Talking about a set of user insight methods

In addition to traffic acquisition, the core of being an independent website is to be a user. There is nothing more important than understanding your users! Insights into users can not only improve the cognition of users, but also enable business through landing. Because user insights play an important role in different stages of users, such as cognitive positioning, channel optimization, personalized service, re-reach and revenue. Once we have grasped the "potential needs of users", it means that we have grasped the most valuable part of the insight, and we may have an advantage in the competition.

The work of understanding users is collectively called "user insights", and its core is the understanding of users' consumption habits, consumption characteristics, potential needs and lifestyles.

Here is our point of view: User insight is a comprehensive and three-dimensional work. Don’t be too obsessed with a single method, resulting in partial generalization.

Difficulties in User Insights

Trying to understand user needs in Insights is a very, very difficult job and is especially vulnerable to the following factors:

1. Many brands, especially start-up brands and small and medium-sized brands, do not have much data accumulation, and also lack the funds and ability to break through data barriers. This is the reality of "data is good, but it's hard to use for me".

2. The value of data to marketing, in many cases, does not depend on the data itself, but more on the ability of marketing decision makers to interpret the data.

3. The user himself is not clear about things, and there are a lot of emotions and potential factors in the user's consumption behavior. Many times, they do not know the specific reasons and cannot provide accurate statements.

4. Differences between technical staff and marketing business people. Technicians do not know enough about the business, but only unilaterally understand the technical implementation of portraits, so they have limited thinking in the application of portraits; while business personnel have strong business improvement needs but do not know what role portraits can play in business, so Also limited in thinking.

So in practice, how do we ask questions to improve the pertinence of our insights?

• It's often a better option to try asking questions through "user pain points": because it may be difficult to get people to describe their "want", but it's much easier to get them to complain about "dissatisfaction, unfulfilled, and unhappy." After these contents are "translated", they are likely to be transformed into "breakthroughs" for understanding user needs.

Because the "potential demand" that is really aimed at here is actually to reduce the judgment cost of customers, let them feel the trivial daily life, and get a little "surprise" here; The brand expression moderately caters to their "easy-to-use razor", and there is a trace of "little luck" in the bottom of my heart.

• Start with the "value perception approach"

For example, Gillette used to have a case where "manual shaving is sexier than electric shaving" illustrates this well. In this case, if we gain insight from the perspective of "user potential needs", we will gain little. Because manual and electric are different in the way of shaving, there must not be much difference in their functional properties, problems to be solved, and effects to be achieved.

But if we can switch perspectives, start from the "value perception method", and gain insight from the different cultural meanings of the two, it is likely to discover a new perspective on product value. Manual shaving is more masculine and sexier in women's eyes.

Combining these information together, we will understand that: in fact, the demand is not as simple as "more professional products", but the brand needs to make "customer touchpoints" such as product selling point display, packaging, and even customer service staff representations. The information presented is more concise, clear, and consistent, and it can send a signal of brand responsibility.

Sometimes, the insight into "value perception methods" is not limited to "more perceptible concepts", but may also involve "what kind of expressions do users have? Which channels? Which types of communication methods are more susceptible to" , these propositions need to return to our insight task - is it to clarify the core value of the brand? For the so-called "positioning"? Or is it to be used to optimize communication strategies or improve advertising performance? for focused design.

User Insights Approach

Whether it is questionnaires, focus groups or other specific methods, they can basically be classified into these methods. Observation, investigation and experimentation are the three most basic methods for us to understand and grasp a thing.

• Questionnaire

How to understand your users? The instinctive method is to conduct a questionnaire. The questionnaire is indeed a quick way to understand customers, but we must know that the questions of the questionnaire will induce customers, because customers are affected by the "Hawthorne effect", that is: may make the interview The results are somewhat biased.

How to receive more valid questionnaires? Studies have shown that the main reason why users are willing to participate in the questionnaire is (a) the rewards provided;

(b) interest in the subject matter;

(c) Whether the research time is sufficient;

(d) whether the length of the survey is appropriate.

Put the more interesting questions at the top; put the thinking and challenging questions at the middle; put the identification of user attributes (age, occupation, income, etc.) at the end.

The questionnaire should have a concise introduction, the introduction should announce early that the survey will not involve sales, and the survey length should be appropriate while emphasizing that the respondent's time is valuable. This can increase the sense of security of the respondents.

