How the Internet should do traffic

Absrtact: Is doing the flow, do the user is not once and for all, must be a motorized, durable, long-term operation. Why do traffic? First of all, do flow is to do the user, do the product. It's not about hiring kids, spending money on ads, or hiring a few business operations

is doing the flow, do the user is not once and for all, must be a motorized, durable, long-term operation. Why do traffic? First of all, do flow is to do the user, do the product. It's not a matter of hiring a few kids, spending money on ads, or hiring a few business operations that can be solved automatically. In essence, the CEO, product manager to think for themselves, and this is actually a lot of misunderstanding.

Why do traffic?

First of all, do flow is essentially to do the user, do products.

It's not a matter of hiring a few kids, spending money on ads, or hiring a few business operations that can be solved automatically. In essence, the CEO, product manager to think for themselves, and this is actually a lot of misunderstanding.

One mistake is, the simplification of the blanking indicator.

That year's Internet companies, whether it is a video site or financial sites, often in the league to put some breast, this hot title, the flow to their own website. They invest a lot to improve their site's recent operating metrics. But does it really make a real difference? The truth sounds simple enough to be forgotten at the level of execution. In fact, the promotion of the Internet, including the promotion of the previous time group purchase website, 80% or even 90% spent money is meaningless.

Another mistake is to ignore the product.

Product, user acquisition and operation are in fact the Trinity. Many of the founder of product origin, I believe that as long as the product itself is done, the next promotion is very simple. The flow of traffic is actually the product how to reach the user, which is as important as the product itself, but also a product problem. For example, Zynga's early game itself was no different from the previous one, but it was the first good use of Facebook to bring the game from a core player to a blue-ocean user. The new approach to user arrivals can be a huge innovation in itself.

The second basic question is when to start spending money to get users.

Most of the way to do the flow is actually no money. Relying on the performance and operation of their own products to obtain users, is the legitimate way to obtain users, but why pay to do the user?

There may be two answers: first, accelerate growth. Second, the need for seed users.

Both of these are reasonable answers. There are two situations in the actual operation, one is that when you get the user can earn money, more than pay, you can unlimited money to obtain users, this is beyond doubt. A lot of online games are like this.

But if you lose money to get users, your goal should be to achieve a point of growth. According to the Internet's custom, when a brand or user group reaches a certain density, then can achieve a certain growth. If the situation is not particularly chaotic, real users, active users to achieve millions, or to reach a certain level of word-of-mouth, coupled with the real reputation, the real search index can be over million, the product itself is good, you can gain from growth. And to do the user growth, the goal is to achieve this as soon as possible from the growth point.

If so, the purpose is clear. You want to figure out what that point is? What are the real metrics needed to reach that point? If you do all the promotion is to help achieve that point, it is effective; if you do not help you reach that point, such as a financial portal to find some nude pictures on the network to attract clicks, although the indicators are reached, But actually it doesn't help that you accumulate real metrics to that point, which is totally in vain.

Three "relative" for traffic

The most basic concept after finishing, the next is my own so many years summed up a few relative bar.

First, spread. The first absolute truth of a transmission is that the total amount of traffic you can get in any particular method and specific channel is limited, and the more you want to get, the more expensive the unit price, the higher the cost.

Whether it's a portal, a search engine, or anything else, it's the total number of users who meet your goals. Take the search engine as an example, which has the most suitable and cheapest keywords, for example, you invest in a keyword, search traffic 5,000 a day, these get over is the cheapest. But if you want to get 10,000 traffic a day, then the second 5,000 traffic to find a less overlap with your keywords, but with your user matching ratio is lower, may auction prices higher, the effect is worse. In short, it's even worse if you want to get 5,000 more traffic.

This leads to two phenomena: A, you must have a very clear understanding of how to get traffic; B, your access to traffic must be diversified.

The second relative is that all traffic has a general-purpose and proprietary distinction.

You can get the traffic you need from a variety of user entrances, free of charge, but at a cost. The cost of these resource exchanges, usually only you can use, and others use inconvenient or to others no use of traffic, but is the cheaper traffic. All is useful for all, everyone take out can give oneself to guide the user, it is very expensive traffic.

For example, who put the hao123 home page, it is useful, so the position is very expensive. But the early days of the novel site is very worthless, 5,000 pieces can be tens the flow of the novel site's key location monthly. Because in that era, that flow no matter what advertising, do not use any promotion. But that flow later in the Promotion page tour is very useful.

The third relative is that any flow of practice is not long-term effective, there are not long window period, recession period, and the first to find a flow of the best mining methods to benefit most people.

This approach will soon reach a very high price, and then gradually into a recession.

For example, when I was in Google in the early 2006, access to Internet café traffic is very cheap. One is no one to obtain, and second, no one knows how to load the traffic from the Internet bar back. Not only do many people not know the price, but also do not know the method. Including 2003, the earliest wave to know how to do search engine optimization webmaster, the best use of people accounted for a great advantage.

