Challenges of user conversion Funnel Model for software development

What is a user conversion funnel model?

There is a long process between an ordinary user getting a software from a software company's marketing activities and becoming a paying user of the software. In this process, there are many links that may cause the user to lose interest or patience, so as to give up further attempts and eventually lose the user. We can describe the process from the users who know the software to the paying users of the software:

when a user learns a software from a software company's marketing activities, such as Weibo or advertisement, if they are interested, they will click the link in the advertisement to the downloaded website to learn the software details. If he thinks the software is exactly what he wants, he will download and install it. After the software installation is complete, he may run the software and try it for free. After a trial period of time, if he is satisfied, he may be willing to pay for the official version or pay for the software.

the loss of users may occur in each of the above steps. Even if the user accesses the software download Webpage through advertisement marketing, if he does not find the function description he is interested in the software details description, he may give up the download. If you want to download the software, if you need to fill in a lot of information during the download process, the installation steps require complex settings, all of which can make users lose patience and give up further attempts. Similarly, if he does not find a reason to pay for the free trial, he will not be willing to pay for the software.

Generally, only a few users continue to the next step. Generally, only one of the one thousand users who know the software will become a paid user. In addition, it is worth noting that the proportion of software users eventually converted into paying users is different through different channels. Users who know the software through the recommendation of paying users, the ultimate conversion rate is the highest.

Funnel Model challenges to software development

in traditional software development, the development team attaches the most importance to software functions. Programmers are always racking their brains to write cooler features. At the same time, the development manager will allocate the most complex functional modules to the most senior and excellent programmers. Relatively speaking, software download web pages and installation programs do not seem so challenging, so these jobs are usually assigned to graduated programmers or even interns.

The previous funnel model tells us that most users have already said goodbye to the software before they see the cool and cool features. For these users, it is meaningless to make the software more powerful. For them, the reason for leaving them may be that the Download button on the download page is not obvious enough, or the user registration steps before the download are too cumbersome.

A software development team analyzed user behavior data and found that the conversion rate from Software downloading to software installation was very low. After further analysis, they found that the download time was too long due to the installation package being too large, which caused many users to interrupt the download process. As a result, they tried to compress the size of the installation package to greatly increase the user's conversion rate.

The funnel model requires the software development team to transform the thinking model from function-centric to truly user-centric. The reason for the user to choose whether to use or discard a software is not only the powerful functionality of the software. We need to focus on the user experience in every step of browsing the Web page, downloading, installing, and trying out. It is worthwhile to spend more energy optimizing user satisfaction in the early stages, because users will leave if they feel unsatisfied in the early stages, so it is meaningless to do better in the later stages. From a technical point of view, it is not challenging to develop web pages and install programs. However, this is the first impression of users and is a prerequisite for users to experience the powerful functions in the future.