Case analysis | The entire process of the 3-yuan group buying activity at Zuoyebang

Now all the major online education companies are doing everything they can to compete for traffic. When a new user just enters the official account or downloads the app, they are eager to convert him/her immediately. Before he/she can experience the aha moment of the product, he/she is disturbed and discouraged by various marketing activities and pop-ups.

1. Case Link

app banner page

2. Case Name

Name: Homework Help Group Study and Spelling Course

Activity purpose: Convert new non-paying users

Activity keywords: homework help, group buying, conversion

Disassembly purpose: To understand the logic and gameplay of the group buying app Zuoyebang

3. Case Background

Zuoyebang is committed to providing learning tutoring services in all subjects for primary and secondary school students across the country. With over 800 million activated user devices and approximately 170 million monthly active users, Zuoyebang is a leading brand in online education for primary and secondary schools.

Zuoyebang has independently developed a number of learning tools, including photo search, Zuoyebang live classes, ancient Chinese text assistant, composition search, etc. On Zuoyebang, students can get the analysis steps and answers to difficult questions through taking photos, speaking, etc.; they can interact and learn with teachers through Zuoyebang live classes; they can quickly discover their weak points in knowledge and make precise exercises to supplement them; they can watch live classes and learn interactively on their mobile phones; they can also connect with teachers online for one-on-one answers to their questions; in addition to studying, they can also communicate with students of the same age across the country and discuss interesting things in their study and life.

Data source: iResearch

4. Overall business logic

1. Products

Zuoyebang has a total of 4 products, including Zuoyebang APP, Zuoyebang Live Classes, Zuoyebang Mental Arithmetic, and Bufan Classroom (an adult education brand).

Homework Helper APP

Homework help live class

The live teaching platform carefully selects top teachers from Peking University and Tsinghua University, concentrates on polishing courses, and provides interactive teaching to make learning more convenient and efficient for children.

Homework help oral calculation

A one-stop math homework tutoring platform designed specifically for primary school parents and teachers.

Extraordinary Classroom

The adult education brand under Zuoyebang includes online live classes, a senior teaching and research team, professional tutoring and answering questions, famous teachers + tutoring, and dual-teacher teaching.

Cocos Courseware

Cocos is a high-tech courseware developed by Zuoyebang specifically for primary and lower mathematics students. In the Cocos courseware, each example question is introduced by a carefully crafted animation to create a practical scenario for the example question. At the same time, various forms of interaction are set up, such as gesture recognition, dragging questions, voting, etc.

Meow Meow Machine

Zuoyebang’s “Meow Meow Machine” is a smart way to print out wrong questions. You only need to take a picture of the wrong question with the APP on your mobile phone, and then you can print out the wrong question, the correct solution steps and the answer, automatically generate a “wrong question book”, and summarize the wrong questions of the same type.

According to iResearch data, the number of monthly independent devices of Zuoyebang decreased from February 2020 to January 2021. During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year (February-May), the number of monthly independent devices remained at a high level. The number of independent devices in February 2020 increased by 12.3% from January, the highest growth rate last year.

Data source: iResearch

2. Traffic

Public account matrix:

The public account matrix of Zuoyebang is very large. Just searching the keyword "Zuoyebang" in WeChat will bring up many pages of related public accounts. According to Xigua data, Zuoyebang has hundreds of public accounts.

APP Matrix:

It mainly has four products, among which the "take photo to search questions" function has brought huge traffic to Zuoyebang and has a high user stickiness.

External delivery:

Zuoyebang can be found on WeChat Moments ads, Douyin, Kuaishou, Toutiao and other channels, with a total of 22,214 creative materials searched.

Offline elevator advertising

Brand marketing: sponsor popular variety shows, programs, and TV dramas, such as "Longing for Life", "Don't Leave After School", "Hot-Blood Dance Crew", "There Are Trees in the South", "The Metamorphosis", "Chinese Story Conference", "Douluo Dalu", "Happy Comedians", and "Magical Chinese Characters"

E-commerce platforms: Taobao, Tmall, JD.com and other stores, live streaming and selling courses

3. Monetization

5. Case Path Analysis

1. User usage path

APP

User path for participating in activities

Experience:

There are actually some questions about this activity. The name of the activity is positioned as a "group buying" activity, but through experience, it was found that there was no group buying action. Why do I say so?