However, the user's entry is constantly changing, and the rules and methods of the user's portal are changing. So do the flow, do the user is not once and for all, must be a motorized, durable, long-term operation.

Every month there are ways to change from a very good bargain to a general one, or even some will be replaced, and then some new channels and methods will sprout. For example, Tencent opened the micro-letter interface, Apple released IOS6, any changes to think about what I have to do.

Specific details and practices

1. Who is the effective user?

Do the flow of the first to consider what is the problem? user base. This stage wants someone to use your product, is often a lot of people do not think clearly before the flow of one thing, this problem is very important for three reasons:

1 first with your product phase

Pinterest was relatively stable in the early stages of development, so it did not develop the so-called silk users in the early days of the development of users; His first priority is to develop a user who is a photographer. Because it is a beautiful photo to share with you, if you want to attract the real main users, first of all have very good content. If a lot of middle-aged women start to enter, without a good photographer as the core, the product's purpose is ruined. Each phase of the flow promotion, first of all have a product purpose and user purposes.

2 The user to reach the tipping point and the growing point is the need for density

If you buy 1000 users, suppose that 100 of them are in a different circle, there are only 10 per user base. This can not be done on any user base tipping point and the growth of the self. If these 1000 people are in the same user group, such as a circle or a school organization, at least this promotion in this circle can achieve growth. 1000 of people lost to 800 after a period of time, but after the formation of a nucleus, the 800 people will become 1000 or even 1200 in a period of time. Otherwise, the promotion of these 1000 people spent after spending, because the crowd density is too small, after a few days nothing to keep down. The same amount of 1000 will make a big difference.

3 Another important reason is media selection

The properties of each media vary widely and prices vary. What criteria do you choose for the media? is the unit price per media or total media flow? These things are not important, the most important is the so-called effective flow, or effective cost-effective, including effective user behavior.

4 What do you want the user to do?

You need to figure out who your users are and what you want users to do. For example, you are a high-end luxury consumption of the site, you put ads on the bar, playing on the hao123, not to say no users, but you spend money to buy 10,000 traffic may only 10 are related to your people, And there's probably only one of these 10 people who thinks about you when you're on this site. Because the 9 people are related to the crowd, what may be done on this site causes him not to think about what you advertise.

2, product requirements

If the product is to be promoted, first have to make sure which few things to do? Product and quality are the very right answers. Once you are ready to do the promotion, or to understand these things, the first question is whether the product is good enough to be able to set the target of these people to promote the situation. There are several steps to be made.

1 The product itself is worth promoting to these users. You have been tested in existing users to ensure that the target users you are promoting are good enough for the performance parameters in your product.

2 Your product must be able to be promoted. Promotion is when you spend your money buying a place in someone else, or you buy a user's chance to get there. Users will only give you 10 seconds, and your product is not clear, concise, clear, in 10 seconds to make users interested in exploring your product, and in the next 3 minutes will be willing to use your products again. And you have a way to continue to contact this user within a week, to find ways to let users back. This is the basic concept of 10 seconds, three minutes and a week.

3 You need to have some basic tracking code, whether it is software or website, users from different channels you can give these users accurate positioning, and know the different channels of the difference between users, what the difference is, and other users where the difference. If you don't have this sense, doing promotion is a waste of money.

3. Product Promotion Steps

The promotion of a product to divide a lot of steps, from the user first use to the real user maintenance and fixed down, add together is a complete chain.

First of all, the first thing is the media choice. These practices are very numerous and are specific to each media, each method, and these front-end operations are different. For example, for search engines, spend money you buy what keyword, do not spend money how do you do seo? How to make your page appear in more search results, this is a big principle.

The second landingpage, for the Web page is relatively simple, is to click on the ads after the end of the page to jump success. This ensures that your landing page is fast enough and has very high compatibility. No matter what browsers and what kind of speed of the network, must be in a few seconds to landing successfully.

Take the website for example, even if the company all other servers can not afford the best, the server should be placed in the best room. If the other pages use a lot of dynamic oversized pictures, this landing page will be made into a static page or a very small page, so that it can be opened very quickly.

If it is the client, first jump to a download, let the user download successfully. This download may fail if the user does not open to allow downloading of the site from a third source. So the download process also has to have a clear hint to help him solve the problem. Even if the download succeeds, the user may have forgotten about it. In particular, users from such places such as pea pod download 10 software In a batch, may have forgotten this. How to improve the success rate of the download, how to let the user activation to open it, this is a very important step

For example, a lot of software, even if not very large software, first to download a 200K download, and then download. First, 200K is easy. Second, download 20 trillion when it is possible to download software stopped or users restart the machine. Third, even if you restart the machine, the download can continue to download, and after downloading can ensure that your software to run. There are many ways to do this on a mobile phone, especially in a larger size. For example, in Android, especially for the early models, if your size is more than two or three trillion will be more trouble, if it is a few 10 trillion, the standard in China's mobile phone SD card capacity is very small, users download the finished can not be installed.

