Soul product operation analysis report

In today's society where the Internet is widely connected, the cost of meeting someone is very low, but the cost of getting to know someone is very high. The impetuousness of society, the diversity of entertainment scenes, and the fast-paced life have brought the distance between people infinitely closer while also rapidly expanding. But we who are accustomed to the cruel reality have not given up our expectations for destiny.

A large number of companies have seized on users' demand for social interaction and developed a large number of personalized social software. From the initial Weibo, Douban, and Tieba to the later WeChat, Lofter, and Xiaohongshu, Internet social products have gradually become an indispensable part of users' lives.

This report analyzes the stranger social product Soul, and based on the current status of the Soul product, proposes targeted solutions to Soul's later user stickiness and user retention issues.

1. Product Overview

Soul focuses on stranger social networking. Unlike software like Tantan, Momo, and Baihe.com, it is a weak social software that uses algorithms to match soul mates for users through personality tests and label matching.

1.1 Experience Environment

Experience model: Huawei Honor V10

System version: Android 8.0

APP version: 3.36.0

Experience time: 2020.5.30

1.2 Product Introduction

Product Name: Soul

Product Type: Stranger Social

Product slogan: Follow your soul to find you

Product logo:

2. Market Background and User Analysis

According to iResearch Consulting's "White Paper on Marketing Strategies for Chinese Internet Social Enterprises", the number of independent monthly devices of Chinese social products has dropped from 25.6% in Q2 2018 to 11.0% in Q3 2019. This means that the development pace of my country's social products has begun to slow down and has officially entered a stage of slow growth.

Figure 1. Monthly growth of independent devices of Chinese social products - iResearch

Data shows that more than half of users use social products to expand their social circles, and an important criterion for them to evaluate the quality of Internet social products is whether the content provided by these products is what they are interested in.

Figure 2: Distribution of Chinese social product users by city – iResearch

The gender distribution of China's Internet social products is relatively balanced. In traditional stranger social software, such as Momo and Tantan, the number of male users often far exceeds the number of female users. Because compared with boys, girls are more wary of social interactions with strangers. It is more difficult for them to gain a sense of security and respect in these software. In addition, most female users are more emotional. Once they have an unpleasant experience, they often distrust the entire software. Therefore, female users are a big gap in the field of stranger social networking.

Figure 3 Gender ratio and age of social product users - iResearch

Figure 4 Gender distribution ratio of Tantan and Momo – Talking Data

Soul focuses on the social needs of female users and establishes a weak social environment where users can choose their chat preferences independently. If they choose "staying isolated today", the system will not match them with other users for chat. The criteria for starting a chat has also changed from direct appearance to "moments" that show various personalities.

Soul provides users with a comfortable social atmosphere and reduces the purposefulness of social interaction with strangers. Therefore, Soul is more popular among female users. In terms of gender ratio, nearly 70% of users are female users.

Figure 5 Gender ratio of Soul users - Analysys Qianfan

The report shows that the age of users of stranger social software is mostly concentrated between 19 and 35 years old.

According to the "2019 Post-95s Love Report" released by Tantan, more than 60% of post-95s believe that online dating is more effective than finding a partner. They still yearn for love at first sight and destiny. Instead of going on blind dates and waiting to be chosen, it is better to take the initiative to fall in love online and find the one they can.

The users of stranger social products are mostly concentrated between the ages of 19 and 35, among which those under 30 years old account for about half of the total users. Therefore, young users are the main users of stranger social products and are also the main users that need to be maintained.

Figure 6: More than 60% of post-95s believe that online dating is more effective than finding a partner - Tantan

Figure 7 Age distribution of social product users-Talking Data

Since Soul went online in 2016, it has gone through a startup and growth period in which it attracted a large number of users quickly, and has now transitioned to a saturated and mature period.

Judging from the user reviews obtained from Huawei's user market, the negative reviews of Soul's old users mostly focus on the problem of the product's "atmosphere". Due to the influx of a large number of new users, Soul as a whole has begun to lean towards hormonal social networking. A large number of more direct message push notifications such as "Do you want to fall in love?", "Find a girlfriend", and "Successfully meet with Souler" have appeared on the square, which is contrary to Soul's philosophy. Some users who were attracted by the "soulful" social promotion and the initial core users will feel "deceived" and become dissatisfied with the App.

While I was experiencing the product, I found that most users would switch to WeChat after becoming familiar with the conversation, which resulted in the loss of some users. Therefore, at this stage, the main problems facing Soul are user stickiness and user retention.