There are three entrances for payment in the details page, namely "Go to group buy, Direct purchase, Initiate group buy". At first, I thought it would be similar to Pinduoduo's gameplay, that is, click "Go to group buy" to form a group with other netizens to complete the task, click "Initiate group buy" to become the group leader, and need to share posters to invite friends to participate. But in reality, no matter which button you click, you will enter the 3 yuan payment order page. The user only needs to complete the order by himself throughout the process, and there is no need to forward it to friends.

By inferring the purpose of the activity design from this gameplay, we can roughly guess that this activity is disguised as group buying, but in fact it is to reduce the cost and difficulty of user participation. At the same time, the purpose of this activity is no longer to attract new users, but to convert new users who have downloaded the Zuoyebang app but have never paid.

The "Go to group buy" section displayed on the details page is also a means of designing to lower the threshold for participation. On the one hand, it takes advantage of the user's herd mentality. The fact that others are signing up proves that it is quite popular, so it should be more reliable. On the other hand, it lowers the user's psychological expectation of the difficulty of participation, and they can succeed directly without forwarding the invitation.

Can be optimized:

2. Target User Profile

Target users of the activity

Target users: New users who have downloaded the app but have not paid for it; new users

Activity grade: elementary school-high school

Target user profile

According to the Baidu Index, Zuoyebang's user base is mainly distributed in major educational provinces such as East China, Central China, and North China. Students in these regions are under great competition and parents attach great importance to their children's studies. Therefore, their willingness to pay for online learning is relatively stronger.

The users’ age is mainly concentrated between 30 and 49 years old, accounting for 74%. Among them, users aged 30-39 account for 54%, and most of them are parents born in the 1980s. Female users account for 59%, and male users account for 41%, which is slightly lower than the female user population.

Data source: Baidu Index

User needs

From the demand map, most users download Zuoyebang for two reasons: taking photos to search for questions and taking online live classes.

6. Analysis of the three elements of fission

1. Products

Target users of the activity

New users who have downloaded the app but have not paid for it; new users

Main pain points

child:

Parents:

2. Channels

Activity flow entrance

Drainage method

After downloading the app, users actively enter the event through the banner. No other channels for pushing information have been found.

3. Creativity

Referral effect = sharing efficiency x conversion efficiency x sharing frequency

Since this activity does not involve sharing, we only analyze the conversion efficiency of this activity here.

【Conversion efficiency of group buying activities】

The influencing factors mainly include two aspects: the attractiveness of the group buying poster details page and the difficulty of participating in the group buying activity.

1. Improve the attractiveness of the group purchase poster details page

Six elements of poster conversion: reciprocity, commitment, conformity, authority, liking, and scarcity.

1) Reciprocity

The underlying logic of this factor is to give users benefits and satisfy their desire to get a bargain. Faced with such a "favor", users will "repay" with purchases, and the common uses of this factor are free, special prices, group purchases, etc.

It can also be seen from the details page that this event is very good at taking advantage of this point. First of all, the course price is exclusive to new users, with a direct reduction of 396 yuan, making people feel that they have picked up a bargain; then the subtitle "3 yuan to learn 2 subjects, and get 8 pieces of materials for free" makes users feel that it is good value for money.

2) Commitment

The essence of this element is to take advantage of the psychology of speed and gain, and make promises about the effects of user actions, that is, to tell users that they can get the expected results after taking action. A typical application is to use quick-formed copy in the main copy of the check-in activity and the course outline.

3) Follow the crowd

That is, the principle of social identity. This element guides users to take quick action by creating an atmosphere of multi-person purchase. Common usages include displaying altruistic invitation language on the avatar, or displaying words such as "xxx people have participated".

The pop-up message "xxx successfully joined the group a few seconds ago" on the first picture of the details page and the rush purchase progress bar at the bottom of the price are both creating an atmosphere of multiple purchases.

