英文原文来自：https://medium.com/initialized-capital/what-to-do-if-your-product-isnt-growing-7eb9d158fc

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推动产品增长的方法

“关键用户路径”如何帮助产品起飞

BY   austin chang      翻译：Kevin嚼薯片

作为创始人、Pinterest的产品主管、几个Google产品的产品经理、初创资本的合伙人，我看到很多产品团队都在努力成长。

许多产品一开始都是一下子蹦出来的。一些产品找到了适合持续增长的市场。一少部分产品经历了高速增长的阶段。但更多时候，我看到大多数产品都在原地徘徊。

在这些经历中，我注意到一种常见的模式，几乎每一个创业者在开始时都会陷入其中。创始人推出他们的产品，疑惑它为什么没有病毒式增长，继而试图去解决它的增长问题。

他们会转向增长策略，在真正了解他们的产品和用户前，就开始做如登录漏斗优化、搜索引擎优或推送通知的事情。这可能会推进短期增长。但由于略了核心产品的问题，它可能最终会导致用户的大量流失。

在毫无头绪地去尝试不同的增长策略前，创业公司需要重新审视他们的用户，评估产品的最终目标，并重新定义他们想让用户去做的事情。这里有一些提示，可以帮助定义一条路径，从而展示解锁产品增长所需要的不同步骤。

绘制出你的“关键用户路径”

许多创业公司在不知道他们希望用户往下如何操作的情况下就去开发了一款产品。如果你查找“关键用户路径”这个短语，你会发现大量的用户体验框架和用户地图。这些都是伟大的，但也可能是压倒性的和令人畏惧的。

早期的创业公司应该从简单的开始，确保他们的产品满足用户的最佳旅程。

您的关键用户路径应该聚焦于一个带有特定目标的用例，并包含用户的上下文环境。例如，Pinterest关注的一项路径是帮助用户找到他们个人风格想法。Pinterest的用户通常会从浏览大量的风格想法目录开始，然后逐渐发现适合自己风格的东西。

然后Pinterest允许用户整合自己的书籍、样式板，并最终无缝地让用户直接在Pinterest上或通过与商家链接去购买这些东西。很高兴的是，整个旅程都是在Pinterest上完成的。如今，Pinterest已经成长为一间大公司，并丰富了他们的用户路径。

Pinterest会一步步地引导用户去寻找他的个人风格：浏览、过滤、整理和完成。

创业者们需要清楚地了解他们正在实现的“关键用户路径”。然后，他们需要了解他们的产品如何帮助用户一步步完成这个路径。

衡量你的“关键用户路径”

一旦创始人有了一个精心设计的用户路径，他们就需要理性地去量化如何去衡量它。所有成功的创业公司都有大量的度量标准（或者kpi），并且有很多很好的工具可以帮助我们理解这些指标。对于刚起步的创业公司来说，很容易就会选择像MAU（月活跃用户）这样的比较虚的指标，或者是一种看起来正在增长的度量指标，而忽略了实际正在发生的事情。

来源：https://blog.kissmetrics.com/throw-away-vanity-metrics/

相反，早期的创业公司应该以可量化的度量标准来衡量这段路径的每一步。从两个指标开始：一个在漏斗顶部的用户获取度量指标，度量有多少新用户注册并进行了第一个步骤。其次，一个用户参与度会进一步下降，测量这些新用户与产品互动的频率。总之，这两个指标定义了一个产品的转化率，即它如何让新用户成为活跃用户。在这里，你可以添加一些你产品特有的用户路径度量指标。

在产品的用户路径中，越具体的指标越能帮助初创公司做出决策的更好。

例如，在Google助理上，我们根据用户在一个特定国家（如英国）的一个特定的界面（如像素手机），在头两周内通过一个特定的功能去完成一个成功的查询（如询问“我的一天”)，来衡量用户的行为。

识别“产品杠杆”，帮助用户按路径推进。

许多初创公司选择了度量标准，但却无法通过项目和工作流直接将它量化和系统化。如果你知道如何用正确的产品杠杆，那只有用数字来衡量才是好的。

产品杠杆是一种可移动的、可衡量的东西，它可以连接你的团队正在处理的项目，以达到你所关心的一线度量指标。

例如，我与我密切合作的初始资本投资组合公司之一，选择了度量标准“L7参与度”，即用户在过去7天内对该产品活动的天数。他们选择了主要的产品杠杆，将其转化为“每个用户的附加动作”。他们将正在做的项目减少至一个，只针对那些每个用户的附加动作（比如显示更多的在线建议，创建产品促销，发送相关的后续通知等等），并减少那些与此无关的。在经历了几个实验周期，并专注于一些驱动L7参与度的产品杠杆后，他们的L7参与度得到了好转。

