How does Pinduoduo, which has a super high conversion rate, make users unable to stop buying?

In the field of e-commerce, Pinduoduo may be the product that is ridiculed the most and has the most "delicious" reviews. Before the 10 billion yuan subsidy made most people sigh "it's really good", Pinduoduo also achieved a super high conversion rate with its social, gamification and other product designs and consideration of user experience. In addition to "watching the fun", its product thinking and operational thinking are more worthy of our learning.

With the vigorous promotion of Sean Eills, Fan Bing and GrowingIO, more and more people have a deeper and more diverse understanding of the Pirate Model, and combine it with psychological and sociological concepts such as the Hook model and Aha moment, and widely apply it to business scenarios such as product design iteration and user operation.

In the previous article "In-depth Review | Pinduoduo, which earns from red envelopes and stays with tricks", we mentioned Pinduoduo's various little tricks in the activation and retention stages. While racking its brains to make users dependent on and loyal to its products, Pinduoduo always needs users to make transactions and attract new customers in order to achieve its ultimate growth goal. For Pinduoduo, which started out as a gaming company, this is exactly what it does best, so today we will talk about Pinduoduo's conversion and re-sharing.

1. Conversion

In the e-commerce industry, all operations and product work revolve around "sales = traffic × conversion rate × average order value × repurchase rate" . While conversion rate is the core indicator of the conversion process, it is also a comprehensive indicator to measure the work quality of operations and product teams.

Why is it called a comprehensive indicator? Because there are many factors that affect conversion rate, including operational strategies, product functions, interface design, user interaction experience, brand trust and other factors. Combining the above factors, we break it down from two aspects: user experience and product design.

1. User Experience

Generally speaking, users enter Pinduoduo to browse, and are influenced by factors such as platform advertisements, promotional information, product screening, etc. After comparison and thinking, they finally decide to pay for the purchase. We summarize the user behavior in this process into three stages: stimulation-thinking-action . Pinduoduo's main target group is middle- and low-income consumers aged 25-35 in second- and third-tier cities who are price-sensitive .

In response to this, Pinduoduo has set up multiple user psychological influencing factors in the three links of stimulation-thinking-action, thereby prompting users to complete conversion.

1.1 Stimulus

1) Low-price atmosphere - materials, copywriting

When you open the Pinduoduo App, you will definitely not forget the keywords such as free, 1 yuan, 10% off, half price, clearance sale, and crazy rush that can be seen everywhere in resource positions, pop-ups, and function modules .

This is also the essential difference between Pinduoduo and other sophisticated shopping platforms such as Yanxuan and Dewu. It gives users the illusion of financial freedom that "the loud speaker at the five-yuan store at the corner of the street has started broadcasting, and I can buy whatever I want." Whether it is the details page or the list of various products, plus the red envelope pop-ups that pop up from time to time, it makes people feel that after browsing for so long, they would be at a disadvantage if they don’t buy anything.

2) Exclusivity and surprise - materials, copywriting, pop-ups

If some small red envelopes that everyone gets cannot stimulate users' desire to buy, then those coupons and red envelopes with limited or exclusive words, specific categories combined with your recent purchasing behavior, which pop up from time to time, can be said to be a surprise among surprises. Surprise + exclusivity can better arouse users' sense of superiority and scarcity. Most of these coupons have no threshold, further increasing the possibility of users completing their purchases.

1.2 Thinking

1) Attachment psychology-materials

When we enter the product details page through various stimuli, except for the product picture in the header of the details page, the scroll bar of the user's shopping information and the real-time updated order information on the details page frantically suggest that the user hurry up to buy, giving the user the feeling that "it will be too late if you don't buy it now."

Through content forms such as "user avatar + number of group orders + group order success", xxx best-selling rankings, user reviews, etc., sales volume and user authenticity are reflected, thus dispelling users' concerns.

2) Sense of urgency - materials

If you observe Pinduoduo carefully, you will find that in addition to various promotions, preferential benefits and stimulating words, the second most common thing is various countdowns. Through the countdowns for discounted prices, coupons and red envelopes, Pinduoduo is constantly sending a message to users: "If you miss this opportunity, you will miss it. If you buy it, you will earn money. If you don't buy it, it will be gone." This forces users to feel a sense of urgency.

1.3 Decision Making

1) Laziness

For products like Taobao, it is often the case that after users add items to their shopping carts, their desire to consume is worn away over time, and they ultimately do not make the purchase. However, there is no such problem with Pinduoduo. Because he didn't go through the shopping cart stage and went directly to the payment stage. Avoid unnecessary user actions and directly complete key payment actions.

At the same time, if the user is too lazy or too embarrassed to find someone to join a group purchase, the platform will help the user complete the group purchase and successfully complete the purchase.

