In 2020, I believe that many partners working on user growth will have such feelings: weak growth, increasing costs, and difficulty in retention. As the traffic dividend gradually disappears, obtaining traffic from outside will face the dilemma of increasing costs and difficulties.

Now many companies are gradually shifting their focus from external traffic acquisition to "internal growth". Through product optimization and targeting users, they establish some mechanisms that can achieve self-growth through product functions. These products with self-growth capabilities are collectively referred to as traffic products.

A single tree cannot make a forest. A single traffic product is difficult to meet user needs and growth needs, so multiple traffic products are aggregated together to form a traffic product platform.

【Traffic Product Platform Model】

This article takes Xueersi-Xueersi Public Lecture Platform as an example, mainly from the perspective of [product model] and [growth gameplay], how to build a traffic product platform with self-growth capabilities, mainly including:

• The core and characteristics of traffic products
• Case analysis: the main components of the Xueersi public lecture platform
• Gameplay analysis: What are the gameplays of the Xueersi public lecture platform product?
• Analysis and thinking: Product model highlights and reusable points
• Personal thoughts: My thoughts on traffic product platforms

1. The core and characteristics of traffic products

1. The core of traffic products is the product

For users, the fundamental factor that can make them trust and attract new customers is your product itself, and more specifically, the content of your product. Products are the determining factors of user behavior. They can motivate users to participate and share.

The biggest feature of traffic products is that they are free. The value of free lies in obtaining traffic. For users, free is always the biggest attraction as long as the content is almost the same.

2. Common patterns of traffic products

Using profitable products as traffic products Profitable products are often a company's main products, but in order to attract traffic, companies usually give away some of their profitable products for free to attract users to participate in activities, such as limited-time flash sales, top prizes in lotteries, etc.

Using value-added products as traffic products Value-added products themselves may not bring any revenue, but they are also attractive to users, such as exclusive services;

2. Case analysis: the main components of the Xueersi public lecture platform

The Xueersi Public Lecture Platform (hereinafter referred to as the Lecture Platform) is the online course platform of Xueersi Peiyou. The main function of the platform is to provide free or low-cost course resources for Xueersi Peiyou offline users (nursery class to senior high school students). If users want to obtain these free course resources, they need to participate in corresponding activities and receive course resources by completing tasks.

Users obtain course resources through tasks, and the platform achieves new user acquisition and retention by setting tasks.

The lecture platform is mainly divided into four modules: [Popular Group Purchase], [Fun Micro-Courses], [Open Lectures], [Regional Popularity], and [Popular Group Purchase] mainly include group purchase activities for some low-priced courses. The course prices are mainly 0 yuan, 1 yuan, 19.9 yuan, and 39 yuan. The course content includes quality education, popular science, and guidance on filling out applications. Users can filter by grade on the activity page. The activity is played in a low-price group purchase. The task level is generally set to 3 people in a group, and the course content is relatively small.

[Fun Micro Courses] are mainly free courses. The course content is mainly quality education and the subjects are mainly mathematics. For courses in [Fun Micro Courses], users only need to click to sign up and follow the official account to receive the courses. No invitation or payment is required. The threshold is very low. Users can filter by grade on the activity page. The course content is relatively small.

The [Public Lecture] section is the most content-rich of all the templates. The course content includes many literacy courses such as solar terms, currency, and the origin of Children's Day. It also includes lectures by famous people such as "Wang Liqun Lectures on Records of the Grand Historian", "Meng Zhuo Lectures on the Analects of Confucius", and "Liu Xinwu Lectures on A Dream of Red Mansions". It also includes many courses related to mathematics, Chinese, geography, etc. Users can filter grades and cities on the event page. These courses can be obtained by following the official account, group buying at a low price, invitation unlocking and many other activities.

[Regional Popularity] mainly provides regionalized services for users of Xueersi branches in different regions across the country. The course content mainly includes local policy explanations, study plans, various review courses, etc. Users can filter grades on the activity page. All content is provided to users free of charge. Users only need to follow the corresponding official account to successfully register.

【Main sections of the lecture platform】

In addition to the four major sections, the lecture platform also has a personal center, which includes information such as my orders, lectures I have signed up for, lectures I have collected, and live broadcast rooms I follow. The lecture platform is not only an event registration platform, but also a course content viewing platform. After obtaining the course content, you can watch it directly on the lecture platform. The course viewing module is mainly divided into 5 parts: course playback part, inviting friends to watch, lecture instructions, communication area interaction and bottom menu.

【Lecture platform course playback section】

3. Gameplay analysis: What are the game modes of the Xueersi public lecture platform product?

Traffic products must have the ability to attract new users, and usually need to set up corresponding activities. Common traffic product activities are mainly the following:

1. Invite to unlock

Invitation unlocking is a common form of invitation-based fission, which means that users need the help of friends to obtain rewards. Rewards can be obtained by inviting a certain number of friends.