不要添加太多会让“关键用户路径”变得模糊的功能。

另一个常见的陷阱是，所有的创始人都被陷入了用增加更多产品的方式去“修复”增长。通过产品增加的增长很难衡量，而且很难扩展。

例如，我曾与一个投资组合公司合作，该公司有一个很好为用户提供服务的产品。他们正在推动一个有意义的指标，但他们看到的是月度增长停滞了。在仔细观察之后，我们发现他们构建了多个复杂的行为流程。他们发布的每一流量都显示出轻微的整体收益，因此他们继续推进，并在之上建立更多的流程。很快，他们就无法判断哪些流程是负责直接留住用户的。他们的产品变成了一个臃肿的机器，每次使用都会让用户离去。

一个臃肿的机器 — 简单的输出都要通过很复杂的机械系统

一旦我们将产品简化为一个行为路径，每个流程直接对应特定的产品杠杆，它们的转化率就会上升。这主要是因为他们的产品更为简单。这让用户更容易理解，并且公司更容易去排除用户问题。

后退一步来简化和聚焦，使产品得以成长。

让使用最频繁的用户给你带路。

这一点似乎很明显，但有时用户已经给你铺了路。初创公司应该关注他们最活跃的用户，并深入了解他们所采取的行为和途径。

找一群使用最频繁的用户，然后向后看。确定他们在第一天、一周、第一个月和以后的时间里采取了哪些行为。把这些行为看作是新用户在路径中每一步的关键时刻。例如，如果在第一周采取四项行为，让用户在第二周变得更加活跃，那么在第一周就为新用户优先安排这些行为。

围绕这些行为创建中创建闭环，以鼓励用户在完成一个行为后进行另一个行为。当然，测量并监控有多少用户在路径的每一步都采取了这些行为，以发现产品的整体参与情况。

如果你明确知道优质用户采取了哪些行为和步骤，你应该试着为复制他们的路径给其他用户。

为您的产品定义一个“关键用户路径”是一个开始，并将作为制定度量指标的早期指南，阐明用户在每一步需要做什么，并去优化产品杠杆以创造可持续的增长。

当您准备好时，这个框架可以扩展到几个用户路径，它要么能加深现有用户的参与度，要么能拓展新用户。

如果你觉得这篇文章有价值，请在文章底部给我打赏，支持我继续分享好文给你。

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What To Do If Your Product Isn’t Growing

How ‘Critical User Journeys’ can help a product take off

BY   austin chang

As a founder, product lead at Pinterest and PM for a couple products at Google, as well as a growth partner for Initialized Capital, I’ve seen many product teams struggle to grow.

Many products start out with a bang. Some find product-market fit with sustained growth. A few have gone through spurts of hyper-growth. But more often than not, I’ve seen most of them linger then fizzle.

Throughout these experiences, I have noticed a common pattern that almost every startup founder falls into as they begin this journey. Founders launch their product, wonder why it isn’t growing like gangbusters and then immediately try to fix their growth problem.

They turn to growth tactics like optimizing their on-boarding funnel, SEO or push notifications before really understanding what they are building and who they are building for. This may create an initial burst of short-term growth. But it ultimately leads to high churn of your possible customers, while ignoring problems in the core product.

Before trying different growth tactics like throwing spaghetti at a wall, startups need to take a fresh look at their users, evaluate their product end goals and re-define the journey they want their users to take to get there. Here are some tips that can help define a path which will clarify the different steps needed to unlock product growth.

Map out your ‘Critical User Journey’

Many startups build a product without knowing what path they want their users to go down. If you look up the phrase “Critical User Journey,” you’ll find a plethora of UX frameworks and user maps. These are great, but can be overwhelming and daunting.

Early startups should start simple and make sure they know the optimal journey they want their product to fulfill for the user.

Your Critical User Journey should focus on a single use case with a specific goal and include the surrounding context for the user. For example, one of the journeys that Pinterest is focused on is helping a user find ideas around their own personal style. A Pinterest user typically starts from browsing a large visual catalog of style ideas, and then progresses to discovering the right looks that fit their own style.

Then Pinterest allows users to curate their own look books, style boards and eventually make it seamless to buy those looks, whether that’s directly on Pinterest or through a deep link to the merchant. The happy case is that the whole journey is completed on Pinterest. Now Pinterest has grown over the years to become a large company and fulfills multiple user journeys.