Figure 8 Selected screenshots of Soul user reviews

3. User Profile

Name: Tang Tang

Gender: Female

Age: 19

Occupation: English major, sophomore, single

Hobbies: playing games, singing, watching anime, cosplay

Scene: Tangtang has just entered her sophomore year, and her friends around her have gradually found their partners, but the person Tangtang has been waiting for for a long time has still not arrived. Since she was studying English, a major with a serious imbalance in the gender ratio, Tangtang felt that she needed to expand her circle of friends. By chance, she heard a good friend mention "Soul" to her, and she also saw an advertisement for Soul on Weibo. Tangtang was attracted by the concept of soul-based social networking and decided to try her luck. Maybe this was the moment of destiny. After downloading, registering, and filling out a test, Tangtang strolled around Soul's square and saw a lot of interesting life updates. Tangtang thought this was a good software. Even if she didn't meet the right person, she could still see all kinds of people. Tangtang followed the example of other users and posted a moment to briefly introduce herself. After clicking "Soul Match", someone took the initiative to greet Tangtang. The moment Tangtang looked at him, she was pleasantly surprised to find that he also liked to play "PUBG" and played the guitar very well. After chatting for a while, the other party sent a new guitar piece he had learned, and Tangtang sang along for a few lines. The other party thought Tangtang's voice was very nice, so they made an appointment to collaborate on recording a singing and playing video another day.

Name: Xiao Xiao

Gender: Female

Age: 25

Occupation: HR of an Internet company, in charge of campus recruitment, single

Hobbies: photography, reading, watching TV series

Scene: Having just finished a day of campus recruitment, Xiao Xiao habitually opened Soul to edit "Moments". "When we have a midnight snack, it is just a midnight snack. But when they have a midnight snack in the back street of the school after their evening classes, what is it? It is youth." Xiao Xiao added nine edited photos of a snack street full of fireworks to the text and clicked send. Xiaoxiao is an old user of Soul. Because the photos she takes are beautiful, she has a lot of followers. Soon after she posted a photo “instantly”, she received a lot of likes. Xiaoxiao replied to the comments one by one and also received some private messages. Xiaoxiao would click on these people's moments to take a look. She found that there was a Souler who happened to be an alumnus of this school and was currently working as an independent photographer. Xiaoxiao also likes taking photos on weekdays, so she started chatting with the other party about this topic.

Name: Yu Yu

Gender: Male

Age: 22

Occupation: Automation major, senior, preparing for postgraduate entrance exam, single

Hobbies: singing, watching anime, playing basketball

Scene: At 10:30, the library's closing bell rang. Yu Yu took a photo of what she had learned today, packed up her things and went back to the dormitory. After washing up and lying on the bed, I opened Soul and sent the photos I just took to Soul er. This is a friend Yu Yu recently met under the topic of "study check-in". She is also preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination. They agreed to supervise each other and check in to study together. They have been chatting for a while. Sometimes when they can't hold on any longer, they will talk to each other to cheer each other up. When you know that there is someone walking forward with you somewhere on the earth, it seems that all the difficulties are a little less heavy.

4. User Demand Analysis

4.1 Requirements Summary

We analyzed user needs based on user portraits, and we summarized the various types of needs of Soul users into three types: basic needs, expected needs, and exciting needs.

The list summarizes the various features that Soul has currently launched based on these needs and the highlights of these features. In the following sections, we summarize some of the current shortcomings of some functions and new sections that can be improved.

4.2 Feature Highlights

4.2.1 Soul Matching

As users spend more time using the app, the data obtained from personality tests and the tag data provided by users can more accurately match users with soulmates who share similar values ​​and interests. The matching efficiency is high, and users can be matched with online chat partners within 1-5 seconds.

Figure 9 Soul Test

4.2.2 Square

Soul's Square will recommend different moments to users based on the number of times they browse, like, and reply. Soul's recommendations are not only based on the number of likes and popularity, but also some users with fewer likes or even no likes will be randomly pushed. It increases the exposure rate of ordinary users and also increases the probability of communication between different users.

Soul has stratified high-quality users. In addition to following and recommending, it has added a new "Discover" section, which only recommends high-quality "Moments" with a large number of likes and recommends more high-quality UGC content.

