Practical Tips for Overcoming Web3 User Growth Difficulties

The pursuit of Mass Adoption in Web3 seems to be a distant goal, with most projects stagnating in merely increasing data rather than actual user acquisition.

User acquisition is defined as utilizing all resources to enable more users to use core product functionalities more frequently.

For projects, there are three key challenges to address: “more users,” “frequently,” and “core product functionalities.”

This article will delve into the difficulties of user growth, examine its root causes, and explore efficient solutions.

Difficulty in acquiring users and high costs

Standing out and attracting users in the fiercely competitive Web3 market poses a challenge. With intense competition, projects vie for limited user resources, resulting in high acquisition costs.

Low user quality

New users often lose interest after initial exposure, and even if users are attracted, maintaining their engagement remains a challenge. Many applications find that users only skim through rather than truly engage in the community ecosystem.

Lack of community stickiness

Building an active, loyal community is crucial for Web3 projects. However, the lack of effective user education leads to an insufficient understanding of project concepts and functionalities, resulting in inadequate long-term user engagement and loyalty.

Root causes of growth difficulties

Compliance issues

The complex and constantly evolving regulatory environment requires projects to comply with strict legal and regulatory requirements to avoid involvement in illegal activities or violations of regulations. However, achieving compliance-driven customer acquisition not only requires a significant investment of time and resources but also a deep understanding of regulatory policies in different countries and regions. This increases the operational costs of projects and affects their market expansion and user acquisition efficiency.

High entry barriers

The complexity of industry technology makes it difficult for new users to understand and participate. Terms such as blockchain, smart contracts, and addresses, filled with technical jargon, may pose challenges for new users, making them hesitant to join and engage in the Web3 community.

Poor user experience

Many projects need more user-friendly interfaces and smooth user experiences. Issues such as slow interaction speeds and complex operation processes may affect user engagement and retention rates, making users reluctant to stay with the project long-term.

Severe homogenization

Emerging projects need to find an entry point to attract and retain users.

Consensus gap

Users still have a vague understanding of Web3, lacking in-depth knowledge of potential use cases and advantages of projects, which affects their enthusiasm.

Lack of resources and experience in community management

Some projects may need more resources or experienced community managers to effectively manage the community and create a positive, active community atmosphere. The lack of effective community management and incentive mechanisms may lead to insufficient community vitality, low user engagement, users’ inability to experience the project deeply, and reluctance to recommend it to others, thereby hindering the formation of a positive growth cycle.

Growth difficulties stem from both internal and external factors. External factors cannot be resolved solely through the efforts of one project but require time and resource accumulation. For projects that urgently need growth, it is necessary to utilize tools to minimize the impact of external factors as much as possible.

Solution Overview

Growth and Compliance

For Web3 projects, establishing a compliant legal team and blocking access from explicitly prohibited regions are standard practices. However, for operations personnel within the team, avoiding regulatory risks while minimizing the impact on growth can be challenging, especially when it involves technical operations like IP blocking. In such cases, one solution is to collaborate with growth platforms and leverage their region restriction features to mitigate regulatory risks.

The collaboration between the Tron team and the growth platform TaskOn is a typical example of current growth strategies. Through TaskOn’s region restriction feature, the Tron team can block user access to its project in regions that do not comply with regulatory requirements, thereby reducing the legal risks faced by the project. This approach not only effectively mitigates potential regulatory risks but also maximizes the project’s growth impact.

Collaborating with such platforms not only reduces regulatory risks but also greatly aids in growth:

• Simplified Campaign Setup: Web3 growth platforms offer various task templates, maximizing the simplification of campaign setup tasks and reducing the team’s costs. By utilizing the task templates provided by the platform, project teams can quickly create and launch various promotional activities, saving time and resources.
• Expanded Audience Reach: Web3 growth platforms have a native user base. By launching activities on the platform, projects can maximize their exposure. By leveraging platform functionalities, projects can collaborate with others to launch joint campaigns, mutually sharing their users, further expanding the audience, and enhancing the project’s exposure and influence.
• Reduced User Education Efforts: Web3 growth platforms may have accumulated a certain degree of Web3 user base, and these users may already have some understanding of Web3 technology and projects. Therefore, launching activities on the platform can reduce the user education efforts of the project team, making it easier for users to understand and participate in project promotional activities.

Utilizing growth platforms improves customer acquisition efficiency and addresses the issue of reaching more users. However, newly acquainted users may lack sufficient understanding of the project, leading to potential churn.

How can we encourage them to use core product features frequently?

A comprehensive approach involving Consensus, Product Optimization, and Community Management is required.

