When operating a new product, there are many things that need to be prepared in advance in the early stages of the product. The most important thing is to clarify the product focus. In the early stages of product operation, attracting new users is also a very important step. How to attract more users? How to keep users? The author of this article proposes three methods for setting product rhythm. Let’s take a look at them together.

This year, I switched to a new company, where I was responsible for the overall operations of the company's C-end e-commerce business. I experienced the entire process from the product's initial launch to sales exceeding one million.

I reviewed the operational practices during this period and shared with you my thoughts on the product rhythm at this stage.

For many new product teams, the early stages of a product are a time when everything is waiting to be done. They often feel that there are a lot of things to do, but they don’t know where to start. Therefore, it is crucial to clarify the product focus and milestone path at this time.

This article takes the insurance e-commerce platform I am currently working on as an example to talk about what I think are the initial key points of the product.

I call it the three axes of a product: attracting users, improving retention, and expanding product categories; the three axes are interdependent and none of them can be missing.

1. The first move: attracting users

Attracting users means attracting new users, which is generally divided into two ways: user self-propagation and finding external channels.

User self-propagation is easy to understand, such as the various new customer acquisition activities that we often see on WeChat, such as "invite friends to help" and "help me bargain".

This method is more efficient, allowing users to become promoters of the product and bring in organic traffic. It is also common in various large-scale apps, so it is easy to give people the illusion that the first thing to do after a product is launched is to do a new customer acquisition campaign; then they work hard on development for a long time, only to find that there are few participating users and the participation rate is low after the product is launched.

Here I suggest that you do not follow the trend blindly, but look beyond the phenomenon to the essence. Why do new product acquisition activities of large manufacturers often become popular?

Because the prerequisite for user self-propagation is to have a large number of users and user activity, many large companies will simultaneously launch activities in a large number of external channels or existing fan groups when doing new customer acquisition activities. For example, Hua Xiaozhu used Didi App to divert traffic in the early stage of its launch.

So you think the top student is playing with you, but in fact he is preparing for the exam all night long.

Therefore, in the early stage of the product, external channel traffic is more important than new customer acquisition activities - channel traffic is divided into free channel traffic and paid channel traffic.

Let’s talk about free first. If you want to use free channels to attract traffic, you either have to have the resources or invest in manpower costs and time.

If you have resources, whether it is cross-industry cooperation or your own resources, you can first think about what cards you have in your hand, such as industry endorsement, industry resources, providing discounted product services, existing users within the company, or even internal employees, which can all be used as your bargaining chips.

Take me as an example. Considering the large number of employees within the company, we recently held a friend invitation competition among employees: inviting more than 10 friends can participate in the ranking, and cash rewards will be directly given according to the ranking. Through this internal channel, we have gained a large number of new users.

If you don’t have the resources, you can only invest manpower and time to post “small advertisements” on various traffic channels, such as Zhihu, Douban, Tieba and other channels.

Speaking of payment, don’t think that payment is simply spending money to buy traffic and then waiting for users to come; the key to payment channels lies in how to spend money wisely, which is much more difficult than free.

Generally, paid advertising is not placed on only one channel, but multiple channels are tested simultaneously, and the ROI is compared to determine which channels can be placed in the long term.

When comparing ROI, we usually judge it by the purchase price and ARPU (revenue per user). We should also carefully consider the pricing method when choosing a channel. For example, when I am looking for traffic owners, I will give priority to CPA-billed channels (CPA: charged according to user behavior, for example, charging is only made once after the user registers).

For channels with low or even negative ROI, remember to stop losses in time and don’t fight to the end.

2. The second trick: Retained deposits

While attracting users, retention operations must also keep up; if attracting users is like charging into battle, then retention is the logistical support to protect the results at the front.

The retention method in the early stage of the product can be relatively simple, such as a simplified version like a calendar sign-in. I also like to call it a classic retention method - lightweight, low-cost, and effective. In short, it is cost-effective.

Of course, when doing the sign-in gameplay, you can also add some traffic distribution gameplay, such as displaying a series of tasks after signing in, and getting rewards for completing the tasks.

However, it should be clear that sign-in is the main function at this stage. Retention should be ensured first, and then incidental tasks can be performed.

For example, when I design a page, most of the main visual area will be reserved for sign-in, and after signing in, I will ask the user to "authorize tomorrow's sign-in reminder."

Always remember what the focus is at the moment!

After the retention effect of the simplified sign-in reaches the target and remains stable, we should start to consider how to maintain or even improve retention in the long term, and at the same time, start to consider how to improve the traffic distribution effect of the gameplay.

So the question is, why do I add data indicators for traffic distribution at this stage?

Because the retention data is basically stable, and the richness of products on the platform has also increased at this time.

For e-commerce platforms, if tasks are added when the products are not abundant in the early stage, the operation will feel like designing tasks just for the sake of designing tasks.

It is important to clarify what stage you are in and make a plan based on your own situation. Don't follow the task system just because others have done it.

Just like our country's path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, only by basing ourselves on national conditions can we walk our own path well.

In the second stage of retention, the goals of this stage are generally achieved by enriching the retention gameplay.

The most common way is to add gamification. The reason for using gamification is to reduce users' fatigue with a single gameplay through the fun of the game.

However, the gamification function will be relatively complicated. If you lack development human resources, you can also achieve it through front-end modifications such as changing the layout, style, and color of the current page. The key is to make users feel that you are interesting and different.

I saw that Taobao’s sign-in section was recently revised, changing the gameplay from gold coin manor planting to city building. You can also think about the reasons behind this revision.

Revised gold coin sign-in

In addition, when I was working on retention strategies, I also found that the user life cycle of retention strategies is much higher than that of new user acquisition activities.

Although new customer acquisition activities have a high participation rate and a wide impact in the early stages due to the novelty and strong benefits, their sustainability is not strong. It is also understandable that users will continue to participate for a few days because of the rewards, but due to poor retention, they may forget about the activity after a few days.

It is predicted that in the future, retention-based gameplay combined with new customer acquisition may become a mainstream trend, and pure new customer acquisition activities are more suitable as short-term activities.

PS: It is observed that Pinduoduo, which is known for attracting new customers, basically displays the gameplay of combining retention with new customer acquisition tasks on the first screen of the homepage:

3. The third move: expanding product categories

In the early stages of a product, all operational focuses should revolve around how to promote user growth, and this also needs to be considered when selecting products.

It is recommended to choose popular products, products with the three characteristics of "low user decision threshold", "high frequency of use" and "easy to spread".

For example, during the epidemic, the zero-yuan insurance products related to the new coronavirus can easily bring traffic to the platform. Another example is the fruit group buying that Pinduoduo focused on in the early stage.

After having a certain user base, other basic categories must also keep up, that is, expand categories, for two reasons:

• A large number of users brings with it personalized demands. It is difficult for a single product to meet diverse demands. Once user demands cannot be met, users will be lost.
• From the perspective of platform GMV, it is necessary to increase the revenue per user. Diversified products can promote user repurchase and thus increase GMV.

Author: Asi

Source: Asi's Notes