see business
is mainly about business-related analysis and judgment, specifically, business type and stages, business model , business characteristics, business essence and business target , let's look at them separately.
Business types and stages
The first thing we need to know is what our current business is like, is it brand new or not? Is business solution more explicit, or less explicit?
For example, 10 years ago, you said that our company should do a takeaway business. At that time, it was a brand new business, and there were basically no competitors in the market. Now let’s talk about it. Let’s do a takeaway business, and what needs to be evaluated is Under the current Meituan and Ele.me, is there still room for such a business? Whether the
business solution is clear is to clarify what the current competitive situation is, whether to fight for resources, fight for efficiency, or fight for innovation and differentiation. For example, e-commerce has always revolved around the keywords of how fast and economical it is, while social networking and communities have been exploring new solutions and new forms.
Different businesses can cover different user types and user levels. We need to know what kind of business is currently, whether it is DAU or revenue .
Some businesses can achieve large-scale DAU, but the value of per user is not high, such as Qutoutiao, and some businesses have low DAU, but the value per user is very high, such as live broadcast and krypton gold games. There is no difference between the two modes. After all, what we ultimately look at is the total number of users * value per user.
The business stage is what we often call the S-shaped curve. What stage is the business currently in, whether it is the introduction stage, the growth stage, the mature stage or the recession stage? This is the major premise and determines many follow-up actions.
business model
My simple understanding is how this business works, what roles are, what is the relationship between them, and what is the benefit distribution mechanism.
Using the diagram of online education that I sketched a long time ago as a simple illustration, we can see that there are teachers, students, parents and platforms in the whole business. these roles. The
business model diagram can make it easier to understand the overall picture of the business. The more complex the business and the more roles, the more necessary it is to have such an overall business model. For example, the following picture shows the upstream and downstream business model of live e-commerce.
The material comes from the Internet.
Business characteristics
There may be great differences between different businesses. For example, business A may be suitable for membership, but business B may not be a member. Many things need to be considered in combination with specific business characteristics.
I tried to summarize some different characteristics from the dimensions of the business itself, users and supply relationships, let's look at them separately.
From the perspective of the business itself, the degree of standardization and urgency of the business itself determines the characteristics of different businesses.
Take taxi as an example. This is a highly standardized business. What users need is taxi services. It is relatively unimportant which driver does this.Hair cutting is a less standardized business. There are no special circumstances. Users will not easily change their Tony teachers.
Under such business characteristics, it is feasible for taxi platforms to assign drivers to users nearby, but the mechanism for assigning hairdressers to users is unreasonable.
Similarly, users of taxi services have high requirements on timeliness. In most scenarios, users need to use the car immediately, so the response time and the time to receive passengers are very important, while the timeliness of beauty salons is relatively low. .
In addition, whether the business itself has scale effects, network effects, whether there are periodic rules (peaks and valleys, low and peak seasons, etc.) , the degree of regulatory constraints, etc., these require specific business analysis. From the user's point of view,
is whether needs and how frequently it is popular. These will affect the user's decision-making cost and decision-making cycle, as well as the customer unit price and the user's life cycle.
Take takeaway as an example. This is a popular and high-frequency business. The user's decision to buy A or B is likely to see who arrives first and whether there are subsidies. For businesses with high decision-making costs and long decision-making cycles, such as buying a house or a car, it is necessary to build trust step by step, and ultimately increase the conversion rate.
In the business of low customer unit price and high customer price, the price sensitivity of users may be different, which determines different operation subsidies and promotion strategies.
The strategies adopted for one-time business and business that require users to continuously trade are also different. The former is mainly to improve the transaction conversion rate and the unit price of customers, while the latter is mainly to prolong the user life cycle and improve the overall LTV.
The last is the relationship between supply and demand. Whether the current business is in short supply or oversupply, under different supply and demand relationships, the business focus is different.
Take second-hand cars and second-hand houses as an example. No matter how good the user experience is, users can’t buy the car they want from you, and they can’t buy a house in a good location. In the end, the business still won’t work.
The essence of business
My understanding of this matter is what solution are you using, and what problems are you using in what situations.
For example, Didi has already provided freight services. In fact, freight services and taxi services have many similar characteristics. Their essence is to provide transportation services from point A to point B. The difference is the transportation object, carrier and some Requirements may vary.
Is there any essential difference between Ctrip's hotel business and Airbnb business? Is the problem solved for people who are outside who need a place to live?
WeChat Reading has purchased physical books in the last year and has also made e-readers. These seem to have nothing to do with a reading app. In fact, the essence of the business is to solve the problem of allowing users to read better.
The business objective
is specifically what the business wants to do, what are the short, medium and long-term goals, and then reflect on the specific business indicators to do, is it user volume, order volume, revenue, or profit?
Different businesses and different stages may have different priorities.
The above is to look at the business. I understand the relationship between them is to first clarify the current business type and stage, and then look at how the business operates and what are its characteristics. Through these, I can deeply understand the essence of the business , and finally deduce the key points and business goals of the business.
View product
is mainly related to product analysis, helping us to understand the whole picture of the product and the past, present and future of the product.
Now: product status and model
The product mentioned here is a product in a narrow sense that needs to be done to support the operation of the entire business. , applet, PC terminal, and subdivided into client terminal, merchant terminal, sales terminal, rider terminal and so on.