The third step is a user conversion. This involves a lot of questions, such as how your product will impress users within 10 seconds. First of all, can you use a sentence of not more than 10 words to describe what your product is doing? or your product has a lot of features, but in this promotion phase it is very clear that the product wants to attract which user group, I want users to do. YY is inherently capable of many things, but in a specific promotion phase is very specific. For example, yy for Baidu post a private group to do the promotion, the characteristics of the product is weakened to "here are countless places to listen to music." The best thing is to be able to understand in a sentence and see what the product is all about. If you can't do this, at least try to understand what the product is for the customer base. If this is not understood, it is difficult to have a good effect.

There is also a root cause, through the promotion of the users back, theoretically are not the concept of users, do not know your product. And there's a big possibility that he's a user with a lot of products and maybe even used your competitor's product, so why would he switch to your side? So, these 10 words not only to say that your product to bring him the benefits, but also to tell him clearly, you can help him complete this matter, while It's a lot better than the others. Unless you are the first to implement this function, and this feature has a strong demand. For example, if talkbox just do promotion, just say "I am doing free talk", because there is no other mobile phone software in the world has this function. But the voxer he had to do in the first part of the day had to emphasize that "I can speak at the same time" because you are not the first person to do it. So in the 10-word description, you want to understand what these people are doing here, and what are the outstanding advantages.

Also, the essence of this page is to let users know what you are doing within 10 seconds, and to understand what you have in it. If you are lucky, the product itself has a ready-made page to meet the user's needs, but 99% of the case is that the page must be done alone.

First, in 10 seconds to impress the user, two, jump to the user to the product has a deeper understanding and exploration, or users are willing to do a deeper level of interaction, you have to design all the entrance. The user looked at for 10 seconds and was willing to continue to watch, to give users a guided tour. This time hope is not too high, you can set it to 3 minutes. What do you want users to do in these 3 minutes? This is a lot of possibilities, because everyone's purpose is different and the practice is different. Some may want to further deepen the user's impression, some want to give the user to see some website content. In addition to let some users of the product impression, but also to allow a small number of users to leave something, you can take the initiative to find him.

This is also a number of sites to adopt a phased approach to the registration of the reasons for the first use of users only need to leave the e-mail address or mobile phone number and so on. If you want to allow users to provide more information, one method is phased, the other way is to give users a strong reason. For example, no user will really provide birthday, but some time ago we in a cosmetics site, to give users a simple skin test, the user unknowingly put their age to tell us. There are a lot of skills in this area, I was in Google's many products for different channels and different user groups to write pages are not the same, that is, fine to this point.

The next step is more important process, can put a user first visit and after two weeks inside, take it as an RPG upgrade game. The user has a preliminary understanding of you, you also know how to contact him, if the user in two weeks the second, the third time to reach the site, you should gradually let him deepen the impression and show more features, and gradually improve the user to your goodwill, to ensure that in two weeks after the user will be able to visit again. The user import process is very detailed.

Like social games and even traditional client-side games, in this often hard work. Because it is a direct line of life and death for them, and they can see the money right away. But for the product that does not make money, not a attributes is behind, often very ignore this process. Those games rarely show users the first time they play or the first level, and they don't force users to make friends at the first level. It is very clear that they set the user to a growth curve and what functions they give to the user in a few days or at what stage.

In gaming or social networking sites, for example, different practices can be several times less than the 3-day retention rate, one-week retention rate and two-week retention rate. All of these conversion work, the media choose good and bad can have several times the gap; Landing page Matching each step can also have a gap of 10%, the last conversion, two times conversion to improve a lot of actually is very easy. and two transitions to three transitions, to three days to retain, and then to seven days to retain, or even to two weeks, each link as long as the difference of 10%, the final result will be several times worse. The complete retention not only needs you to the product, the user clear understanding, but also needs the meticulous operation, the plan, the product development team intervention.

Socialization

Just a little bit more about the socialization of products. Whether in the United States, China, whether in the traditional application areas, social areas, or e-commerce areas, there has been a phenomenon: dozens of people, or even more than 10 people, in a very short period of time to achieve 10 million users, and can achieve very high growth, to provide users with high value. This example is particularly numerous. There are several problems involved in this, what is socialization? The internal socialization and socialization of products, and the socialization of products outside. If we want to achieve this realm, content and service is generated by the user, the promotion of these products and two communication is also through the socialization method to achieve. is to let your users become your author, become your trading supervisor, become your marketing staff, can only use more than 10 20 people at a very high speed development.

Even if you can't do this, there is always a link that can do this, such as the product itself is not socialized, but the promotion means is socialized. Socialization is not a mysterious concept, there is no social network in the early days, everyone uses social marketing, if there is no social marketing, Facebook did not have other social sites, how does Facebook promote itself? This topic is very big, we can find another chance to discuss the problem alone next time.