Itching Points, Blocking Points, and an Altruism-First Growth Strategy ​

For those not in the Internet industry, the concepts of user pain points, itching points, and blocking points might seem unfamiliar, like jargon. However, for those deeply involved in user operations, these terms are all too familiar. What is constantly debated with product, development, and project managers every day often revolves around these few words: What are the user's pain points? Are there any blocking points during the experience? Should we set blocking points to achieve certain goals? And what are the product's itching points?

Returning to these three points and applying them to the growth level, I believe many operation experts have a lot to share. Looking at numerous domestic SaaS tools, they always insert a less harmonious conversion mechanism when you most need to perform the next operation, such as registration, payment, or watching an advertisement. When you desperately need to download a resource, when the download progress reaches 99%, when you really need to share with others, or when you cut a watermelon, sit on the sofa, and press the play button...

Don't you find these blocking points annoying? Or even repulsive? Or have you gotten used to them? These examples truly exist, each one blocking users at their most urgent moments, with the aim of nothing more than increasing the conversion rate in the table. Of course, these blocking points do their job well and have achieved conversion effects to some extent, with some even reaching a conversion rate of 50% or higher.

But... does it have to be this way? Is it necessary to find that urgent point of the user in an otherwise smooth user experience process and step on it hard to achieve an effect?

Our DROP team thought and acted this way in the past. We learned various strange blocking point techniques from domestic product predecessors and strived to bring more conversions to the platform, regardless of whether the users liked it or not. The "register to continue" rule couldn't be stopped.

These blocking points did have an effect. Because others were doing it, we did it too. Many operation colleagues also shared relevant data and optimization methods for different techniques. Initially, it seemed that to convert users, it was necessary to block the user at the most uncomfortable point in a smooth process.

But looking back today at our previous strategy of setting blocking points, I still don't think it was wrong. But now it feels that this way of guiding user conversion is actually lazy thinking, lacking innovation and consideration. We were willing to sacrifice user experience and even earn the hatred of some users, just because others did it and it worked, so we thought we'd give it a try.

But if we spent some time and effort to understand the user's conversion psychology and then tried to abandon all conversion blocking points and cut a most comfortable experience path from the user's perspective and provide several non-blocking and equally convertible ways, wouldn't that work?

After a period of discussion, the DROP team reached a consensus: The best experience value path is an unrestricted, no-threshold, use-and-go large file delivery scenario. We removed all blocking points on the experience path and instead gave conversion hints during the "itching point" stage. All the "itching points" are the maximum value output of our product at this stage that we recognize and are also full of confidence in the product. For example, giving a conversion hint after upload and before sharing; another example is giving a conversion hint after the user clicks to download. From the perspective of the experience path, these two points pose no obstacle to the user's operation (compared to many domestic products that don't allow download without registration). With our confidence in the speed and experience of the product at these two points, we made such an operation. So what was the result?

From the evening of May 29, 2024, after going online, in the following two days, the registration conversion rate exceeded 50%, the number of new daily registrations increased by at least 150% compared to the same period, and the number of weekend registrations increased by 800%. But that's not all. Because we removed the blocking points and made a little adjustment at the "itching point", but the user experience was not just that. Because they felt something else, that is, altruism.

Altruism is a very interesting point. It's complex to explain, but almost everyone understands it when it comes to implementation. It's not as obvious as some other characteristics. It's more of a direction or strategy. When the beneficiaries recognize the altruism we provide - in our scenario, the users - they will spend more time on our product and gradually enter our "itching point" experience path through our designed guidance strategy. After the user experience is completed, they will complete the registration conversion through our conversion path.

This seems much more complicated than setting blocking points, but the actual effect far exceeds our imagination, bringing several times, dozens of times, and perhaps even hundreds of times the benefits in the future.

In the AI era, the importance of assets is increasingly prominent. DROP is committed to optimizing user experience, walking an unusual path through innovation and understanding user needs, and achieving remarkable results. We believe that as long as we think carefully and respect users, the future possibilities are infinite.