This article will share Duolingo's gamification design and its localization operation strategy, hoping to inspire you.
Unexpectedly, after brushing Douyin and Xiaohongshu, learning languages has also become a trend-
When queuing, commuting, and lying down, people are keen to use "Duolingo" to break through and earn points.
Currently, Duolingo has more than 500 million users worldwide and more than 40 million monthly active users.
It insisted on providing courses for free, and this year's Q2 also achieved a turnaround, with a net profit of $2.8 million in Q3.
Duolingo has captured the "whim" psychology of modern people when learning languages - Xi learning Korean to watch Korean dramas, learning Xi Japanese to watch Japanese anime and traveling to Japan, and learning Cantonese to watch TVB and listen to the Hong Kong Philharmonic Xi......
And use gamification to make the process of learning Xi language fun and fun, and strive to make people interested and addicted.
Today, let's explore together-
- How is Duolingo addictive?
- How does Duolingo localize its operations?
- What is the difference between Duolingo and traditional online education apps?
1. Addictive gaming experience
Duolingo is more of a gaming app than an educational app.
It is like Pop Ile, which brings users a simple and non-brain-burning gaming experience.
It uses a "level-breaking" approach that encourages you to level up. Users complete a level challenge to move on to the next.
It chops up the knowledge points and "feeds" you in a fancy way.
The user's level is very simple, and only needs to complete a variety of small tasks - word and picture matching, word and translation matching, word and pronunciation matching, two language exchange translation, etc., and skilled players only need to take 2~3 minutes to complete a level of challenge.
It has designed "leaderboards" that inspire users to be competitive.
Users can brush their points to climb the leaderboard and gradually win the 10 ranks of "Bronze-Silver Gray-Gold-Sapphire-Ruby-Emerald-Amethyst-Pearl-Obsidian-Diamond", and can also compete with language lovers from all over the world.
It is designed with incentives such as streak challenges, gems, hearts, and more.
The "Winning Streak Challenge" encourages users to persevere in their learning Xi: users can earn a winning streak by completing one unit of Xi every day;
"Gems" encourages users to answer more questions and answer them correctly: the higher the user's correct answering rate, the more gems they will get, which can be used to exchange for winning streaks, purchase props, etc.;
"Red Hearts" enhances the tension during the game: each person has 5 original red hearts, one deduction for each wrong answer, and red hearts can be obtained by doing additional Xi.
It designed a series of cartoon characters as "encouragement teachers".
Do'er the green owl, Sister Drag, a cold woman with purple hair, Zari, a social expert, and Lin, a part-time mechanic, will demonstrate reading aloud to you in different voices.
Duo'er and Sister Tu are even more life-threatening every day to urge you to check in and study Xi. Duo'er's fickle emojis and funny text messages urging people to check in have become hot topics on social media such as Xiaohongshu.
Sister Drag's rich urging words——
"You don't learn at all, do you?"
"It's up to you whether you punch in or not, I'm not interested in staring at you."
"Busy, busy, busy with your feet on the ground, then you have to find a time to practice Japanese!"
Duolingo's gamification has "rolled" people up and increased user activity and retention, which is a clever strategy for "hello, hello, hello everyone".
2. Localized operation strategy
Duolingo has entered 190+ countries around the world, and it has also done an excellent job in localizing its operation strategy.
It provides users from different countries with differentiated language options.
Xi from Europe and the United States mainly choose courses such as Spanish, French, and German;
Asia-Pacific Xi mainly choose courses such as English, Korean, and Japanese.
Based on this, Duolingo has developed a targeted curriculum.
It has designed exclusive training methods for users in different countries.
Duolingo has found that Chinese users are particularly fond of "memorizing words", so they have developed word lists for both English and Japanese, and there are many word-matching question types in the course.
In contrast, the question types designed for European and American Xi are mainly based on "cloze in the blanks".
It also focused on the field of dialects and developed a "Cantonese" curriculum.
This is the first Chinese dialect course online at Duolingo.
Cantonese is spoken by more than 120 million people worldwide in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau, and some countries or regions in Southeast Asia, as well as in overseas Chinese communities.
At the same time, pop music, film and television productions in Hong Kong have further contributed to the popularity of Cantonese.
Duolingo is also very down-to-earth in the development of Cantonese courses.
For example, how to order food when drinking morning tea, how to ask directions when traveling in Guangzhou, how to play when traveling to Hong Kong, and how to say Spring Festival Xi.
It contains a lot of Cantonese memes -
For example, "Xinghua Street", "Wishing you prosperity, Li is coming", "sighing for cold air", "having to drink tea leisurely" and so on.
At present, Duolingo's Cantonese courses are relatively limited.
Cantonese has only 2 units with a total of 12 lessons, while Japanese has 5 units with a total of 72 lessons.
After studying and Xi Cantonese course at Duolingo, there is still a big gap between watching Hong Kong dramas, singing Hong Kong music, and communicating with locals.
But it's a lively and interesting attempt –
At least people don't need to sign up for classes or ask for teachers to learn Cantonese for free, which is a great help for the popularization of dialects.
This can also form a positive cycle –
More and more people are learning Cantonese at Duolingo, and those who finish Xi Cantonese at Duolingo can go on to Xi learn other languages.
Cantonese is just a stepping stone, and there could be a bigger world on Duolingo.
3. A clear stream of educational apps
Duolingo is different from traditional online education apps in that it makes learning languages a fun game.
The growth password of traditional online education apps is "traffic + marketing", that is, through a large number of traffic and marketing means, to attract users to pay.
They care about how many new users they can bring in by the sales (or "0 yuan audition" and other wool picking activities) that they are responsible for developing the market, and they don't particularly care about how many classes users take after paying, and how often they take classes.
It's like a fitness card that invites you to experience a free lesson and then entices you to pay for more classes.
Duolingo's growth password is "retention + subscription", that is, to obtain subscription revenue by improving user retention.
It's about how many days the user sticks with the Xi, and doesn't ask the user to pay for the lesson, unless you have a specific service need, such as removing ads, taking an English level test, customizing the Xi, etc.
Just like many Internet products, such as cloud network disks, mailboxes, music apps, video apps, etc., you can get basic services for free, and you can unlock value-added services by paying.
Currently, Duolingo's revenue is divided into 3 segments:
Subscription services revenue (72%), advertising revenue (17%), English language testing and other revenue (11%).
It can be seen that subscription services account for the majority of the total.
After subscribing, users can eliminate ads, offline Xi, unlimited Xi practice, etc., and the monthly price is between $6.99~$12.99.
In addition, Duolingo has also launched an English testing service –
You can take the test at home, complete it in 1 hour, get results in 48 hours, and pay 49 US dollars, which is fast and convenient, cost-effective, and just meets the explosive demand during the epidemic and has become a language certification tool for many colleges and universities in English-speaking areas.
Write at the end
Duolingo's linguistic Xi app reshapes language learning with gamified thinking, lowering the threshold for users to learn languages and stimulating users' enthusiasm for language learning.
Perhaps its greatest value lies in the fact that-
Let global users equally enjoy the right to learn and Xi languages, and let more languages equally enjoy the opportunity to spread widely.
After all, language is like a key that can open the door to more unknown worlds.
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