User operation: How to improve user stickiness and retention?

In the mobile Internet, there is a saying that goes: "Everything is a tool."

Each APP is a tool, including entertainment tools, chat and work tools, security tools, etc. The interactive experience between users and applications (APP) ultimately exists to solve a specific problem of the user.

However, is the value of every APP really just to solve a certain problem/type of problem?

Since each APP appears to solve specific problems at the beginning of its life cycle, it will only be used in specific scenarios. Outside of this scenario, the APP will rarely be opened or deleted. Because of this, if you want an APP to achieve a breakthrough in commercial value, improving user stickiness and retention is a topic that every product manager and designer needs to pay attention to.

Of course, the functional efficiency of the core scenarios of the APP itself is the basis and foundation.

1. The importance of user stickiness and retention (activity)

As a breakthrough point for expanding product value barriers, the importance of user stickiness and retention (activity) is self-evident. It can improve user retention, build product ecosystem, increase advertising revenue, and promote high corporate valuations. With more and more homogeneous applications and increasingly fierce competition, everyone has long realized the need to have a place in the mobile Internet, and user stickiness has become the first point that needs to be conquered.

Profits from Internet products are often post-provisional, and the profits they can bring are generated through user services and operations in the future, rather than making money on a per-order basis like selling offline products. Therefore, an app without user stickiness and retention is worthless and will bring neither commercial returns nor investment.

There are many dimensions to increase user stickiness and retention, which can be from the strategic level, business level, or operational market level. Let’s first look at understanding stickiness and retention from the dimension of the product itself.

2. Stickiness and retention are more important than operations and new users

Many people may say that to increase product activity, you can just attract new users through operations. In fact, in my opinion, "retention" is more important than "attracting activity" in "attracting activity and retaining".

Stickiness and retention mean that most users will come back after using the product, which means that the product can continuously bring value to users, whether it is practical value or entertainment value. Users who behave like this are called retained old users. In the past, some operational activities generally involved attracting new users through various activities and converting more people into new users through traffic costs. But if the product has no value, new users cannot become old users, and attracting new users becomes weak and useless.

A lot of data clearly show that the cost of retaining an old user is much lower than the cost of acquiring a new user, and operational activities are high-cost behaviors. Truly doing a good job in outputting the value of the product itself will be a very profitable thing.

3. Analyze the product’s capabilities and fundamental attributes

When it comes to design strategies to improve user stickiness and retention, you need to first understand the interactive properties of the application and their relationship with users.

• In terms of application capabilities , the needs that an application can meet are diverse, and the depth to which it can meet a single need also varies. For example, social applications, the most superficial ones are text messaging apps and phone apps, which are also the narrowest social tools. As they have developed to the present, the experience has become diversified and multi-dimensional. Social interaction methods include voice, video, shared location, and even "emoji exchanges".
• If we understand application properties from the perspective of information interaction, we can divide applications into two categories: two-way information interaction and one-way information interaction. Two-way information interaction means that the application provides tools to users, and users also provide information feedback to the application. For example, photo editing, video editing, and article typesetting have natural potential for tool contentization , and tool contentization can be considered in the future to expand value. Corresponding to two-way information interaction, one-way generally means that users only use tools without any feedback, such as weather inquiries, maps, security, etc. The application of two-way information interaction can break through the value barriers in terms of content, while one-way information interaction can generally only transform into content-based and social applications by increasing communication with users through entertainment.

To sum up, when formulating a retention strategy for an application, we should start from several dimensions.

1. In terms of core functions, we focus on user scenario behaviors, find the behavioral differences between new and old users, inactive users and active users, and explore the factors that truly affect retention.
2. In terms of function and experience expansion, we can expand the demand pool, that is, look for linkage scenario needs while satisfying the core scenarios; we can also dig deeper into the original functional modules to explore diversified and multi-dimensional experiences.
3. From the perspective of information interaction, tool contentization and socialization are good choices for retention.

1. Analyze the behavioral characteristics of active and inactive users

By analyzing data or user interviews, we can find the positive correlation between "product function points-user behavior characteristics-user retention/activity". When the positive correlation is very high, we can find the behavioral characteristics and product function points that are affecting the activity. Then, we can simplify functions, increase exposure, and put information in front , which can improve user activity conversion.

In theory, when doing product planning, it is necessary to determine the data of various buying points to facilitate the subsequent analysis of all interactions between users and the APP. This analysis helps product/designers discover user retention issues.

Generally, after finding the key indicators that affect retention, you can conduct A/B testing for further verification to see whether these key factors can effectively affect user attention and user retention.

2. Expand the demand pool and extend the service value chain

Expanding the demand pool does not mean arbitrarily adding features to the application. I will add whatever features are available in the market/competitive products.

APP was created because of demand, and its existence is to solve this rigid demand. It is this rigid demand scenario that will bring 100% user activity, so on this basis we can explore related scenarios and even replace similar rigid demands that are already being met in the same field.

One point that needs to be noted about related scenarios is that they can trigger scenario-based associations in users. For example, the errand service extended from a food delivery app is easy to remember. Another example is the taxi-hailing function extended from a map app, which is also a supplement and expansion of its own service design chain, in line with user psychological expectations and easy to remember and associate with.

As the demand pool expands, the more demands the application can meet, and the more times and durations users open the application.

3. Make scene tools more interesting

When deeply exploring the functions of a single scene, we can think in the direction of fun.

The design strategy of making tools interesting is generally used in functional modules with monotonous requirements, small amount of information interaction and low frequency. Adding interesting interactions is to break the barriers of one-way information interaction between users and applications and increase interactivity. [The idea of ​​a user growth system can be appropriately introduced here], for example, communicating with users through some super-fast mini-games, accumulating points, packaging experience results, and attracting users to play again or share next time.

For example, the fun game design in Meituan - Kangaroo Run, is both fun and practical:

Making the app more interesting can also increase users ' "scenario-based impression" of the app. Scenario-based impression is a powerful guarantee for user activation and retention. When users encounter a similar scenario next time, they will actively think of this function.

4. Product Ecosystem Content

For applications with natural content accumulation and two-way information interaction, contentization is the best choice.

Contentization is actually another manifestation of socialization, which is equivalent to an information tool that connects people. For example, the super APP Meitu XiuXiu, if users only use it for beautification, it will probably only be used more frequently when taking photos outside, and the total demand will have a certain bottleneck. However, XiuXiu has the characteristic of a large amount of user input information every day, so we can consider value expansion and content-based value output. The content starts with beauty, skin care, and photo editing, educating users to become familiar with this field, growing with users, and building stickiness.

There is actually a very good breakthrough point for content/socialization, which is the weekly/monthly report, or even the annual bill (annual report) that was previously popularized by Alipay. Such content that is closely related to the users themselves will naturally become the most popular point for attracting traffic.

In summary, for an APP that needs to improve user stickiness, retention, and activity, you can start from the APP attributes and do a good job in the experience design of the core value, and then make breakthroughs in the three dimensions of expanding the demand pool, making core functions interesting, and making the application ecosystem content-based, and ultimately achieve the extension and expansion of product value and achieve business goals.

Author: Xiaowei

Source: Xiaowei

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