Turning Simple Check‑In Features into Powerful Growth Engines at Liulishuo

01 Check‑In Growth Hack

Liulishuo’s core English‑learning app serves over 60% working adults, 18% students, and the rest adult learners without exam pressure. Early on, designers collaborated closely with product to iterate simple check‑in features that acted as the primary viral acquisition mechanism.

Subsequent maintenance and extensions of this structure were handed to operation designers, who, after multiple A/B tests, identified the core principle of influence driving growth.

02 Inviting Friends

Beyond external check‑in traffic, internal user activation was tackled through a friend‑invitation page. Product, design, and operations teams conducted user interviews, revealing insights that led to clearer step‑by‑step instructions, a popup for gift display, and highlighted sharing buttons.

These changes reduced visual churn, streamlined the workflow, and allowed the invitation‑reward system to scale.

03 Commercial Operation Slots

After WeChat banned incentive‑based check‑ins, internal traffic became precious. Operations focused on improving banner click‑through rates (CTR), leading to intensive A/B testing of banner designs. A case study of a “real‑time conversation” banner showed that without systematic test logs, designers received vague change requests, hindering optimization.

By establishing a shared testing wiki and real‑time logs, both product and design identified issues, ultimately discovering that a UI‑mimic banner outperformed others, though over‑optimizing clickability caused user fatigue.

04 What Is Information Flow?

Information‑flow ads blend native content with advertising, often unnoticed by users. Compared to traditional ads, they balance commercial goals with user experience, requiring continuous content optimization. Market reports predict scenario expansion and service upgrades as future trends.

05 Reflection on Contradictions

Repeated banner redesigns led to designer fatigue and anxiety about skill stagnation. Solutions included turning successful patterns into reusable UI components, collaborating with frontend to build batch image tools, and outsourcing simple design tasks to part‑time staff.