Case Analysis | Ant Farm’s User Level Strategy

The most difficult part of setting user levels is the difficulty of user upgrades, especially in gaming applications, where you need to consider the product life cycle, business logic, user favorability toward the game, and so on.

1. Case Objectives

Enhance user stickiness, retention and cultivate user loyalty, build a full-life platform, and drive traffic for Alibaba products.

2. Case Label

Gamification, development, charity

3. Case Path

Alipay homepage -> Ant Farm homepage -> Obtaining and consuming feed

Alipay homepage -> Ant Forest -> Ant Farm homepage -> Obtaining and consuming feed

push -> acquisition and consumption of feed

The path for users to reach Ant Farm is very short, allowing users to reach core functions efficiently and quickly.

4. Product highlights and reusability

User incentives generally adopt a combination of material incentives and spiritual incentives.

Ant Farm's user rating system

There are 12 user levels. When you reach the corresponding level, you can unlock the corresponding medal. The user level is determined solely by the amount of donated love, and the honor value is also determined by the amount of donated love.

(Donating 5 hearts = 1 honor point, one egg = one heart, and chickens are raised to produce eggs by feeding them. Each time, a bag of feed weighs 180g, and each time takes 5 hours (the time will be reduced if the feed is stolen). A chicken eats 500g of feed to get one egg.) So essentially the level is determined by the amount of feed obtained from the chickens.

The way to obtain feed is as follows: complete the chicken feed task, which mainly consists of six parts: brand diversion, payment, charity, activeness, social interaction, and new customer acquisition. The details are as follows:

Analyzing the way feed is obtained

Among the six ways to obtain feed, the glutinous rice ball task (public welfare) and inviting friends to raise chickens (attracting new customers) account for the largest proportion, and the other tasks are basically the same and account for an even proportion.

1. The exclusive tasks of browsing Xiaoji’s window (Taobao) and Ele.me are designed to divert traffic to other Alibaba brands. Shopping and takeout are high-frequency behaviors in daily life, and they can be jumped on the task bar without opening other apps, which lowers the threshold for users.

2. Payment is the core function of Alipay; however, it does not account for a large proportion in the task. It is limited to once a day, and you can also get 180g of feed, which is enough to feed the chickens once;

First, the feed generated by payment is generated incidentally by using Alipay in daily life scenarios, without any additional fees; second, the linkage between Ant Forest and Ant Farm is very strong, and daily payments can not only generate feed for Ant Farm, but also generate energy for Ant Forest.

Previously, Ant Forest Payment could generate feed twice a day, but there were relatively few tasks and relatively few ways to obtain feed. Later, the tasks of Ant Forest gradually became richer.

3. Like most of the Ali games, the glutinous rice cake task and the charity donation are of a public welfare nature, and they echo the main theme of Ant Farm. For the glutinous rice cake task, a single donation of 1 yuan can get three glutinous rice cakes, and each feeding can increase 0.3 eggs (equivalent to the level of feeding a bag of feed), and a donation of any amount can get a bag of feed;

The common point between these two tasks is that they are both for public benefit;

The difference is that the amount of money donated by users can be different. One has a threshold and the other has no threshold. The rewards obtained are also different. The rewards obtained from the glutinous rice cake task are different from those of all tasks. Feeding feed requires time to wait, while feeding glutinous rice cakes does not require waiting, and three glutinous rice cakes can get 0.9 eggs, which is approximately equal to 1 egg. The incentive for users is very great.

This task reinforces the theme of public welfare, allowing users to feel the power of public welfare and thus elevate their personal values; at the same time, Alipay also establishes its brand image through public welfare activities.

4. The daily answer in the manor classroom is similar to the sign-in function. For this task, users basically do not need to spend money, social relationships, etc. The questions are not difficult and are multiple-choice questions, which reduces the difficulty of answering questions for users. Even if the answer is wrong, 30g of feed can be obtained. It is also combined with hot spots to enrich player knowledge.

5. The main purpose of "Get Chicken Feed Together" is to strengthen user active retention and recall users through the user-friend relationship chain; feeding friends' chickens takes advantage of the fun of users interacting with friends. If users do not feed the chickens, the chickens will run away from home and risk being beaten to steal food from friends' homes. If the chickens are beaten, the platform will notify the users, thereby recalling the users back to the game and forming a closed loop;

For some heavy players, the feed storage is limited, and feeding takes time. Therefore, the extra feed from tasks cannot be collected, and can only be consumed by feeding friends' chickens. The feed storage capacity cannot be expanded through other means like other games. The storage capacity of each user is fixed, which increases user interaction;

Reminding friends that their chicks have been eaten is also an important way to get feed. This method has no restrictions. The amount of feed obtained is directly related to the time when the friend's chicken was eaten, that is, the time when the friend was active on the platform, and the number of friends. The earlier the friend was eaten and the earlier the notification, the more feed he or she will get.

To obtain feed in this way, users do not need to spend money through the platform. The purpose is to increase activity on the platform and enhance users' social relationship chains. The above three methods all obtain feed through users' social relationships, and the proportion of feed obtained by different methods is different.

6. Invite friends to raise chickens. The requirement is that they must be new Alipay users. The purpose is to attract new users for Alipay. They can get 7 days of free feed and 20 yuan in cash. There are not only incentives for feed but also monetary incentives.

The thresholds for all the above tasks are not high, and users are not required to pay anything extra. The feed generated by the payment is what is needed in daily life scenarios, shopping and take-out are also additional rewards, and the daily answer is also full of fun. In fact, the donated projects are also for charity.

In the entire hierarchical system, users basically receive spiritual incentives; medals are a very distinctive product design in Ant Farm membership. Users donate different amounts of love to reach the corresponding level and obtain medals of that level. At the same time, combined with the gameplay of the ranking list, PK is carried out through the ranking of donated love, real-time updates, timely feedback, and social relationships are used to encourage users to obtain more energy through tasks and cultivate user habits.

5. Points to be optimized & solutions

1. It is too difficult for users to upgrade. To produce an egg, 500g of feed is needed. Only one bag of 180g can be fed each time, and each time is 5 hours, which means at least 15 hours of feeding, not including the loss of being eaten by friends. In other words, basically only one egg, or one heart, can be produced a day. Five hearts must be donated each time, which means at least 5 days are needed to increase the honor value by one. It takes 25 eggs to reach the first medal, which generally takes 25 days. Of course, it can be faster, and the levels of Ant Farm are increasing. The later you go, the more difficult it is to achieve, and users are easily frustrated.

Solution: Reduce the difficulty of upgrading, such as reducing the time it takes for chickens to eat feed, or the difficulty of producing eggs (of course, this is my personal opinion as a user, and the difficulty of Ant Farm is not suitable to be reduced too much)

6. Points for consideration

1. The most difficult part of setting user levels is the difficulty of user upgrades, especially in game applications, which requires considering the product life cycle, business logic, user favorability of the game, etc.

Most users should be within level 5. As for myself, I was considered a heavy user of Ant Farm before, but I was at level 2 and almost level 3, so I basically gave up. Every time I wanted to donate, I couldn’t reach the threshold of 5 hearts.

By the time I reach the threshold, I may have lost my patience, and the user's sense of novelty will gradually decrease as the product becomes more homogenized. In this fast-paced era, users no longer have so much patience to repeat the same thing.

2. When the user base is large enough, users should be divided into levels. If the user base is small and homogeneous, it is not recommended to use grading. Long-term incentives should be provided to users. User grading should only be considered when the user base is large and diverse. If grading is to be done, the rights and interests of users at different levels should be clearly differentiated.

Author: Shiyi

Source: 11