Designing for Organic Acquisition
With the expanding business, the challenge was to achieve sustainable user growth while keeping our marketing spend within a reasonable budget. At the org level, the plan was to bring down the marketing cost from 8% to 5% while maintaining the growth trajectory. Hence new channels had to be identified to acquire users which can cover for the paid installs.
Currently, Byjus does Celebrity Endorsements, Regional marketing, Digital Marketing and Word of Mouth. These ways help us reach to a wider audience, increase brand awareness among students and parents and thus get more organic installs on the application. With these mediums constrained, we had to figure out channels in our app which engaged and appealed to the students on the app, these would help us in getting more organic installs through word of mouth.
In-depth App Analysis
We analysed and compared all the existing features on the BTLA app based on their retention and completion rates.
Insights from the analysis
- Live Quiz had the maximum retention as compared to all features
- 77% of users who join the quiz stay for the complete 15 minutes of playtime vs 27 mins for Overall App
- Over 29000 users have joined Live Quiz within the span of 60 days
- Adoption rate for live quiz was fairly low, which was a problem area.
What is Live Quiz?
An interactive, real-time quiz experience facilitated live by a host everyday in the evening for 15 mins. Participants showcase their knowledge by answering the questions while host creates excitement, building recognition and boosting user engagement.
Our Objective
- On the basis of our analysis, we decided to leverage Live Quiz further and drive the popularity of BTLA
- Improve the adoption rate of Byjus live quiz from the app’s homepage and increase visibility of the live quiz on other platforms
How we planned on achieving this — Our Hypothesis!
For Adoption Rate
By introducing daily and weekly rewards program (Extrinsic motivation), students will be lured to play live quiz everyday and the adoption rate will improve for the feature.
For Popularity
By introducing points system in the game and rewarding students with them for each successful referral, will excite them into referring their friends to the app. These referrals will increase our organic installs.
But can point system alone make the product interesting enough?
Since Live quiz is a quiz game, we researched other apps to understand how they lured users and what made their products popular
We observed psychology behind games ad observed patterns. We inferred that there was a framework that these apps followed : The Three Loops
- Core loop : A series or chain of actions that is repeated over and over as the primary flow of your players experience
- Meta loop : Any action made external to the game itself that has an effect on the play experience. (Game beyond game)
- Viral loop : The steps a user goes through between entering an app to inviting the next set of new users
Lets go in detail of these loops in context of Live Quiz
Core Loop
It will consist of discovering the live quiz from the home page, exploring the game play, setting reminder for the next quiz, joining the quiz and playing everyday.
Meta Loop
This will be built around the core loop. This loop is a game beyond the game which will include earning points, moving up the leaderboard and winning prizes.
Viral Loop
This will help bring the social factor to the game. It will focus around inviting friends and earning points.
To summarise, Our core loop was in place, for meta loop to function properly we had to reinforce the importance of points through out the game, establish the visibility of rewards in the game and establish a community within the game to give a reason to the students to share the app among their friends.
How did we solve for these loops?
Octalysis Framework for Gamification and Behavioral Design
The Octalysis Framework provides a systematic approach to designing engaging experiences that motivate users to take desired actions, whether it’s completing tasks, learning new skills, or participating in activities. It helps designers understand and harness the psychological factors that drive human behavior, leading to more effective gamification strategies and user experiences.
Our takeaways
- Epic meaning & calling, showing users value in the game by defining a clear objective for them to complete
- Feeling of accomplishment, Giving users sense of progress, mastery and gratification
- Social influence and relatedness, that gives users a sense of connection and belonging. It is about making them feel like they are part of a community
- Scarcity and impatience, the core drive of creating a sense of urgency and excitement. It is about making users feel like they need to act now or miss out
- Development and Accomplishment, the core drive to level up, improve and mastery
To understand the opportunity areas and gaps in the current user journey, we structured the user journey into three distinct phases:
- Pre Quiz (Core Loop)
- During Quiz
- Post Quiz (Meta and Viral Loop)
Pre Quiz — Discovering phase
Pre quiz is referred to as the time when the user discovers live quiz from the Homepage and explores more about it or play the game depending on the time of the day.
User expectations at this stage
Since the adoption rate was low from the homepage and we didn’t have enough data to figure out why that was happening. We assumed a few causations of this based on user expectations during this phase.
Our assumptions
- The homepage card didn’t stand out from the rest of the content and hence was not discoverable
- The copy or imagery was not exciting enough to click through and explore further
We utilised Scarcity and impatience, the core drive of creating a sense of urgency and excitement. It is about making users feel like they need to act now or miss out
How we solved for it?
Pre Quiz — Exploring phase
The main aim of the page was to get students to set reminders because students coming to the page left without doing so, our assumptions to this were:
- New users could not understand how to play the quiz
- Rewards for the week were not clear to the students and hence no external motivation
- Noway to check the progress made throughout the week for regular players
How we solved for it?
We utilised the following
- Epic meaning & calling, showing users value in the game by defining a clear objective for them to complete
- Feeling of accomplishment, Giving users sense of progress, mastery and gratification
- Social influence and relatedness, that gives users a sense of connection and belonging. It is about making them feel like they are part of a community
- Development and Accomplishment, the core drive to level up, improve and mastery
Waiting room intervention prior to the quiz
We figured out that the students tend to leave the quiz page if they joined a few minutes earlier because there is nothing to do, so to fill that gap and reduce drop off, we introduced waiting room.
Post Quiz
Once the game ends, the experience that comes after is referred to as post quiz.
User expectations at this stage
Our current experience
Currently the quiz ends in a very abrupt manner, the winners of the daily rewards are just informed that they will get a call from the sales team, which leaves the student unaware of the next steps and way to claim the reward.
How we solved for it?
We introduced and after game experience which showed the progress made through out the game, and to provide a bigger picture, we introduced Global and Friend Leaderboard
- Feeling of accomplishment, Giving users sense of progress, mastery and gratification
- Social influence and relatedness, that gives users a sense of connection and belonging. It is about making them feel like they are part of a community
As shown above, Point system was established throughout the game, and an individual’s personal score was informed at different touch-points to create value for the points and the urge to earn them.
At the end of each week of gameplay, we designed tailored experiences for both winners and participants to highlight their progress and uplift their spirits for the upcoming week.
Referrals
With clearly defined objectives and an evident intention to engage students in gameplay, coupled with a point system directly influencing their leaderboard position and proximity to prizes, incentivizing referrals became a logical step. This approach encouraged students to share the app with their friends, fostering a self-reinforcing loop of engagement and virality.
Insights for Adoption Rate
For Grade 4,5,9,10
- Entry card click rate increased by 32%
- 33% increase was seen in the no of reminder set for the upcoming quiz
- 19% of increase seen in the students playing live quiz
For Grade 6,7,8
- Entry card click rate increased by 66%
- 60% increase was seen in the no of reminder set for the upcoming quiz
- 37% of increase seen in the students playing live quiz
Future scope
- We observed multiple drop-offs in downloads originated from user frustration with the download and app access process, leading to a disconnect where users lose sight of their initial purpose for visiting the app. To address this, we plan to develop an instant app that allows users to play the quiz without installation, preserving their context and encouraging them to download after experiencing the gameplay.
- In the long term, achieving product virality relies on creating an addictive gameplay experience. To accomplish this, our strategy involves introducing boosters, live chat features, and clan creation options for invited friends within the gameplay, enhancing the overall quiz experience.
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