Blog 60: Approaches to grow user base fast

Bad design can be a deal breaker. As costly as bad customer experiences.

Users' experiences influence their decision to return. If the product meets their expectations (product-market fit or PMF), they will return. To achieve PMF, release your minimum viable product (MVP) to target users, accept all feedback, make improvements, and re-release. A continuous loop. MVP is like the first version of the product that is customer facing (blog 51 for more on PMF and MVP; blog 52 and 53 for more on two widely adopted design thinking frameworks).

Successful products often follow similar steps. Google Files, for example, began with understanding users, iterated to achieve PMF, and then focused on growth. Explore how Google Files team grew its user base to 100 million (source: Medium article).

Background: Files is a product within Google’s Emerging Markets portfolio. It has three main aims, to help users clean their phones, browse local files, and share files offline easily.

In Emerging markets this is an important value proportion. Research found that one in three users exhausted their storage every day. Hence, cleaning comes in useful. Large number of files need to be sorted and organized. The ability to share files offline meant there is no need to depend on data connectivity.

Files was launched in 2017 and in around 2019 it was estimated to have crossed 100 million users (source). The scope of this case study is limited to this period of growth.

What we can learn from Files’ initiatives that led this growth?

During the ideation stage, the team spent significant time on user research. And gathered insights that they would have never guessed. Firstly, people received several good morning images daily. Filling up their storage. This needed clean-up. Secondly, large number of people shared their devices with family members leading to privacy concerns. Thirdly, Files involves complex computation, however, it must run on low-end phones. On learning these pain points, the team built a solution that addressed them. In successful product teams, user research is an activity that is done diligently.

The team focused on building multiple prototypes to test with users, with a two to three-week turnaround. Something like Google X, that tests up to twenty ideas in a week. The Files team leveraged the design sprint framework. Where instead of building a full prototype, you test the idea with users, gather feedback, and then iterate on the idea.

After verifying the idea with a series of prototypes, the team arrived at a version called Alpha, followed by Beta and then a MVP that launched into the market.

After Files’ launch, the team entered the iteration stage. Where they focused on user feedback and usage data. User feedback came from app store reviews, posts in social media platforms and online forums (such as Reddit) etc. Since feedback can be biased, it’s important to be objective while collecting user feedback. From usage data, the team tried to understand feature usage, retention drivers and collected error reports. For example, they were surprised to learn that 60% of users didn’t free up space with the app. But it was intended for just that. Feedback and usage data/behaviour gave the team insights for the next iteration.

In third stage, the team looked to push for growth. Growth relies on a quantitative approach of analysing, estimating, and testing. The team worked closely with a quantitative product marketing manager. And they were data focussed. The different growth channels available to them were organic, partnerships, ads, referrals, cross-promotions, and physical marketing. The team looked at the value and the cost of each channel. For example, partnerships with smartphone companies would be the most effective. Because if users quickly ran out of space on their phones, they wrote negative reviews about the phone. Hence, appropriate partnership deals (some paid and some free) resulted in traction and yielded growth.

To conclude: 

Four metrics that the team tracked were, 28-day active users, week 1 retained users (to see if users come back after the first time), week 4 retained users (a proxy for long-term retention), Google Play rating (gauges people sentiment). These metrics can be sliced and diced by market, by partner, by growth channel, etc. In addition, the team also relied on different dashboards and ad-hoc analysis.

Jump to blog 100 to refer to the overall product management mind map.

I wish you the best for your journey. 😊