Stick to the critical path

The funnel method, which I'm going to introduce today, is particularly useful for increasing conversion rates. Do you remember the e-commerce formula mentioned before? Sales = flow * conversion rate * customer unit price. When our flow is unchanged, if the conversion rate can be doubled, the sales can also be doubled! In my consulting experience, conversion rates are the key factor that many teams don't get stuck on, and there's plenty of room for improvement. It's easier to double conversion rates than traffic. If you don't have the money or resources to expand your traffic, remember to use funnel analysis to work on the conversion rate!

What is the funnel analysis method?

It records the user conversion rates of different key nodes in a scenario to discover the link of user loss, locate the reasons for user loss, and find ways to improve the conversion rate.

Let's take the most common application scenario. The shopping process in e-commerce is a typical transformation funnel model. If you think about it, let's say 10,000 people go to the front page of an e-commerce site, it's like they go to the wide opening at the top of the funnel, and then they go through a couple of steps, and finally they get to the payment process, which is the narrow opening at the bottom of the funnel, and maybe there are 10 people left. Distilling the steps from start to finish is the critical path. So at what step did the intermediate users leave? Is there a way to reduce churn? By sorting out the impact factors along the critical path, we can begin to improve conversion rates.

Second, how to establish the funnel analysis model?

Step 1: Determine the transformation path

What are the key steps in the whole process from user access to payment?

Let's take the simplest steps for a user to enter Tmall to buy things as an example. First, the user enters the home page of Tmall to browse. Step 2: Click the product to enter the details page; The third step is purchase payment. The first to the second step, which we usually call browse conversion, is the key to attract more people to the baby details page; The second to third step, we call it purchase conversion, and the key is to get more people to buy. Most people tend to combine steps one through three and call it the conversion rate. Through the split we can know that the conversion rate is not high, in the end is the browsing conversion rate of the problem or the purchase conversion rate of the problem.

Loading in...

Step 2: Analyze the reasons for the loss

For example, the user's behavior from the Tmall home page to the product details page may be influenced by the product location, whether the banner image is attractive to click, the product name, and the price

The user's behavior from product details page to purchase may be influenced by evaluation, sales volume, baby details page, customer service, promotional activities, etc.

Step 3: Select significant influencing factors for improvement

As mentioned in the previous step, there are many reasons for churn. We can optimize one by one, but there are often trade-offs and priorities involved. Some factors are very difficult for us to optimize, do not change with our subjective will, or spend a lot of energy is not effective. For example, the location of goods, now Taobao, Tmall many positions are thousands of faces, artificial intelligence recommendation presented. We can't decide who gets on the front page, so this factor can be put on hold. They focus more on whether the banner image or the first image of the product is compelling to click on. This is something we can optimize subjectively, and the results are immediate.

Funnel analysis can be used in many scenarios besides shopping malls. Most transformation processes can be abstracted as a funnel.

In long-term practice, I have developed a habit of passing movies, which is to close my eyes and pass over the critical path of an activity in my mind. Constantly questioning myself, in each step, users will feel abrupt, attractive enough, whether I can intentionally add some operation points, to lead more users to the next step?

For example, Posting advertorials through public accounts to attract readers to participate in activities is also a typical funnel model. There's actually a lot of caution machines in there.

In the first step, the user receives the push and clicks to read. The key factors in this step are the title and cover image. So a lot of new media classes will teach you clickbait, and clickbait is actually right, as long as you don't overdo it. At least it makes it possible for your good content to reach more people. In addition, after the revision of the public number, the cover picture is more important, you will see some operations do well the public number will make full use of the cover picture, plus the key words of this article, to maximize the attention of the audience.

The second step is to lead participation. It is usually at the end of the article to attract the click to read the original text or put the event poster with QR code at the end of the article. There's a lot of caution here, too. For example, some students will put the two-dimensional code of the company's personal number, and then guide to participate in the activity after adding the personal number. Some students will put the QR code of wechat group, create an atmosphere after entering the group, and make use of the herd effect to let more people participate in the activity; There is also the practice of directly putting the two-dimensional code of the activity landing page, this path is the shortest, but the requirements for the landing page are very high. The first screen you need to click on to see the attraction of the activity is usually a big profit point. For example, register for classes, buy a penny, raffle, coupons, etc.

It's up to you to test which of these three methods is better for you. It is worth noting that no matter where to lead, you need to add a small copy as a hook before the two-dimensional code or reading the original text, so that users know what benefits you can get by clicking on it, don't let users guess. If he hesitates, he'll probably close the page.

Three, before we talked about how to establish the funnel analysis model, and the applicable scenario. Now let's talk about some points to pay attention to when using:

Number one. Enlarge the funnel opening as much as possible. For beginners, is the first opening of the funnel as big as possible? Will not be filled with inaccurate flow. My point is, for the same amount of money, bring in as much traffic as possible, even with clickbait, and then filter. Because the funnel is decreasing step by step, if the first opening is very narrow, then after filtering out the layers, the final transformation is very little.

Second, prioritize the key factors with large space for improvement and significant impact on the results. For example, I am an activity operator of an e-commerce platform, and the daily active users are 100,000, but only 5,000 people guide to my activity page, so there is still a large room for improvement. For example, I can send push, in-site messages, apply for resource bits such as open screen image and focus image, and make the banner more attractive to click. But if the current guide to the active page of the user has fifty or sixty thousand, then this step actually does not have much room to improve, and more should do is to expand the external traffic channel and transformation has been to the active page of fifty or sixty thousand people.

Finally, streamline the steps along the critical path, not one more. You've probably heard the conclusion that for every step you give users, 50% of them give up. Users are not that patient. I would also like to explain from this scientific perspective why I am very opposed to asking "are you there?" in wechat communication. Or the act of sending a few voicemails as soon as you don't say anything. I think the most efficient and easy way to get an effective reply is to type the situation and wait for a reply. This way the other person can see your question directly and choose to reply or not to reply. If you need the other person to say "yes" first, or if you want them to click on the voice to listen to the conversation, you will increase the number of steps the other person has to take, which will obviously decrease the response rate.

Four, summary promotion

Well, in this video I've taught you about funnel analysis and how to model funnel analysis. The funnel analysis model is divided into three steps: the first step is to determine the transformation path, the second step is to analyze the causes of loss, and the third step is to select significant influencing factors for improvement.

When using the funnel analysis model, we should pay attention to enlarge the funnel opening as much as possible; Prioritize factors that have a large improvement space and a significant impact on the results, and reduce the number of steps on the critical path to no more.

It allows us to make our processes more refined and efficient, and get more conversions for the same amount of traffic. Try to make a funnel of one of your most important tasks and say which elements you can start to optimize. If you think the course is great, please share it with your friends. I'll see you next time.