2) Loss Aversion - Materials

In addition to various time and sales stimulus on the details page, Pinduoduo compares the prices of group buying and non-group buying through different shades of colors. Let users have the mentality that "group buying can save so much, so hurry up and group together", and while completing the purchase as soon as possible, users will also actively share in order to complete the purchase.

3) Sense of security and trust

On the payment page, near the payment button, users can see the relevant underwriting of "PICC Property and Casualty Insurance". The sense of security created by the relevant insurance labels can dispel users' purchasing concerns. Although the relevant insurance only protects user information security and is not product insurance, it will play the same role.

If you give up payment, we will see a pop-up window prompting you whether to give up payment. The pop-up window will also show how many users have reviewed the product and how many positive review keywords the product has, in an effort to dispel users’ doubts about the product’s quality and help them complete payment.

2. Product Design

After understanding the user psychological process and stimulation in Pinduoduo, let’s talk about Pinduoduo’s purchase conversion process. In fact, as long as you have used Pinduoduo, you will find that the purchase process of Pinduoduo is extremely short, so its conversion funnel is also very simple. And follow the universal product formula = user demand (internal and external stimulation) + advanced technology (creativity + technology + channel) + reducing user costs.

The conversion funnel is basically broken down based on the user's operation steps. In this process, there are several key points where Pinduoduo has achieved the ultimate experience:

2.1 After disassembling the process, shorten the process as much as possible

A good product conversion path must be convenient and efficient, and will not consume too much user energy to complete irrelevant actions. Users are not required to think or make choices, and their rational participation is turned into mindless operation.

Therefore, there is no shopping cart in Pinduoduo to avoid users not completing the purchase after adding items to cart, thus reducing users' thinking time. There is no payment method such as credit card payment and Cloud QuickPass. The processes such as card binding, recharge and setting transaction password are eliminated to reduce the user's operating costs on the purchase page as much as possible. The most direct ones are WeChat and Alipay, which are essential third-party mobile payment methods. By the time the user comes to his senses and decides there is no need to buy the product, the payment has actually been completed.

2.2 Conversion funnel design is both independent and related

Although product managers will design core conversion paths and continuously optimize them, users will always perform various magical operations during actual use. Thanks to the simple conversion process, except for the necessary payment link, Pinduoduo has freely combined the remaining links to ensure the smoothness of the overall process without affecting the core order conversion.

There are no blank pages in Pinduoduo, and the original end of the successful purchase page is also the beginning of the next purchase. After users complete their purchase, other related products are immediately recommended. There will even be recommendations when viewing logistics information or order cancellation pages, encouraging users to buy and buy without being able to stop.

2.3 Intervention and treatment of negative behaviors in the transformation phase

In the e-commerce scenario, we believe that purchasing immediately after browsing is a positive behavior, while canceling payment and returning to the product list are negative behaviors.

In response to this, Pinduoduo simplifies the operation steps for positive behaviors, strengthens the priority of relevant information, and helps users achieve their goals quickly. For negative behaviors, the operation steps will be complicated and the operation costs will be increased. For example, secondary confirmation during the cancellation process, triggering a red envelope pop-up window when leaving the page, etc., forcing users to stay on the relevant page, continue browsing products or complete payment.

2.4 In addition to posters and copywriting, guidance animation is a more direct means of guidance

When using various apps, we really hate pop-ups because they are all advertisements. Frequent pop-ups disturb users too much, and posters and copywriting are not vivid enough, so various guiding animations are simply the best choice.

From the jumping function module prompts to the constantly twisting red envelope prompts, to the small fireworks after completing related actions and the ubiquitous guidance for sharing. The dazzling animation effects not only enhance Pinduoduo's "getting a bargain" atmosphere, but also attract users' attention and guide them to click.

2.5 Focus! Black mask and monochrome background

Although users may often feel that Pinduoduo's product interface is too fancy when using it, this is not always the case in some key scenarios.

In key links such as user sharing, coupon collection, and red envelope collection, Pinduoduo is very good at using black masks or solid backgrounds to cover the bottom page, thereby blocking invalid information and focusing users' attention. It is easier for users to complete related actions.

2.6 An excellent homepage reduces the depth of visits, creates the possibility of improving conversion rate, and also serves as a diversion

Due to Pinduoduo's 10 billion subsidy strategy, various types of mobile phones, computers and other categories are very popular. In addition to various functional modules on the homepage, we can also see various high-subsidy high-quality products. These products are personalized recommendations generated based on the user's browsing history. The path from the homepage to the details page is made as shallow as possible, skipping the intermediate process to effectively stimulate conversion.

At the same time, the homepage is also responsible for diversion. Although we always emphasize that the number and richness of shopping guide columns are not the more the better, we need to ensure that users will not get lost. In order to avoid too many layers of catalogs, Pinduoduo directly divides products according to categories without other complex content, and determines the category ranking based on the product turnover rate, so as to achieve mindless browsing and purchase as much as possible.

