Talk about the difference and inspiration between traffic and users

Recently there was a discussion topic about traffic and users in the group. Although I didn’t have time to participate, I had some scattered understanding of these two concepts before, so I took this opportunity to sort them out.

We may hear the words "traffic" and "user" in various occasions at work. At first glance, they seem very familiar, but if you think about it carefully, are they the same? Is there any difference between them?

This article is mainly based on these two keywords, including what is traffic, what is a user, why there is a distinction between traffic and users, and what inspiration it can give us.

1. What is traffic and what is a user

Although these two words are often mentioned, when I really think about their definitions, I can't think of them at once, so I went to check Baidu Encyclopedia:

Traffic: On the Internet, it refers to the number of popular visits to a website address within a certain period of time, or it is the popular meaning of mobile data.

User: A user, also known as an operator, is a person who uses a computer or network service.

It didn't seem to deepen my understanding, as they were all literal meanings, so I continued thinking and tried to define the depth of the relationship between users and products.

Traffic: They have only the most superficial relationship with you and can abandon you at any time.

Users: The relationship is deeper than traffic and has a certain degree of loyalty.

Let’s take the example of a mobile phone brand. There was a time when there were many copycat phones in the Chinese mobile phone market. There were all kinds of mobile phones on the market. Some consumers didn’t care so much, as long as the phone was cheap and worked.

Later, some domestic mobile phone brands appeared, including Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, etc. Users began to recognize brands and no longer bought all kinds of mobile phones.

Later, these brands of mobile phones had their own user groups. They only bought mobile phones from these brands. Some people even joined these brands and became retailers, agents, and employees.

You can see that the whole process is such a path:

• Unbranded goods, just cheap is fine;
• Those who have a certain degree of brand awareness and want to buy this brand;
• Only buy this brand;
• Participate in the construction of this brand.

According to these stages, I defined the corresponding roles as traffic - ordinary users - super users - partners.

Specifically, as a natural person, your initial relationship with him is just a traffic relationship. You each get what you need. You provide the selling points of the product and he pays the bill. It is a purely commercial behavior.

Going forward, your relationship will become closer, with emotional factors and goodwill; as goodwill increases, the relationship will become closer and loyalty will also increase.

In the end, users have become one with your product or brand, share your honor and disgrace, and can also benefit from it.

At the end of this section, let’s briefly talk about some scattered thoughts.

First of all, traffic has its own attributes. Different traffic is naturally different. For example, the traffic of novel websites and shopping guide websites have different attributes. Traffic of different natures will affect subsequent conversion methods, monetization methods, and monetization efficiency.

Secondly, traffic is the reservoir of product value. The downstream is constantly looking for traffic upstream, and the source is the number of mobile Internet users, that is, the number of smartphone users.

Only by creating value can you take over this part of the traffic, otherwise it will be lost in vain. The exception is one-time and low-frequency business.

Finally, from traffic, to ordinary users, to super users and then to partners, the value of a single user is completely different.

Kevin Kelly once said:

To be a successful creator, you don’t need millions of fans; to make a living as a crafter, photographer, musician, designer, writer, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor, you only need 1,000 True Fans; a True Fan is defined as a fan who buys any of your products.

The fans here are closer to super users.

2. Why do we distinguish between traffic and users?

This section attempts to answer this question, mainly from the perspectives of demand, business model and values.

User + scenario - demand. Different people and different scenarios will produce many demands in combination. The size and frequency of these demands may be different.

Different demands correspond to different business models in terms of products. The size and frequency of demand determine the size and frequency of the business.

For some businesses, they are naturally low-frequency or even one-off. In this case, it is easier for the entire industry to operate a traffic model.

For example, when you travel to a certain place, the chances of being ripped off by some unscrupulous merchants will greatly increase. That’s because they know that you are just here to travel and you don’t know whether you will come in the future. They will try to make every possible deal in the short term. For them, short-term interests are the most important, and we are just traffic.