Pinterest guides users through each step of Personal Style Discovery: Browsing, Filtering, Curating, and Fulfilling

Founders starting out need to have clarity on the specific ‘Critical User Journey’ they are fulfilling.Then they need to understand how their product helps users along each step of that journey.

Measure your ‘Critical User Journey’

Once founders have a crafted a user journey, they need to be ruthless and specific on how they measure it. All successful startups have a plethora of top-line metrics (orKPIs) they measure and there are many greattoolsto help visualize this. For startups just starting out, it’s very easy to fall into choosing vanity metrics like MAU (Monthly Active Users) or a sum total measurement metric that looks like it is growing and lose sight of what is actually happening.

source:https://blog.kissmetrics.com/throw-away-vanity-metrics/

Instead, early startups should start with actionable top-line metrics to measure each step of the Journey.Start with two metrics: One user acquisition metric at the top of the funnel that measures how many new users are signing up and taking their first action. And then one user engagement metric further down the funnel that measures how often these new users engage with the product over time.Together, these two metrics define a product’s activation rate in how it graduates new users into becoming active users. From here you can add additional top-line metrics that are specific to your product and user journey.

The more specific top-line metrics are to a product’s user journey, the better they are at helping startups make decisions.

For example on Google Assistant, we measure user activation based on the user making at least one successful query that day on a specific surface (i.e. Pixel phone) in a specific country (i.e. U.K.) using a specific feature (i.e. Ask about “My Day”) within their first two weeks.

Identify ‘product levers’ that help move users along their journey.

Many startups chose top-line metrics but are not able to directly move any of them in a measurable and systematic way through projects and work streams. Having numbers to measure is only good if you know how to move them with the right product levers.

A product lever is something that is moveable and measurable that connects projects your team is working on on to top-line metrics that you care about.

For example, one of Initialized Capital’s portfolio companies I worked closely with chose the top-line metric ‘L7 Engagement,’ or the number of days a user has been active on the product during the last seven days). They chose the primary product lever to drive this as “Additional Actions taken per User.” They narrowed down the projects they were working on to only ones that drove additional actions per user (such as showing more in-line suggestions, creating off product promotions, sending contextual follow-up notifications, etc.) and cut the ones that didn’t. They saw their L7 Engagement rate turn around after a few experiment cycles and they expanded their focus to an additional product lever to drive L7 Engagement.

Don’t add so many features that the ‘Critical User Journey’ becomes obscured.

Another common pitfall all founders are pulled into is to “fix” growth by adding more and more to your product to “see what sticks.” Growth by product addition is hard to measure and rarely scalable.

For example, I worked with one portfolio company that had a great product serving a user need. They were driving a meaningful metric yet they were seeing stagnant month-over-month growth. Upon looking closer, we saw that they had built multiple convoluted activation flows on top of each other. Each flow they released showed slight overall gains, so they kept going and building more flows on top of each other. Soon enough, they couldn’t tell which flow was directly responsible for retaining or losing users. Their product became a Rube Goldberg machine spitting out one user at a time.

A Rube Goldberg machine — complicated mechanics for a simple output

Once we simplified the product down to one activation pathway with each flow directly moving a specific product lever, their conversion rates went way up. This was mostly because their product became simpler. It was easier for users to understand and easier for the company to see what was going when users got stuck.

Taking a step back to simplify and focus freed the product to grow.

Let your most engaged users show you the way.

This one may seem obvious, but sometimes users have done the hard work for you. Startups should look at their most engaged users and deeply understand the actions and pathways they took to get there.

Find a cohort of your most engaged users and look backwards. Identify what actions they took the first day, the week, the first month, and subsequent time periods to get to their state. Identify these actions as pivotal moments you want new or casual users to take at each step of the journey. For example, if taking four actions in the first week led users to be more engaged the second week, prioritize these actions for new users in their first week over anything else.

Create engagement loops around these actions to encourage users to continue down the pathway to take another action after completing a previous action. And of course, measure and monitor how many users are taking these actions at each step of the journey to see the holistic engagement picture of your product.

If you know exactly what actions and steps your best users took, you should try to replicate their journey for others.

Defining one ‘Critical User Journey’ for your product is a start and will serve as an early guide to define metrics, clarify what users need to do at every step, and help prioritize the right product levers to create sustainable growth.

When you are ready, this framework can expand to several user journeys that either deepen engagement of existing users or broaden use cases to reach new sets of users.