developing relationships, and even falling in love with the idol "boyfriend" or girlfriend. The accounting process is very sweet.

According to the different attributes of consumption, Daodao Accounting divides common income and expenditure categories into "income, food, shopping, transportation, education, entertainment, love, housing, clothing, and investment" to help users keep accounts quickly. The accounting process is simple and easy to use, and the experience is very friendly.

The accounting process is simple. Just click the "+" sign, select the accounting category, fill in the amount, and add notes. After the accounting is completed, the companion will give some sweet or reminder replies driven by the AI ​​robot algorithm. The timely feedback and pleasure after the accounting make some star-chasing boys and girls "unable to stop".

2. Train the companion

Personally, I think this is the killer feature of Daodao Accounting. The so-called training, according to the official meaning, is "teach your Daodao character to speak. By setting keywords and inputting the content of your Western counterpart's reply, Daodao will let your character learn to say this sentence based on the algorithm"; the training function grasps the user's need for emotional dependence, allowing users to train their own companions, make them become the way they like and expect, and interact with them in the way they expect and like.

There are two entrances to training. One is to long press the character's reply to pop up the training entrance, and the other is in "My-Training Chat". The training process is also very simple and easy to use. Just set the keywords-set the reply terms (emojis, videos).

For example, you can set it to remind you warmly but seriously to control your sugar intake after you drink milk tea. You can also set it to send you a greeting of "Good morning, baby" after you finish breakfast at 8 o'clock every morning... and so on. These settings will be reviewed, and the content that passes the review will enter the chatbot's corpus, and also help Daodao Accounting to make this robot more humane.

On the other hand, the tuning function also allows users to invest themselves in helping to define the product. The energy invested by users not only benefits the users themselves, but also makes Daodao Accounting better. The more energy users invest, the higher the migration cost of abandoning this product, and the stronger the user stickiness.

3. Create surprises

If it simply relied on the highlight of being a "chatting accounting tool", it would be impossible for Daodao Accounting to gain the favor of young star-chasing users so quickly, become widely shared, and obtain a large amount of traffic and downloads.

So, what is the core of Daodao Accounting's rapid formation into social currency and its widespread dissemination?

The answer is that Daodao Accounting is good at creating surprising experiences. Daodao Accounting carries out a large amount of content operations, collecting and organizing a large amount of information about each celebrity, game and animation character, and film and television figure; it carries out targeted operations to shape the characters into real and three-dimensional ones, and combines them with training functions to constantly create surprises for users.

First of all, Daodao Accounting has done it by collecting information about the characters and creating objects that are so real that they can be mistaken for the real thing based on each character’s unique personality and language style. Different characters give personalized responses to different scenarios.

Secondly, Daodao Accounting will bring different blessings and surprises on every holiday or user’s birthday, which is completely customized based on the role; just imagine, how would the user feel when he wakes up one morning, opens his phone, and sees the sweet blessings sent by his “idol”?

Finally, Daodao Accounting will pay attention to the dynamics of every celebrity. For celebrities, gossip and scandals have always been hot topics that fans track in a timely manner. Daodao Accounting will follow up quickly after a celebrity scandal occurs, and then give users some intimate and private replies in the tone of the parties involved. In addition, Daodao Accounting will also pay attention to the schedule of celebrities and tell users in the tone of boyfriend/girlfriend.

What's even more clever is that celebrities' hot topics, scandals, and gossip will become the core operating points of Daodao Accounting. Every hot event can help Daodao Accounting successfully create social currency, gain a large amount of traffic, and completely bind celebrity hot traffic events with products.

4. Other highlights

• Bill Calendar: Displays daily spending amounts in calendar format; if you forget to record your account on a given day, you can re-enter the account in this section, which can also help users quickly see how much money was spent on a given day;
• Report analysis: Based on daily income and expenditure records, the consumption is classified and illustrated in charts to show the proportion of each category of expenditure. Help users quickly see the proportion of various expenditures;
• Export to Excel: mainly exports daily bills to users in Excel format and sends them to their email addresses, allowing users to analyze and compile their own bills;
• My Wallet: Unified record and view of the user's account assets and liabilities on various platforms and bank cards, summarize the income and expenditure of each account of the user, can add or delete accounts, set the balance of each account with one click, and support transfers between accounts.

3. The sudden popularity of Daodaojizhang

It is understood that the predecessor of Daodao Accounting was Huahua Accounting. In September 2018, Huahua Accounting was renamed Daodao Accounting, the product positioning was changed, and the accounting boyfriend/girlfriend function was launched. The 2.0.* versions are all optimizing products for accounting roles and chat scenarios.

