Recently, a startup friend asked me to brag about whether the project he was working on was a good product. As a developer who has been in the business for less than 10 years, it was a difficult question to answer, but I had to hang on for the sake of face. Let’s take a look at two products that I think are better over the years.
A certain answer
Is a paid voice question and answer product, the platform has many well-known big V in various fields, can help you answer all kinds of questions, such as medical, legal, financial, workplace and so on. Consider a product scenario:
When the child has a large small red rash, but it does not itch, many parents may choose to go to the hospital. If the time is at night before going to bed, the willingness to go to the hospital may be reduced, not to mention the distance, but the registration queue a series of processes make people headache. When in doubt, consult a reputable pediatrician online to take photos of your child’s rash and describe basic information. Pediatricians will give a relatively accurate answer based on the description, for example, it is because the weather is dry and there is no need to go to the hospital. You should pay attention to moisturizing. Let’s say the question is 50 yuan, then for you to save not only registration fees, but also more time costs. If you do need to go to the hospital, know in advance whether your illness has significantly alleviated your parents’ anxiety, and then decide when to go according to the doctor’s advice.
You think this is the end of it? That’s wrong. The brilliance of the product lies in the back.
When the question you ask is a universal one, many people will encounter the same problem, and asking the same question again will cause a waste of resources. Although doctors can increase their income, they can not enhance the sense of accomplishment of “saving people by dispensing medicine”.
So the product designed a “paid eavesdropping” mechanism, only need to pay a small fee to hear the doctor’s answer, for “eavesdropper” that is to save time and money. Not only that, but the doctors also continue to get paid, say, 80% of what the eavesdropper pays, so they can keep increasing their income by eavesdropping on repeated questions as long as they return to as many questions as possible.
The remaining 20 percent is split between the questioner and the platform, which in turn encourages the questioner to ask better questions. Not only can you solve your own problems, but you can also earn a fee for asking questions, or even a profit.
I remember once a person asked wang Sicong, the “national husband”, a question on the platform, which attracted a large number of netizens. It is said that Wang Sicong answered 32 questions in the third week of The fenda online, and earned 238,000 yuan.
This product has changed its name now. After all kinds of experiences, it is no longer brilliant. However, it does not affect that it is a good product.
WeChat reading
The name suggests it’s a reading app, and there are tons of reading apps on the market, as well as hardware like the Kindle designed specifically for reading. How is it different from other software?
The new user can select 3 books from the specified book list and purchase books with reading coins. You might say, “Hey, isn’t that a beginner’s package?” Yes, ordinary reading apps don’t seem to have a beginner’s package, but wechat Reading borrows from the product design of the game, although it’s a small step, and plays an icebreaker role in acquiring users.
Other reading software do a good job in reading experience. However, the biggest fear of reading software is the lack of user stickiness. Even if users have books, they may not really spend time to read them. Wechat Reading also adopts the strategy of the game. It will give you reading coins according to your reading time, making use of the greed of human nature to easily create a sticky growth engine.
The greed is endless. Once you’ve spent all your coins, you’ve maxed out this week, and one of your favorite books is on sale, you’ll wish there was a free way to get your coins. Here comes the opportunity, you can pull a friend to join wechat reading, each of you will get 5 extra reading coins, wechat reading is based on wechat login, pull new cost is very low. Easily build viral growth engines.
There are some nice functions in wechat reading, such as “ideas” and “reading list”, which in my opinion is not a plus. The last function to be mentioned is awesome. It also takes a long time to finish reading a book by using the laziness of human nature. If the text of the book is extremely boring, it is really impossible to help but want to give up.
Wechat Reading has created a “we media” platform with countless storytellers. Before buying a book, you can listen to the audio of the storyteller to understand the general content of the book, and then make a decision.
The above are my two favorite products. What are the common features of these two products?
To the pain
Q&a, at a point in time you need to know the answers to other areas to solve the current problem you are facing. Reading, longing for knowledge and personal improvement. Two requirements are real.
Simply speaking from the pain point, there are many products on the market, such as Q&A products such as Baidu Know, Zhihu, 360 Q&A, etc., which can solve the pain of acquiring knowledge in other fields. Reading products are countless, such as: palm reading, read more, starting point reading, douban reading… The product similarity is high, the experience is different, that’s all.
Cutting to the point of pain is only the first step, can single point breakthrough is the key!
Value of the flow
What makes these two products good? While solving the pain points for users, it also creates more user value.
| product | Pain points | Address user pain points | User value created |
|---|---|---|---|
| A certain answer | Other domain specific knowledge to solve ongoing problems | Users get professional, authoritative answers to the problems they are facing | Get the answer and become a contributor to the content and profit from it |
| WeChat reading | Thirst for knowledge and personal advancement | Solve the user’s thirst for knowledge by reading | Earn more coins as you read * (10 coins for 5 hours of reading, costing an average of 10-15 coins per book) * |
| The game | To be bored or pass the time | Play a game | Get upgrades, better equipment, more damage, more glory, etc |
The value created should promote the next consumption of users (not only the consumption behavior includes: reading, beating monsters in online games, etc., please forgive my lack of vocabulary, it is difficult to find such a word), consumption continues to transform, forming a flow of value closed loop **.
It can be seen that many products in the market have similar mechanisms, such as sign-in and bonus points. The consumption of these points itself becomes a problem, and it is difficult to affect users again. In other words, it does not generate real value for users. Of course, this has a lot to do with the product form. For example, in the scenario of selling glasses, users will only buy once, no matter how stimulating it is, it is difficult to buy again.
The human nature
The way to make money is written in the criminal law, to make a good product does not have to break the law, but must have “humanity”. A good product can often reflect the original needs of human nature. In western religion, there are seven deadly SINS: lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, anger, jealousy and arrogance. These seven deadly SINS are a high summary of primitive needs.
Lust, a lot of products are to use this one human nature characteristic, you slowly recall, can think of what product certainly, anyway I am not to know!
Greedy, the web disk we use all the time, you can get a terabyte of storage for free by doing some tasks, and it’s really hard to store that many files on a web disk unless… Right? So product managers are using human greed to increase engagement. The aforementioned wechat reading is also the use of greed to promote the new. Take advantage of the fact that it’s easy to make a purchase when a book is on sale.
Lazy, the recent typical example is take-out platform, how many restaurants are downstairs in your home, dead or alive do not want to go downstairs, is because of laziness. The same is true of “book-telling” in recent years. People are too lazy to take the time to read, hoping that someone will read the book and tell you the essence of the book.
Anger. You might be wondering how “anger” relates to the product. It doesn’t benefit the product to make users angry, but there is one scenario that does the opposite. In online games you will always meet level and you are about the same, but the equipment is better than you a few times the player, in the PK field easy torture kill you. Yes, you’re angry, right? That anger will make you spend more time in the game than you want to (lazy)? It doesn’t matter. You can be a paying player like him.
Envy, arrogance, is also in the game performance incisively and vividly, limited to length no longer list one by one.
conclusion
A good product needs to hit the point of pain and at the same time continue to create user value, so that the flow of value can make users stick with it. It is necessary to integrate humanity into each link of the product. Of course, it is impossible to let users become addicted to the product at the beginning, and they need to constantly explore in human nature.
The above is purely my personal opinion, there may be many students do not agree, fortunately, personal opinion does not need to be recognized by others, thank you!