2. Share again

1. The driving force behind re-sharing

As WeChat breaks the barriers of distance and time, users' social relationships become increasingly close, and a variety of new transaction models, including micro-businesses, continue to emerge. Just as Pinduoduo’s external public relations said: users connect and interact with different relationship groups such as friends, family, and neighbors through group buying. Every individual becomes the source and bridge of communication and sharing.

We often talk about social relationships, which actually include two main categories: acquaintance-based social relationships and stranger-based social relationships . Due to many factors such as traditional culture and education, acquaintance-based social relations occupy an absolute position in China's social relationship structure.

But relatively speaking, the emergence of the Internet has broken down spatial barriers, and the new generation of Internet natives has established connections with more strangers with similar tastes and interests, including various interest communities, KoL, KOC, etc. Combining the above, we can summarize the motivation for sharing into acquaintance-type social relationships: win-win + sharing, and stranger-type social relationships: mutual benefit + recommendation.

We see that the original driving forces behind acquaintance-type relationships and stranger-type relationships are actually very similar, both are based on their own interests, but there are differences in the degree of trust users have in different groups, and acquaintance-type relationships are easier to gain trust.

Pinduoduo makes full use of this key point by choosing high subsidies to stimulate users to dig deep into their social relationships. Users take the initiative to ask their parents, friends, and even neighbors and colleagues for help, thereby achieving effective dissemination and reach.

2. Another sharing tool - group buying

2.1 What is group buying?

For Pinduoduo, whether it is cash red envelopes, group shopping or material rewards, its essence is the group buying method based on acquaintances. The core of group buying is to invite more users to make purchases or participate in activities within a limited time. The more people there are, the lower the price and the more likely you are to get rewards.

Compared with traditional marketing methods, the biggest feature of group buying is to build a communication chain based on existing users. Users can filter out users around them who have similar consumption habits as themselves. This will allow it to spread within the same circle in a short period of time and gain a large number of accurate customers.

At the same time, low-priced fast-moving consumer goods are the core products of group buying, such as fresh fruits and daily necessities. Because for users, the prices of these goods are relatively low, most of them are necessities of life, and users are aware of the prices of these goods.

With the help of group buying, the promotion intensity far exceeds the normal price range. New users are more willing to buy and can accept the possible losses of these cheap goods. Group buying actually takes advantage of consumers’ perception of price and increases the possibility of impulse purchases.

2.2 Display materials on different terminals

2.2.1 App

Previously, Pinduoduo’s shared external links could be directly recognized by WeChat, and the source was displayed as the Pinduoduo App. The link title and description are simple and straightforward, without any unnecessary words. The link is in the form of a Deeplink, ensuring that new users can directly reach the event-related page when they open the App for the first time after completing the installation.

However, with Tencent's large-scale blocking of external links, Pinduoduo currently adopts the text + link format more often, and the links use a unified short link format to ensure that users will not feel overwhelmed when seeing a long string of densely packed URLs.

At the same time, in order to spread its message in the early days, Pinduoduo chose to create various playful and witty copywriting to ease possible embarrassment between acquaintances. Each functional module of Pinduoduo has a corresponding copywriting pool, and the copywriting shared by the same user at different times is displayed randomly. However, as the 10 billion yuan subsidy has become popular among the public, the current sharing copy is very simple and crude.

2.2.2 Mini Program

As an important part of the WeChat ecosystem, Tencent is currently relatively tolerant in its handling of mini programs. Therefore, Pinduoduo did not give up this important traffic pool, and its previous attempts on the App were directly transplanted to the mini program. Simple and crude pictures directly mark the user's interest points and attract users to click in. The simplest and most direct.

3. Postscript

After gaining an in-depth understanding of Pinduoduo's user portraits and its little thoughts on different product links, Pinduoduo perfectly interpreted the new e-commerce business model it represents: in-depth insight into user psychology + strong guiding design + strong conversion product process + the most appropriate category recommendation.

At the same time, as the 10 billion yuan subsidy has become popular, Pinduoduo, which used to focus on the sinking market, has also begun to optimize the supply chain and enrich the existing product categories in order to attract middle- and high-spending users in first- and second-tier cities.

At this point, the three e-commerce giants are obviously facing completely different situations: while Pinduoduo has established a firm foothold in the sinking market, it has begun to erode the strong purchasing power of middle- and high-spending users. Alibaba and JD.com, which have seen sluggish growth, have finally turned their attention to the huge incremental space in lower-tier cities and are intent on taking advantage of it.

In 2020, an e-commerce war covering all circles is about to begin. As for merchants and consumers, we will gain broader sales channels and cheaper products.

For product operators and product managers, Pinduoduo's social and gamification designs are of great reference value for their daily work.

Author: It's a small pot

Source: Market Dog