Starting in April 2019, version V2.1.0 was mainly used to optimize chat interaction and character development, while also further improving the product's accounting function; from then until October 2019, Daodao Accounting grew rapidly in user base, reaching a peak of 1.68 million monthly active users.

After analysis, there are five main reasons why Daodao Accounting became popular so quickly:

1. Chat-style accounting

Traditional financial management and accounting products mainly attract users through rich financial management functions and knowledge payment; but faced with the fast-paced entertainment application market, it is difficult for users to focus on financial management functions with a long payback cycle, and traditional accounting methods lack appeal.

The product design of Daodao Accounting can deeply explore user usage scenarios and accurately position itself. It takes the integration of entertainment as the entry point, introduces elements of development games through a chat-style accounting method, and breaks through the traditional bill-style accounting; it makes the high-frequency, boring and uninteresting accounting method vivid and interesting, allowing users to become chat friends with real/virtual idols, turning accounting into narrative, and the user's accounting process becomes an active sharing of life events.

The breakthrough point of chat-style accounting is that the characters accompanying the accounting can be selected from popular domestic and foreign stars, characters in well-known film and television dramas, characters in well-known games, animations, etc., allowing users to interact and communicate with the characters they created, establish relationships, and even become boyfriends/girlfriends; on the one hand, it meets the needs of idol-chasing groups to have real conversations with their idols, and on the other hand, it satisfies the needs of some groups who need emotional companionship for a virtual companion.

For users of accounting tools, the original pain point was just to develop accounting habits and complete financial analysis, but Daodao Accounting additionally satisfies users' social and entertainment needs . Users realize fantasies beyond their expectations in the process of interacting with their idols and friends. This is a feature of Daodao Accounting and the main reason for its popularity.

2. Accurate user and product positioning

Before September 2018, the product of Daodao Accounting had been mediocre. Because it did not find the right positioning, it had not made any major updates or iterations. Around 2019, it began to experiment with a role-chat scenario-based accounting method, and gradually became a hit.

Daodao Accounting is positioned at the young female user group, namely college students, girls entering the workplace and those born after 2000; the characteristics of this user group are that they have some income, strong personalities, their own hobbies (games, anime, chasing stars), like to pursue new and interesting things, and are more receptive to new things.

For these users, accounting is a boring activity that requires willpower, but Daodao Accounting has pioneered "interesting accounting" with its role-playing chat-style accounting. Young users are willing to accept it and are more likely to get involved.

Daodao Accounting was able to quickly gain the TOP4 position in the fiercely competitive accounting tool market because it identified the gap in the market - the star-chasing group born after 1995 or even 2000, and captured a group of users through an unprecedented role-playing chat-style accounting method, and quickly became popular through sharing among users.

3. Immediate feedback

Users use accounting tools to cultivate financial management awareness by recording bills every day and understanding their income and expenditure. Accounting itself requires users to have a certain degree of self-control and recording habits, otherwise it will be difficult for users to open the APP every day to record accounts. Traditional list-style accounting tools mainly rely on daily push notifications to remind users, which makes it difficult to encourage users to develop habits.

Daodao Accounting uses an instant feedback method to make accounting something you look forward to every day; that is, through accounting, users can immediately get the opportunity to interact sweetly with their "idols".

From a psychological perspective, instant feedback is a "signal that indicates our behavior is leading to goals and success, and this signal can come from both the inner self and external evaluation"; and the sweet reply or serious encouragement from the "idol" is a positive external evaluation; instant feedback also provides users with a sense of accomplishment, and a sense of accomplishment gives you the motivation to continue and even stimulates users to actively share.

In addition, the addiction model mentions that triggers, actions, variable rewards and returns make users fall in love with a product.

In Daodao Accounting, the trigger is the simple tutorial at the beginning, the action is to guide users to record the first account, and the variable rewards and returns are the sweet replies and encouragements from "ta", which is also an instant feedback that can make users addicted to the product and willing to share.

4. Create a surprising experience

There is a term in psychology called the "peak-end rule", which roughly means that what is most impressive about an experience are its peak moments - the best and worst experiences - and the moment of its end; as for the total length of time and the experiences that are neither good nor bad, people often forget them.

Daodao Accounting is good at creating the "peak moment" for the best user experience - because Daodao Accounting can personalize the user's virtual character through AI and a large amount of content operation, and provide the user with a "real", caring, and truly emotional accounting companion. Every holiday or user's birthday is the time when Daodao Accounting creates a "peak moment" for the user. At this time, the user will receive a sweet holiday blessing and gift from the companion, and may even receive a physical blessing letter and gift from the official. Just imagine, when you see these sincere and personalized blessings during the holidays, would you be surprised and want to share them?

