Why did not Pied Piper take off: our analysis of the 9th series of the 3rd season of the series “Silicon Valley”
Caution, this text contains spoilers! If you are watching the series “Silicon Valley” and have not yet seen the 9th series of the 3 seasons, then do not read this article.
Let me remind you that Pied Piper is a service for efficient compression and cloud storage of files, which in this series goes to the mass market, and so far it is not quite successful.
So, Pied Piper did not take off. There is no doubt that everything will be fine (the season is not over yet, the series is all the more), but for this, Richard & Co (or rather, the writers) will have to do something out of the ordinary. In the meantime, we have the following figures: for 500 thousand installations, only 19 thousand active users per day (DAU). It is unclear how many days have passed since the start of the application launch, and therefore the exact retention values, that is, the percentage of users who visited the project within a certain time frame, is difficult to calculate. But apparently, quite a bit of time has passed, and with a small assumption it is possible to talk about retention metrics for 1 day or 7 days.
And 3.8% (that is, 19 thousand / 500 thousand) is very little. By experience, retention of 1 day should be around 30%, retention of 7 days should be around 15%. Or another estimate - 20% per week (which is why Monica initially estimated that there should be 100 thousand users), which is too high for the Pied Piper.
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As analyst of devtodev service, I ’ll analyze the main mistakes of the guys from Pied Piper:
Error one, common: wrong choice of metrics
All follow only one metric: the number of installations. This metric will always grow, it is cumulative, but behind the growing number of installations almost no one sees the product problem: users do not return to it.
During the product launch phase, the Installs metric is often in the spotlight, as it shows the number of users who have tried the product. However, first of all it is necessary to put the product quality metrics: retention of the first days, ARPU (average revenue per user), sometimes the average session duration. If everything is all right with these indicators, then you can be sure of the product, and the installations will continue to grow.
I recommend tracking key events (at least file compression) to understand:
Keeping track of these metrics will help identify problems, and event reports will help formulate hypotheses to solve them.
Error two, predictable: wrong choice of focus group during beta testing
The keys to the closed beta test were obtained only by the immediate environment of the developers, that is, those who are already familiar with the unique algorithm invented by Richard. When a product comes into their hands, they know where to look, what to check and what to admire, their reviews are certainly positive. Therefore, Richard does not receive adequate feedback from ordinary users (he chose not to pay attention to Monica's remark).
What should have been done?
The most important thing: it was necessary to increase the number of people taking part in the beta test, thereby raising their chances to hear a fair opinion and the necessary criticism. It is still worth remembering that the people participating in the beta test and the people who will continue to use the product are different categories of people. The first are interested in technology, monitor developments, and have already heard about Pied Piper (that is, they will only check the algorithm, and therefore will be pleased with it). The second ones are regular users, and Pied Piper, which they install on their device, is only one of dozens of other applications, to understand in detail the advantages of which they will not have time.
It follows that the focus group could and should have been assembled before the launch of the product in order to identify the problem and have time to solve it.
Error three, instructive: problem with user activation
Users cannot understand the advantages of the system either from the first attempt (when the focus group was still without Richard), or from the second (when Richard began to talk about the fact that eggs consist of electrons). Only then, after spending a lot of time and writing a whiteboard with a marker, Richard gets his way: users understand that the platform is really very, very cool.
Of course, lectures and seminars did not convey this to each user (there were attempts), so it would be right to conduct some user training in the first session.
A user who first saw a new application for himself asks himself questions:
And if the answers to these questions were given in the first session, the rates would be higher. You can simply invite the user to compress his first file, see it on all his devices and tell him that the file on the device does not weigh anything. Even then, an intrigued user will understand everything himself. So an interactive assistant, for all its possible absurdity, is not the worst of the solutions.
The process of user awareness of the benefits of a product is called activation (user onboarding), and the very moment at which the user understands the functionality of the product is sometimes called the aha-moment (“Aha! I understood what the trick”) - I told about it in detail here . A user who has experienced aha-moment, as a rule, remains in the product for a long time (obviously longer than the user who has not reached this point). For reference: the Dropbox service, which operates in the same market as the fictional Pied Piper, considers downloading the first file to the cloud as its aha-moment.
What will be next? I myself am interested to know how the writers will get out of the situation and bring Pied Piper to a new level: here we must pay tribute to the creators of the series, the empathy for the characters is so high that you worry about each episode for them as for your relatives. Some here even write articles.