Figure 10 Recommendation and discovery

4.2.3 Planet

The interactive design of the planet is very sophisticated. The small dots that make up the planet correspond to individual users. Click on the small dots to view the moments of the user, and you can chat privately with the other party if you are interested. Shake the phone to change a group of users. The design of "planet" has a romantic feeling of "just meeting you in the vast crowd", which is in line with the concept of Soul.

Figure 11 Planet users

4.2.4 Light up the Soulmate letters

In order to enhance user stickiness and create unique usage scenarios for Soul, Soul added the letters "soulmate" to the user chat interface. As the chat time increases, the love pool on the chat interface will also increase. When the love pool is full, a letter will be lit up. The later it is, the more love is needed to light up the letter. In order to light up all the letters, some users will continue to use Soul to chat.

Figure 12 Light up the soulmate letters

5. Function Optimization Suggestions

According to the analysis in the previous article, the core problems Soul is facing at its current stage are user stickiness and user retention.

For these two types of problems, we need to meet users' expected needs more, create more usage scenarios for users, and improve user satisfaction. In addition, we need to try our best to create unique usage scenarios within Soul, increase the retention rate of old users, and reduce the user churn rate to other software.

5.1 Create a unique usage scenario - game house

In terms of creating user-specific usage scenarios, Soul has newly launched a variety of usage scenarios such as love bells, group chat parties, and facekini matching.

However, the author believes that the "Love Bell" is contrary to the core of Soul - weak social interaction. When users meet a stranger directly without being prepared, it will increase their sense of insecurity in stranger social interaction. Love bells, group chat parties, and facekini matching are mostly used in scenarios where two strangers meet. Therefore, how to maintain the usage needs of old users after creating the encounter is currently a weak point in Soul's design and is also the key point to improving retention rate.

Psychology shows that when two people are not familiar with each other, doing something together can effectively promote emotional communication between the two parties.

Therefore, asking strangers to complete simple puzzle games together can serve as an icebreaker for chatting with strangers. After users become familiar with the game, mini-games can also be used to kill time and promote emotional communication among users.

Compared with other games that are mini-programs, Soul has a larger user base and is suitable for the development of mini-games. Various props and avatars can be launched in the later stages of the game to encourage users to consume. Moreover, game social interaction is consistent with the concept of Soul's light social interaction, without too strong a purpose, creating a comfortable environment for users to make friends.

Soul has always been promoting the development of small games, for example, Soul’s latest electronic pets; the draw and guess, dice rolling, and face-pinching games in the private chat window; and the Pia game in voice matching. However, the entrances to some mini-games are deep and difficult to find, and the two parties in the chat have different intentions and difficult to coordinate time, so it is difficult to get a response to game invitations and the click-through rate is low.

Therefore, a "Game House" can be set up at the entrance of the homepage, and all mini-games can be moved there, gathering users who like to play games and have time to play games, to promote the formation of game social interaction. In terms of game content, in addition to the original mini-games, other game types can be added, such as "Crazy Guess the Song", "Truth or Dare", "Script Killing", etc.

The following is a prototype of the game house:

Figure 13 Game House Prototype - Home Page Entrance

Enter the game house on the planet page, users can select games for random matching, or create a room or use the room number given by a close friend to search for a room and play games with close friends.

The picture below is a prototype of random matching. After the user clicks "Random Match", a tab pops up above to display the game type. The game mode can be selected as two-player battle or multi-player battle. Two-player battles provide users with more encounter scenarios, and multiplayer battles can add a team mode in the future, allowing users to play with friends, providing more usage scenarios for old users.

Figure 14 Game House Prototype - Random Matching

The options for creating a room include "Game Type", which includes all playable mini-games; "Room Name", which allows users to customize; "Game Mode", which is currently set to "Two-Player Battle" or "Multi-Player Battle" mode, and "Team Battle" can be added in the future to create more usage scenarios; "Room Encryption" can be turned on to prevent other users from entering by mistake.

Take the creation of a "You Draw, I Guess" room as an example to draw a prototype. After the room is created, you can wait for other "randomly matched" players to enter, or directly invite close friends to the game.

As shown in the figure, the page provides multiple user invitation channels, guiding users to use invitation when they are created for the first time.