User Awareness: Interactive Content

Education and training emerge as effective solutions to the challenges of entry barriers and lack of consensus. The quality of educational content is paramount; the public needs timely access to essential information and clear project positioning. Help manuals are indispensable in this regard. A well-crafted help manual can significantly reduce repetitive tasks and guide members to understand the project’s positioning. It serves as the first instructional material users encounter when starting to experience a product. Platforms like Medium and Gitbook are primary channels for hosting educational content.

However, merely presenting project materials to users is just the first step. Ensuring that users truly remember or understand the content after studying it is crucial. To achieve this, interactive learning sessions can be implemented:

Introducing interactive learning sessions, such as Q&A and Quizzes, allows users to test their understanding by answering questions or participating in tests. Such interactive sessions encourage active engagement and enhance user cognition. This can also be facilitated through platforms like TaskOn.

For instance, EarnM has integrated a series of automated verification quizzes within its TaskOn community, effectively boosting users’ memory and comprehension of project content, thereby increasing their engagement and involvement.

Product Optimization: Feedback and Improvement Mechanisms

At the heart of product optimization lies a deep understanding and fulfillment of users’ actual needs, which forms the cornerstone for providing a seamless user experience and enhancing user engagement. To this end, the project team must establish continuous, two-way communication channels with users. Besides setting up an efficient user feedback system, projects must ensure that valuable issues and suggestions are earnestly addressed and actively responded to.

Contact email, a dedicated feedback channel on platforms like Telegram or Discord, or a feedback forum on the official website are all means through which users can easily voice their insights and suggestions.

For instance, Ethereum has launched an online forum section on its official website for users to engage in discussions and provide feedback:

Establishing such platforms fosters a sense of community and collaboration, enabling users to contribute to improving the product and ensuring that their voices are heard and valued.

Community Management: High Frequency & Incentives

Users will only stick with an application or product if they find its core features sticky, so it’s crucial to leverage community efforts to encourage users to engage with these features frequently:

• Shared Experiences and Interactions: Community activities foster interactions and connections among users, allowing them to feel a shared experience. By participating in various community events, users can share their experiences, stories, and insights about using the product, deepening their connections and understanding of each other. The shared experience enhances users’ sense of belonging and increases their loyalty to the product, making them more willing to continue using its core features.
• User Education and Training: Community members often spontaneously share tutorials and practical tips to help other users better utilize the product, enhancing their efficiency and satisfaction. This knowledge sharing and mutual assistance among users can accelerate the learning process for new users, reduce the learning curve, and thus promote user engagement and loyalty.
• Information Dissemination: The community acts as a collective, and effective community management makes it easier to convey information about the product’s features and benefits to users.

How to Effectively Manage Communities and Encourage Product Usage?

Defining Value Behaviors

Firstly, it’s important to define the behaviors within the community that add value to users. For DeFi projects, this might include the number of assets traded and the duration of asset staking, while for NFT projects, it could involve the quantity and duration of NFT holdings. Different product tracks will have different value-adding behaviors. In community management, identifying these behaviors that contribute to the product’s value and then continuously encouraging members to repeat them using various methods is crucial.

Incentivizing Value Behaviors

Providing positive feedback to users each time they complete a value-adding behavior encourages its repetition. Introducing incentive mechanisms is a common practice. While token generation events (TGEs) have traditionally been used to attract users, point-based leveling systems have recently become the choice for most projects. As time passes and points accumulate, users’ investment in the system increases, leading to higher stickiness to the project.

How to Quickly Establish a Point-Based Leveling System?

Using tools like TaskOn, which offers a comprehensive set of tools for building point-based leveling systems, can help projects establish such systems quickly.

Furthermore, providing a fully informative Leaderboard alleviates the need for community managers to manually calculate each member’s points, significantly reducing their workload. The Leaderboard updates in real-time, fostering user competition and boosting motivation.

Increasing Behavior Frequency

Frequency breeds habit. For community managers, repeatedly mentioning tasks within the community every day can be inefficient and require significant repetition.

Why not try presenting these behaviors as tasks? Community users may not carefully read through every message in the group. The community manager needs a platform to showcase the tasks users need to complete at each stage, making it clear at a glance. Users only need to log in each day to check their task completion status.

TaskOn supports setting the recurrence for each task: Once/Daily/Weekly/Monthly. Task statuses are updated regularly, eliminating the need for manual intervention by the community manager.

Effectively managing communities, optimizing product experiences, and providing quality user education are all key factors driving the growth of Web3 projects. By collaborating with growth platforms, establishing point-based leveling systems, implementing incentive mechanisms, and enhancing user interactions, project teams can better attract users, increase engagement, and achieve sustained growth. Through continuous exploration and practice, Web3 projects will be able to address various challenges and ultimately achieve true mass adoption.