Let me remind you that Pied Piper is a service for efficient compression and cloud storage of files, which in this series goes to the mass market, and so far it is not quite successful.
So, Pied Piper did not take off. There is no doubt that everything will be fine (the season is not over yet, the series is all the more), but for this, Richard & Co (or rather, the writers) will have to do something out of the ordinary. In the meantime, we have the following figures: for 500 thousand installations, only 19 thousand active users per day (DAU). It is unclear how many days have passed since the start of the application launch, and therefore the exact retention values, that is, the percentage of users who visited the project within a certain time frame, is difficult to calculate. But apparently, quite a bit of time has passed, and with a small assumption it is possible to talk about retention metrics for 1 day or 7 days.
And 3.8% (that is, 19 thousand / 500 thousand) is very little. By experience, retention of 1 day should be around 30%, retention of 7 days should be around 15%. Or another estimate - 20% per week (which is why Monica initially estimated that there should be 100 thousand users), which is too high for the Pied Piper.
')
As analyst of devtodev service, I ’ll analyze the main mistakes of the guys from Pied Piper:
Error one, common: wrong choice of metrics
All follow only one metric: the number of installations. This metric will always grow, it is cumulative, but behind the growing number of installations almost no one sees the product problem: users do not return to it.
During the product launch phase, the Installs metric is often in the spotlight, as it shows the number of users who have tried the product. However, first of all it is necessary to put the product quality metrics: retention of the first days, ARPU (average revenue per user), sometimes the average session duration. If everything is all right with these indicators, then you can be sure of the product, and the installations will continue to grow.
I recommend tracking key events (at least file compression) to understand:
- what percentage of the user comes to file compression;
- what types of files the user chooses;
- how successful is the compression.
Keeping track of these metrics will help identify problems, and event reports will help formulate hypotheses to solve them.
Error two, predictable: wrong choice of focus group during beta testing
The keys to the closed beta test were obtained only by the immediate environment of the developers, that is, those who are already familiar with the unique algorithm invented by Richard. When a product comes into their hands, they know where to look, what to check and what to admire, their reviews are certainly positive. Therefore, Richard does not receive adequate feedback from ordinary users (he chose not to pay attention to Monica's remark).
What should have been done?
The most important thing: it was necessary to increase the number of people taking part in the beta test, thereby raising their chances to hear a fair opinion and the necessary criticism. It is still worth remembering that the people participating in the beta test and the people who will continue to use the product are different categories of people. The first are interested in technology, monitor developments, and have already heard about Pied Piper (that is, they will only check the algorithm, and therefore will be pleased with it). The second ones are regular users, and Pied Piper, which they install on their device, is only one of dozens of other applications, to understand in detail the advantages of which they will not have time.
It follows that the focus group could and should have been assembled before the launch of the product in order to identify the problem and have time to solve it.
Error three, instructive: problem with user activation
Users cannot understand the advantages of the system either from the first attempt (when the focus group was still without Richard), or from the second (when Richard began to talk about the fact that eggs consist of electrons). Only then, after spending a lot of time and writing a whiteboard with a marker, Richard gets his way: users understand that the platform is really very, very cool.
Of course, lectures and seminars did not convey this to each user (there were attempts), so it would be right to conduct some user training in the first session.
A user who first saw a new application for himself asks himself questions:
- what it is?
- How can this help me?
- How does this differ from other similar applications on the market?
- how much will it cost me?
And if the answers to these questions were given in the first session, the rates would be higher. You can simply invite the user to compress his first file, see it on all his devices and tell him that the file on the device does not weigh anything. Even then, an intrigued user will understand everything himself. So an interactive assistant, for all its possible absurdity, is not the worst of the solutions.
The process of user awareness of the benefits of a product is called activation (user onboarding), and the very moment at which the user understands the functionality of the product is sometimes called the aha-moment (“Aha! I understood what the trick”) - I told about it in detail here . A user who has experienced aha-moment, as a rule, remains in the product for a long time (obviously longer than the user who has not reached this point). For reference: the Dropbox service, which operates in the same market as the fictional Pied Piper, considers downloading the first file to the cloud as its aha-moment.
What will be next? I myself am interested to know how the writers will get out of the situation and bring Pied Piper to a new level: here we must pay tribute to the creators of the series, the empathy for the characters is so high that you worry about each episode for them as for your relatives. Some here even write articles.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/304020/
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