In addition to creating surprises during festivals, Daodao Accounting also creates surprises on ordinary days. For star-chasing users, Daodao Accounting can create an "idol" that users expect to see based on the star's personality and language style.

In daily life, the "idol" will also actively share recent itineraries and moods in a first-person tone, allowing users to truly feel the care and greetings from the "idol". Imagine, as a fan of Jay Chou, after keeping a record, what kind of experience would you have if you saw Jay Chou suddenly say, "I came to your city yesterday and wanted to see your little darling very much, but I was too busy with work and had no time to see you." Would you be very surprised and even want to share this joy with your sisters?

Surprises usually make people happy because they are experiences beyond their expectations. Daodao Accounting constantly creates surprises for users through operational means, which will make users deeply remember these products, remember these wonderful experiences that bring them pleasure, and be willing to share these experiences with others.

5. Social Currency

Social currency is a factor that can induce dissemination, and has now become the main tool for product growth and brand promotion. Daodao Accounting is good at creating social currency for users, and through social currency, it causes widespread dissemination and gains a large amount of traffic through users' voluntary sharing.

As mentioned above, Daodao Accounting is good at creating surprises for its users. Surprise itself is a kind of social currency, and users will actively share because of the "surprise". Moreover, the young female user group of Daodao Accounting is a group that loves to share, and they hang out in their respective "idol" circles. So when a user actively shares, it may lead to widespread discussion within the circle.

Usually, girlfriends will share the "sweet words" of their "boyfriends", and idols will share "idols' love words" and "encouragement" with each other, forming a widespread discussion; every time a festival related to "love" comes, you can search "叨叨记账" on Weibo and you will find that many users will take the initiative to take screenshots and share the sweet words and blessings they have received.

IV. Some questions

1. The growth dilemma

Judging from the growth trend of the number of independent devices of Daodao Accounting, Daodao Accounting's growth encountered a bottleneck after November 2019. The number of independent devices has been fluctuating between 500,000 and 600,000, making growth difficult.

There are two main reasons for these difficulties:

First, there are industry reasons. The accounting tool industry is highly competitive, and a stable oligopoly has been formed in the accounting industry. Among the TOP3 applications, the leading products are Suishuiji, KaNiu Credit Manager, and 51 Credit Card Manager, which account for more than 90% of the industry's overall user scale. With the Matthew effect, the strong get stronger, and incremental users are increasingly moving towards the leading APPs, making the development of mid- and tail-end APPs increasingly difficult.

The second reason is the product itself. Daodao Accounting is a tool APP, and the attributes of tool APPs are efficiency, speed, and you can use it and leave it. However, Daodao Accounting introduced game elements into tool APPs, making it look like a development game. The two are originally separated.

Judging from the feedback from some users, many users actually don’t care about the “account keeping” function at all. Many users come to chat with their “idols” and even keep accounts for the sake of “chatting”. As a result, users are unable to form a strong identification with the “account keeping” function which was originally the core function that Daodao wanted to focus on, and naturally it is impossible to form good retention.

2. Long-term business value

The ultimate question facing free tool products is “how to monetize”, and Daodao Accounting is no exception. The sad fact is that no accounting tool app in history has ever achieved “significant” success. Even Suishuiji, the top accounting tool app, is currently facing the problem of growth and monetization.

At present, the main monetization methods of Daodao Accounting are "advertising monetization", "paid membership" and "shopping cashback". Advertising monetization is the "ultimate choice" of every tool APP; but this monetization method may be "unsustainable" in the future. The privileges of paid members are limited by the items and quantity of the privileges, as well as the number of paid members, and the revenue will not be too high. The other method, the shopping cashback function (Taobaoke), has no corresponding usage scenarios in the APP, and the effect is not expected to be very good.

So for Daodao Accounting, there is a big question mark in the long-term commercial realization?

V. Conclusion

Daodao Accounting is a very interesting product. It has pioneered a way of accounting that involves chatting with others, breaking through the traditional way of accounting and making the high-frequency, boring and tedious activity of accounting interesting and fun.

Moreover, its “celebrity online chat” gameplay for the post-00s is a product model that brings its own traffic, which has brought it huge growth and is very worthy of our study; for many products targeting young users, it is a gameplay worthy of attention and reference.

But even so, the long-term development of Daodao Accounting is still unclear. The story of "born from attracting new customers, died from retention" has been played out too many times on the Chinese Internet, and this product is currently facing such a question; therefore, how to break through the difficulties is the question that Daodao Accounting needs to answer next, and we can pay attention to it together.

Author: Thinking Village

Source: Thinking Village