The restaurants near your home don’t dare to operate like this. What they need is repurchase rate, that is, they need to make transactions with you repeatedly. For them, what they need to consider is long-term interests, and we need to be developed into users.

The key point here is whether you want to make a one-time transaction or a repeated transaction with the user.

One-time transactions are more likely to have traffic operations problems, where they only consider immediate profits and ignore future profits. After all, there may be no future profits.

Repeated transactions mean that you need to maintain an ongoing relationship with your users and find the right balance between short-term value and long-term value. After all, you are pursuing maximum LTV, which means you need to extend the user life cycle as much as possible and maximize the amount of money users spend throughout the entire cycle.

Ultimately, it all depends on the values ​​of the people doing this, whether they want to do traffic business or user business. There may be restaurants in scenic spots that serve authentic food and offer reasonable prices, and there may also be restaurants in the surrounding areas that cut corners and raise prices in disguise. The key still depends on the people.

Whether it is traffic business or user business, they are all forms of business. As long as they do not violate laws and morals, they can be neither good nor bad.

3. What inspiration does it give us?

If a product wants to grow, new traffic must come in. As for what form to take, it needs to be combined with the characteristics and values ​​of the business model.

Low-frequency businesses generally focus on transaction rate and average order value, while medium- and high-frequency businesses generally focus on transaction rate, repurchase rate, and average order value, with more attention paid to LTV.

In fact, values ​​mainly depend on the founder himself, what kind of person he is and what he wants to do.

Traffic platforms are constantly changing, from early app stores, to social platforms, to short video platforms. There are some rules here that we need to pay attention to.

The first thing is to pay attention to changes in information dissemination methods and distribution channels.

As bandwidth increases, the content carriers show the following pattern: from text - pictures - graphics - audio and video - live broadcast. As the carriers change, some new platforms and distribution channels emerge.

When a new channel appears, there will be a short time window, which is what we usually call the bonus period. At this time, we must seize the new traffic as quickly and resolutely as possible.

For example, from the early days of Weibo, to WeChat public accounts, and then to platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, there will always be a group of users who will be the first to move in and seize the opportunity.

The second thing to pay attention to is changes in acquisition costs.

As the time window shortens, more and more competitors begin to pay attention to the new channel, and the cost of acquisition will gradually increase.

Moreover, as the difficulty of acquiring users increases, the cost of acquiring users will inevitably increase. After all, the users who were easy to acquire in the early stages have already been acquired.

The final goal is to achieve low-cost and accurate customer acquisition.

Based on what we mentioned above, users + scenarios - needs, if you want to achieve more efficient customer acquisition, you need to consider users, scenarios, and needs at the same time.

Users refer to where the target user group is and whether the user groups match. Only when the target user groups match can the conversion efficiency be high. For example, if your target users are college students, then it is not suitable to place ads in places where working people gather.

The scenario refers to the matching degree between upstream and downstream. For example, if you recommend products on a shopping guide website, this is a very natural scenario. However, if you promote air tickets on a shared bicycle, this may not meet user expectations.

Demand refers to the correlation between demands. For example, leisure and entertainment are the same type of demands. Novels promote online games, and online games promote novels. Due to the high correlation, the conversion effect will be better. However, if novel products promote online courses, the conversion effect is hard to say.

Finally, let’s briefly summarize the whole article:

• Traffic refers to people who have only the most superficial relationship with you. Users have a deeper relationship with you than traffic and will have a certain degree of loyalty.
• In theory, traffic and users can be continuously converted, from traffic to ordinary users, to super users, and then to partners;
• Whether to do traffic business or user business mainly depends on demand frequency, business frequency and values;
• Traffic platforms are constantly changing. We need to pay attention to changes in information dissemination methods and distribution channels, as well as changes in acquisition costs, to achieve low-cost and accurate customer acquisition.

The above is the main content of this article. You are welcome to correct me, give me suggestions and criticize me.

Author: Wang Jiachen

Source: Product Manager from 0 to 1