A good questionnaire has clear logic and precise language, such as "is your weekend shopping mall within 30 minutes of your home?", without taking into account how many minutes depend on how customers travel; the questionnaire should allow respondents to have The right not to answer, such as "I don't know" or "It's not easy to say", otherwise it will easily lead to withdrawal; the language style of the questionnaire should be as close to the language habits of the respondents as possible, and efforts should be made to avoid the use of professional terms and abbreviations.

Questions in the questionnaire will automatically trigger the respondent's psychological defense mechanism. For example, people are reluctant to talk about their own bad habits. At this time, they should be good at using the "projection method" (ask the respondents to explain their own motives by explaining other people's behaviors). , attitudes or feelings are "projected" into the situation to describe their behavior.) Such as - "Many people now have problems with credit card overdrafts, what do you think is the reason for this?"

The "goodness" of a good questionnaire is reflected in the questions that can be asked and should be asked; we need to think about how the answers to each question can support marketing decisions - the answer is not a goal but a basis.

For example, "How do you think the importance of performance, price, service, and quality should be ranked for a certain product?" How can the conclusions drawn from this question support decision-making?

It is true that through cross-analysis, you will find that young people value service more, while older people are more concerned about price, but how different is this conclusion from "common sense"? In addition, the aspects that customers think are not important does not mean that there is no room for innovation in the brand. But at the same time, it is worth noting: the results obtained by the similar question method only let you know that the A feature is more important than the B feature, but you don't know how much. A better way is to use a scale structure, such as asking users to rate 5 characteristics on a scale of 1-7, so you can not only know who is most important, but also "how much". The combination of quantitative research and qualitative research is reflected in the cooperation of questionnaires and focus groups. For example, we can learn about a series of user pain points through focus group interviews, and then use questionnaires to ask whether users most want to optimize the brand. The "desire degree" of different needs, so that we can design optimization and upgrade suggestions for customers.

• group interview

Conducting small-scale user interviews is a good method, but the point of such research is that it lacks the real environment of the user. Whether the insight personnel can accurately understand this information based on differences in different cognitive backgrounds, understanding abilities, and environments is also a problem.

Observe participant feedback by stating the brand's value proposition: if there is obvious eye contact and excitement, say - "Wow, this sounds great!" I will focus on documenting; I just said with a confused look - "It doesn't seem to be able to get the meaning of this." I will also record it truthfully, and verify the final screening results in other ways.

• Through torrent user research

Through the needs of seed user feedback, we can dig out the essence of user needs, and then starting from the essence of user needs, we can often design products that lead users and make users amazed, and good products can naturally increase the purchase rate of users. .

The well-known OnePlus mobile phone adopted a method of first operating a batch of seed users when it entered overseas, and then achieved a good reputation of "the one who wins the user wins the world". Pay attention to user participation, let the seeds participate in the design of the entire mobile phone software and hardware level from the beginning, and adopt useful suggestions from users. At the same time, OnePlus will also sincerely, openly and transparently report its entrepreneurial progress to users on the forum. There are joys and happiness, and even setbacks. This will bring us closer to users.

The most important thing in this practice is to first identify your torrent user group. We can learn about the various optimizations of the product through a typical torrent user.

Back in practice, we often encounter such misunderstandings:

• It is wrong to understand what seed users are, and mistakenly regard the first batch of users and initial users as seed users.
• Put the operation of the seed stage on the quantity, rather than the quality of the operation of the seed users.

Although torrent users are good, it is possible to gain insight only if three conditions are met for torrent users:

• It is the target user of this product, and the pain point is even stronger than that of ordinary users
• Dare to try early adopters, and willing to use even if they know the product is not perfect
• Willing to provide feedback and suggestions for products

last words

Today's martech is very powerful, we do not deny the importance of data in a certain sense, the value of data has always existed, because we can verify and analyze. But we can't rely on big data alone. It is difficult to analyze deep problems such as consumption motivation, brand recognition, user pain points, and potential needs.

Suggestion: At the beginning of every insight project, marketers, product people, and even founders should work hard to get the product and brand experience. In the process, if something impresses you, it is likely to impress others. Find a way to make yourself a typical potential customer, to feel the product, to feel the brand, not just to roughly divide potential consumers based on gender, age, education, occupation, income, but to emotionally feel what kind of temperament TA may be people, and then find a channel "contact point" that matches their temperament, rather than simply and rudely doing a lot of advertising.

Reference source "Insight" Author: Umi