Gameplay example: "Xueersi 0 yuan unlock animation micro-class activity"

1) How to play the activity

Sign up for free to unlock the first class, then invite 2 friends to sign up to unlock all courses; the invitation activity must be completed within 3 days. If it is not completed within the time limit, you will lose the 0 yuan unlock qualification and can only purchase it for a fee.

2) Event promotion channels

Official account menu bar, official account tweets, etc.

3) User Path

4) Page path

2. Low-price group buying

Low-price group buying is also a common way of playing invitation-based fission, which requires a certain number of friends to pay or participate in the group to get prizes.

Gameplay example: "Xueersi-Zhao Zhaozhong, the director of the bureau, talks about military affairs to young people"

1) How to play the activity

A group of 3 people can purchase a course for 49 yuan, or purchase individually for 99 yuan.

2) Event promotion channels

Xueersi public account, Xueersi official website, Xueersi APP.

3) User Path

3. Free lectures

The free lectures can be seen as a series of courses offered by Xueersi for retention. There is no threshold for free lectures and you can watch them without inviting friends.

However, during the registration stage for some free lectures, a requirement for successful registration was set up in which one had to follow the official account. This allowed the free lecture product to retain users while also converting more platform users into official account users.

4. Set up invitations on the course playback page

The public lecture platform has a function for inviting friends to attend classes together on each course playback page. Click to invite friends to generate a course poster for sharing. After the user scans the poster, he returns to the event details page, completes the corresponding tasks, and then can watch the course. This step of attracting new users is quite clever, taking advantage of the user's sense of achievement and desire to show off.

【Course playback page invitation display】

4. Analysis and thinking: product model highlights and reusable points

Product highlights:

The course content is rich:

The courses on the public lecture platform include general knowledge courses, literacy courses, mathematics courses, Chinese language courses and other general courses. There are at least hundreds of courses in total, and most of the courses are series courses, providing users with a wealth of choices.

There are various ways to play the activity:

The main purpose of the lecture platform is to attract new users, so in terms of activity gameplay, most courses have chosen 0-yuan unlocking and limited-time group buying, and a 3-day countdown has been set for inviting friends to help, which not only gives users ample space to attract new users, but also provides a sense of urgency. If the user fails to complete the task, he or she can pay for the course. There are many ways to meet the user's needs. There are also some courses that do not have the setting of attracting new users, and users can get them for free by simply signing up. Users have a good experience, which plays an important role in platform retention and official account retention.

The event-specific poster uses a unified template:

After looking at the posters of several courses, I found that these posters have a unified template. The analysis shows that the operations can be configured by themselves in the background, which is convenient and quick. The upper part of the poster needs to be designed by yourself, and the lower part should be generated by the system. The overall style of the poster should be simple and clear.

【Poster display of some courses】

The public lecture platform can attract traffic to different public accounts:

The public lecture platform is designed to serve the Xueersi Peiyou branches across the country. Different branches can set up their own activities on the platform, and during the setting process they can configure the public account that will drive traffic to the activities.

The activity platform is also a course hosting platform and has the ability to play courses:

The limitation of many activity tools is that they only have the ability to attract new users, but lack the ability to retain users and teach classes. The public lecture platform perfectly solves this problem. It combines the two and greatly improves the retention rate after attracting new users.

Support message notification:

In addition to being sent to the official account in which you participate in the event, support message notifications will also be posted on the Xueersi service account if you follow it. These two official accounts will have a priority, but as long as you follow one of them, you will receive support message notifications.

Reusable points:

• Traffic product platforms need rich content support and must take into account the diversity of user needs. Content is the foundation and the greatest attraction.
• Traffic product platforms need to target users and set up a variety of ways to attract new users in different courses. At the same time, some resources should be open to users for free to increase attractiveness and subsequent retention.
• The method of attracting new users is not so rigid and can be combined with the course content and course playback format.
• The traffic product platform needs to set up a backend, and operators can configure it as needed
• The traffic product platform needs to have the ability for users to watch courses after acquiring them.
• Traffic product platforms need to consider the issue of directing traffic to multiple public accounts and need to add a public account authorization function.

5. Personal thoughts: My thoughts on traffic product platforms

Building a traffic product platform is one of the many solutions to the user growth problem. The traffic product platform requires rich content support and research and development support. Most partners who want to build a traffic product platform may be blocked by these two. Therefore, when we want to build a traffic product platform, we must consider that "Rome was not built in a day" and we must proceed step by step and achieve it step by step.

Here are some of my thoughts on implementing a traffic product platform:

Step-by-step, low-cost trial and error, and batch replication of design templates.

When we build a traffic product platform, we must think about the model and specific gameplay of the traffic product platform.

Choose the activity you are best at to conduct a single activity test. The test results will directly determine whether this activity should be put on the traffic product platform.

Based on the activity results, if the activity results are good, develop a configuration template for this activity and copy it in batches.

Once we have achieved batch replication of multiple activities, the prototype of the traffic product platform has been established.

Finally, combine and integrate various forms of activities to form the traffic product platform you originally envisioned.

Author: Jiang Liuer

Source: Jiang Liuer