How to operate Internet products well?

1 The Internet does not lack products, it only lacks good products

? Before talking about the product operation cycle, let me give you a set of data. In July this year, I counted the number of Internet websites in China. There were 3.57 million in total, and there were more than 500,000 in IOS systems alone. Everyone knows that the cost of building a website and an APP is not very high now, but if we now build a website and a new APP, and put a new application online, we will find that our product has entered hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of dollars. Thousands of applications.

? How do we make our products stand out among millions of applications? Becoming the best product used by users is a very, very big topic, so I say that it is easy to build the Internet, but it is super, super difficult to do the Internet well. How do we make the Internet good? This includes analysis of user needs, product design, and product operation.

2 How do I operate a product that will be launched in 4 years?

Today I will share with you how to operate products well from an operational perspective and an operational cycle perspective.

I started with my work experience. In 2006, I and three other partners founded Ku6.com. In terms of the right time, place, people and people at that time, the time and conditions for us to launch Ku6.com were not the best, but it took us 4 years to build Ku6.com from an unknown new video website. We have become the top 3 in the industry. In 2010, our daily visits reached more than 20 million users. We were acquired by Shanda and became the first Internet video company listed in the United States.

In this process, we have gone through a 4-year operation cycle. If we split these four operating cycles, especially if we look at the operating strategies we adopted when the product was launched in the first year, we will definitely give you some inspiration. When our product was launched in September 2006, one of the biggest challenges we encountered at that time was how our website, as a new video website, could have a place among the more than 200 websites that had emerged. This was the biggest A challenge.

At that time, we came up with a strategy from an operational perspective: make money together. We found many netizens from many forums and Q groups, and we provided her with an operation mechanism. If she uploads a video to the website, we will put an advertisement in front of the video, and the advertising revenue generated will be based on the number of views of the video. The netizens who upload share the shares and earn money together. With this operating strategy, thousands of netizens upload content to us every day, and the number of content videos uploaded every day reaches 30,000-40,000. In this way, we obtained the first batch of user groups and won our first The number of batch video libraries and the accumulation of content.

On this basis, our second question in terms of operations was how to rapidly grow users on this basis. At that time, we found that the main source channel of video websites was Baidu. We went to talk to Baidu. Baidu’s Tieba did not have video functions. We developed video storage and video playback functions for Baidu Tieba for free. In this way, we obtained more user traffic from Baidu’s massive users, and the number of users increased rapidly.

The second user strategy is the giant *** dance. What was done in July 2007. Next, we found that we had a lot of users and a lot of content, and we needed users to stabilize. We have selected high-quality users among our users who have video creation and dissemination capabilities. Based on them, we have established an online original video alliance to help them further expand the value of video production and dissemination, making them more The good stuff comes to Ku6.com.

The above is our main operating strategy in the first year. We saw that we obtained the first batch of seed users, and then achieved explosive growth of seed users and the accumulation of seed users. This year The time is an important operational period for Ku6.com to go from being a new product to becoming an important competitor in the industry.

3 Three important cycles of product operation

If we summarize the three periods of operation, these are the three cycles I want to share with you today: seed period, outbreak period, and platform period.

1. The seed period is the stage when the first batch of users are formed after the new product is launched;

2. The explosion period: after the users of Zhong Zi period have settled, on this basis, The number of online users has exploded rapidly.

3. The plateau period is when we find that the development of users has slowed down and encountered a bottleneck, or the momentum of our product growth has been very rapid. We hope to consciously reduce the growth of the product to adjust the rhythm of the product. We will Entered a plateau period.

4 Seed Stage

Let’s talk about the first cycle: the seed stage.

Our operations revolve around products, with the goal of acquiring users, and products are the core of our operations. What we need to pay attention to in our products is MVP, minimum viable product. That is to say, when designing the first version of our new product, our product in the seed stage must be MVP. As long as our core functions are clear and our main process can be opened up, our product will be OK. Remember not to design our products too perfectly. Internet products are never perfect. They are constantly improved through application.

So during the seed stage operation process, our products should be simple, with clear core functions, and can be launched online as soon as the main process is run through.

For example, WeChat: WeChat version 1.0, released on January 21, 2011, is very simple. You only need to import QQ friends, chat with text and pictures, and change avatars. Other functions are gone. , this is version 1,0 of WeChat.

Let’s take a look at another product, Momo. You have also seen that it was launched on iOS in August 2011. The function is also very simple. The core function is to chat with beautiful and handsome men nearby. This is just such a function.

We also saw the secret, which was launched in April last year. We saw that her version 1.0 was very simple, just breaking news, commenting and liking. As a social product, there is no personal information or even gender until now, but the core new functions are very clear. This is the MVP of the product. So who is the user in Zhong Ziqi? This is a very critical question.

Now that the product is available, let’s look at the users. We must pay attention to being small and focused on users in the seed stage. Our rule of thumb suggests smaller is better, shrink and shrink again. We define it as the fan user group, the user group that has the greatest needs for our products and is most sensitive to core functions. When we found that we had narrowed the definition of seed user groups, we naturally found these user groups, and we knew how to operate and obtain these user groups, so the definition of user groups is very critical.