Figure 15 Game house prototype - creating a room

Similarly, in terms of the specific content of the game, we also chose to draw the "You Draw, I Guess" game room as a sample. Similar to the existing "You Draw, I Guess", when both parties enter the room, click Ready to start the game. The user selects the question and sets the drawing content according to the answer entered by the user. Currently, in Soul’s “You Draw, I Guess”, users’ guesses will not be displayed in real time, which reduces the fun of conversation and is not conducive to making friends.​

Figure 16 Original “You Draw, I Guess” entry selection

Therefore, we have improved the above situation. The guessed content is displayed in real time, and after the guess is completed, you return to the message board, which displays all chat records. After the game is completed, all drawings are displayed and users can download and share them with their opponents. If you meet someone interesting, you can also click on their game avatar, follow them, or chat with them privately.

Figure 17 Game House Prototype—“You Draw, I Guess” Improvement

5.2 Optimizing user experience - focusing on topic navigation

The main gameplay of Soul is to attract other users to communicate by posting moments. In order to guide users to produce more high-quality content, Soul has designed a variety of user topics and randomly pushed them to the square homepage. Users can also submit topic content themselves, and setting topics when publishing moments can bring more exposure.

Market research also shows that one of the main criteria users use to judge the quality of software is whether the content pushed by the software is of interest to them. Therefore, guiding the topic and maintaining the topics that users are concerned about is another key point in user retention.

Figure 18 Topic

However, at present, it is not convenient to view the topics you follow in Soul. The topics that users follow are simply stacked linearly above the follow page in the form of text, which users can easily ignore.

The operation of viewing topics is to keep swiping back until you reach the last topic the user follows, which is difficult to operate; to unfollow, one even needs to click into the topic to operate, which brings a lot of redundant operations.

Figure 19: Areas for optimization in the user follow-up topic operation

Therefore, we optimized the operation of the user following the topic, and the specific prototype diagram is shown below.

Change the topics that users follow to slider navigation and display them above the follow page in the form of pictures and text to better attract users' attention. In order to reduce user operations, the sliding topics above only show the 5 most recently viewed topics. To view more topics, click the "double arrow" at the back to enter the user's follow-up topic interface, and click the corresponding topic to enter the topic module.

Unfollow Just click the "Following button" to unfollow. At the end of the topic list, two module entrances, "Today's Topic List" and "May Be Interested in", are added to guide users to find topics of interest and extend user usage time.

Figure 20 Prototype diagram of topic navigation optimization

5.3 Accurate Matching - Guiding Users to Take Personality Tests

Soul matches users with corresponding Soulmates through personality tests, but except for the basic personality test that users are forced to take when they register for the first time, deeper personality tests require users to find the entrance themselves and actively conduct tests and matches.

During my experience using the product, I clearly felt that after completing the test, the quality of the users I matched and the degree of matching of their three views were higher than when I first used the product.

Therefore, for some old users, Soul can regularly guide users to take tests to better match users with Soulmates who match their personalities. Moreover, test questions are more attractive to female users, and interesting tests can be pushed randomly to collect more data. For users who do not like to do test questions, you can also set a "no more reminders" button to guide users to check the test entrance and then no more reminders will be given to them.

To prevent continuous push notifications from causing users to feel negative emotions, we can initially set the push notification time to push intermediate test questions to users when they open the APP after using it for one week; push advanced test questions to users after using it for one month; and push advanced test questions again after using it for 6 months or 1 year. The specific prototype diagram is shown below.

Figure 21 Personality test push prototype

VI. Conclusion

In today's society where there is no longer any parental arrangement or matchmaker's advice, a large number of older singles have emerged. The rapid development of the times forces us to urge ourselves to move forward in big strides, but we will inevitably feel lonely in our spare time.

In the more conservative Chinese society, people are more wary of social interactions with strangers. Different from social apps like Momo and Tantanni, Soul has opened up new ideas for the field of stranger social networking. It firmly grasps the social needs of female users, creates a weak social environment, and establishes a relatively comfortable and less purposeful stranger social software.

At present, soul has passed the stage of initial publicity and large-scale traffic diversion. How to retain users and maintain user stickiness is the core problem that soul needs to solve at this stage.

This article starts with market analysis and focuses on the three demands of social users: "want to know what they are interested in", "new features are interesting", and "expand their social circle".

It proposes to add a new user usage scenario "Game House" to improve user retention by using distinctive scenarios. Optimize the "Follow Topics" navigation, improve user experience, better guide users to produce high-quality content, attract more users, and establish a good product "atmosphere". Finally, we proposed to regularly push reminders to users to complete the "soul test" and obtain more user data to optimize the matching algorithm, provide users with more accurate matches, meet the expected needs of old users, and match them with more suitable and interested users.

Author: Tea Bag Tree

Source: Tea Bag Tree