4) Authority

The principle of this element is that users tend to have a stronger sense of trust in things with high popularity, so we will see that many posters will strengthen the teacher's portrait, title, and introduction to reflect their professionalism. They will also highlight famous schools, famous companies, and even recommendations from some big names to reduce user decision-making.

5) Preferences

The most typical applications of this factor are the endowment effect and loss aversion. The former means that when something is about to be lost, it will be more valuable than others, while the latter means that the pain of losing something is greater than the happiness of getting it.

If you sign up for a course today, you will receive three additional benefits (free course + learning materials), making users feel that they have no choice but to buy today.

6) Scarcity

The purpose of this element is to create a sense of urgency, because only rare things are more valuable and users are more willing to make decisions as soon as possible.

The benefit validity period is dynamically displayed on the poster details page. The title "Limited Time Offer", the purchase progress bar below the price, and the remaining class places on the payment page all create a sense of tension and product scarcity for users, allowing users to reduce decision-making time.

2. Reduce the difficulty of participating in group buying activities

1) First of all, the activity entrance is quite obvious and can be seen on the homepage after logging into the app;

2) Secondly, the way to participate in the event is also very simple. There are three entrances for payment on the details page, namely "Go to group order, buy directly, and start group purchase". No matter which button you click, you will enter the 3 yuan payment order page. The whole process only requires the user to complete the order by himself, and there is no need to forward it to friends;

3) After payment is completed, you can check the course records in "My Orders".

VII. Conclusion

Event Highlights

(1) Convert new users under the guise of group buying. Although the activity is under the banner of group buying, in fact, no matter which button the user clicks, he/she will enter the 3 yuan payment order page. The user only needs to complete the ordering process by himself/herself and there is no need to forward it to friends.

(2) The design of the event details page has many highlights and is good at grasping user needs and psychological characteristics.

(3) The participation path is very short and the conversion process is fast.

Points to be optimized

(1) In order to create a strong psychological gap and sense of contrast in users, the "Buy Directly" button in the lower right corner may be set to the original price after clicking on it, so that users will be discouraged by the high price when they click on it. At this time, they will generally be more willing to accept the 3 yuan group purchase.

(2) Reduce the frequency of pop-up windows for courses and benefits within the app. It is understandable that some pop-up windows appear during the conversion of new users. However, after users have paid, pop-up windows for other courses and activities frequently appear. I personally feel that this is quite disturbing to users, especially when they have clicked on a pop-up window and then another pop-up window for other activities is pushed. The user experience is worse than that of the Zebra AI Class app. (Of course, there is also a view that after paying, users will be more willing to pay for other free activities or paid trial courses in other subjects, so pushing at this time can increase conversion. Since I don’t have actual data to verify this, I can’t draw an accurate conclusion.)

(3) After purchasing a group class, adding SMS reminders will help increase attendance rates. Also, if the user clicks the group purchase button but has not paid, they can be reminded by text message to continue to complete the group purchase action. Zebra AI class does this better, always notifying me to go to class by text message when I am about to forget.

Personal Thoughts

1. Is high-frequency interruption really a good thing? Education is a slow process. The faster the society moves, the slower the education should be. This is especially true for the online education industry. Now all the major online education companies are doing everything they can to compete for traffic. When a new user just enters the official account or downloads the app, they are eager to convert him/her immediately. Before he/she can experience the aha moment of the product, he/she is disturbed and discouraged by various marketing activities and pop-ups.

2. The importance of brand implantation and occupying the minds of users is self-evident. In the current situation where course products are becoming increasingly homogenized, whoever has a higher reputation will have a relatively stronger ability to acquire customers, and this point has been deeply rooted in people’s minds through the advertisements of Zuoyebang. In the minds of users, hearing it frequently is equivalent to establishing basic trust. And as far as I know, high school students usually sign up for online courses in groups, either a small group of friends or the entire class, so the group effect is also very large.

Author: Shelly of Pick Up Light

Source: Shelly of Pick Up Light