The status quo mentioned here refers to a specific single product, its role and status in the entire business model, and its current stage.
In a business model, there may be multiple products, and their functions may be different. For example, there may be traffic products, promotion/transformation products, revenue products, efficiency improvement products, support products and so on.
For example, in online education, there will be small courses with lower unit price, free, 9.9 yuan or 19.9 yuan, and regular price courses with unit price of hundreds and thousands. The former is more for acquiring users, and the latter It is the core product that contributes to revenue.
In different business models, the weight of products is also different. Some models are technology-driven, some are product-driven, some are operation-driven, some are design-driven, some are business-driven, and some are sales or channel-driven. Although each link is very important, But we need to know what is the more core key point of the business model.
There are different stages of business, specific to a single product that supports the business, there are also stages of introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. After
has an overall understanding of these, we need to understand the product model and the data model . Specifically, the
product model is what problems we solve for who and in what scenarios, how it works, and what value it has, including two parts: product architecture and operating system.
The product architecture is to define the problems and solutions to be solved by the product. Specifically, how users achieve their desired goals step by step and what we need to do. These solutions constitute the product architecture.
Taking Tantan as an example, users ultimately want to socialize. In order to solve this problem, Tantan provides a series of measures to ensure that users can achieve their goals.
Some measures may be achieved through product functions, and some measures may also require operational means at the same time.
The following is a picture of their product structure shared by the VP of Riday Cooking Products in a previous sharing.
The material comes from the Internet.
The operation system is a series of means to connect users and products, such as user acquisition, user maintenance, user payment, and product support.
Only when we understand the current status of the product, product architecture, and operating system can we make better product decisions. The
data model abstracts the entire product model into some key data formulas or core data indicators through the understanding of the business.
Take e-commerce as an example:
- Total revenue = category A revenue + category B revenue +...
- category A revenue = number of users * paid conversion rate * customer unit price
- ...
Take advertising as an example:
- Revenue=DAU*Number of views per capita*Ad loading rate*Price method (CPM, CPC, CPS, etc.) Dividing into groups and other dimensions, each indicator may also need to be disassembled further down, but the general idea is this, can you use a data model to abstract the product you are working on?
Past: iterates the path
is actually to see what the product has done in the past, what the decision background was at that time, whether the result was good, whether the current decision background has changed, and whether there are new possibilities.
You can look through the previous iteration documents, ask some people to understand the past iteration path, and we can find a lot of things from these iteration histories.
Future: product planning
After understanding the status quo and history, the next step is where the product will go, what are the short and medium-term goals, the current problems and the next actions, and whether there is a Roadmap, and clear milestones , timetables.
Looking at the user
This part is actually to understand our user group. After all, the user is the starting point of everything we do. It is impossible to emphasize the importance. A lot of space is devoted to users and needs, and it is roughly estimated that there may be more than half of the space.
When looking at users, we mainly look at who our users are, what characteristics they have, where they are, what preferences they have, how they use our products, and how they say it, so as to reduce the risk of working behind closed doors and YY demands.
Know who our users are. If you have the conditions, you can look at the user portraits, user stratification characteristics, do user research, or face-to-face user interviews. If you have no conditions, you can chat more with the users in the product. The space and circle of friends to know more and feel more about such a group of people.
To see what users do, you can see some behaviors of users in the product, such as user search keywords, some behavior logs, data conversion on some core funnels, some loss points, and so on.
Look at what users say, you can find users of products in various places, and then look at various feedbacks, such as internal core user groups, seed user groups, user feedback in the app, customer service feedback, etc., as well as external application markets, knowledge Hu, Weibo, Tieba, etc.
The core of watching users is to help us better understand users' thoughts, listen carefully to users, but don't do it directly.
First, users may not know what they want, and second, users may lie consciously or unintentionally, and users may give solutions rather than problems or requirements themselves.
For example, when we go to hospital to see a doctor, we will first tell the doctor what we are uncomfortable with, instead of telling the doctor directly, you can get me a XXX medicine, and I will take that.
The doctor will draw his own conclusions based on some question-and-answer information and some characteristics of our body, and then decide what medicine to give us.
The process of understanding the user is the same. All the means are just to help us better understand the user's thoughts, whether to do it, how to do it, and when to do it, we need to analyze and judge by ourselves.
User needs are only scattered, and the solution is a process of abstraction. not only needs to consider what users say and do, but also the purpose, reason, psychological appeal, and even the needs of human nature behind it.
Originally, this article intends to finish the business, product, user and team, and culture. I found that it is so long after writing and writing, so the team and culture will be written separately in the future. Many times things can be accomplished, The proportion of people is also very high.
A brief summary of this article, mainly including business, product, and user:
- Business: Based on business types and stages, business models and business characteristics, we will deeply understand the nature of business, and then clarify the key points of business, business Goal;
- Look at the product: understand the role and status of the product in the entire business, clarify who the product solves, what problem, how it works, and what value it has (product architecture and operating system), and then abstract the product Become a data model;
- Look at the user: clarify what kind of people we need to serve, what characteristics they have, how to do it, and how to say it.
Author: Wang Jiachen Help product lovers realize their product dreams as soon as possible and run on the road of products.
