When 20 13 was launched, Xiaohongshu was just a simple UGC shopping note sharing community. At that time, the cross-border travel market in China was in a high-speed rising stage, and shopping choice during travel was a big pain point. Xiaohongshu just hit this pain point, coupled with the extremely efficient social network promotion method (high-quality destination shopping strategy sharing), which attracted a large number of users to register. On this basis, establish a self-operated overseas purchase e-commerce platform to provide users with refined overseas goods shopping services.
So generally speaking, Xiaohongshu's product positioning is an overseas shopping note sharing community and a self-operated bonded warehouse direct mail service provider.
2. Target users
Looking at the user portrait of the keyword "Little Red Book" in Baidu Index, the results are as follows:
Whether it is an overseas shopping note community or a bonded warehouse/overseas direct mail service provider in the shopping field, Xiaohongshu's products are designed around the user groups who need luxury goods or high-quality goods. To segment this user group, they should present the following characteristics:
Women are the main target users. Women prefer shopping and tend to buy luxury goods and high-quality goods that are cheaper abroad than at home.
The age group is between 20 and 35 years old, and people of this age group are in a period of stable occupation and strong purchasing power. Young users have just started working, and their income level is not enough to support high-end commodity consumption; Old users (born in the sixties and seventies) were influenced by the times and failed to cultivate the habit of buying high-end goods.
Occupation distribution includes white-collar workers, civil servants and international students in big cities. White-collar workers and civil servants in big cities have a good income base and pursue quality of life; International students are the main force in making shopping receipts. They know more about overseas goods and are more willing to share them.
User portrait:
Alice, a beautiful girl studying in America.
Basic attributes: 22-year-old, studying for a master's degree in Britain, busy studying, and taking part in many social activities. I love traveling and shopping more, and I can't put it down for all kinds of big names. I won't miss the discount.
Shopping habits: Because of frequent travel abroad, the scene of buying luxury goods/boutiques is the offline shopping center, and the time is mostly concentrated in the local discount season.
Product behavior: highly active users who are willing to share shopping notes are young and passionate, and the products that are eager to share are recognized. They will cooperate with Captain Potato to modify notes and patiently reply to comments; Careful calculation, in-depth study of the use of points exchange; Being abroad, I don't buy goods from welfare institutions.
Lauren, a white-collar worker in a petty-bourgeois foreign company.
Basic attributes: 28 years old, graduated from a key university, with temperament and self-restraint, and petty bourgeoisie pursuing quality. Usually busy with work, I take my circle of friends shopping, eating, drinking and having fun on weekends.
Shopping habits: you can afford to visit big shopping malls, and you can also pull your face down and go to Taobao to search; Occasionally buy luxury goods, use high-end skin care products and beauty makeup; Clothing has both big names and cost-effective items; Be sure to buy high-quality and loving decorations/daily necessities.
Commodity behavior: more willing to share shopping notes, both high-end big names and small and beautiful goods. The main shopping force in welfare society pays attention to the price, but when they meet something they like, they will buy it on impulse. Willing to write high-quality product reviews, but time is limited and I can't accept frequent revision of notes. It depends on my mood to reply to the comments.
Peggie, an elite woman in the workplace
Basic attributes: 35 years old, has worked hard in the workplace for many years and achieved something. Higher income, food and clothing. I'm extremely busy, maybe I'm not married because of my heavy career, or I'm married. I have to take care of my children besides work every day, so I am very tired and stressed.
Shopping habits: Willing to buy high-end goods, mostly in shopping centers, online shopping in discount season; Skin care products and beauty cosmetics are high-end products. Fixed outbound travel every year, during which the goods were swept wildly.
Product behavior: not sharing shopping notes often, not paying much attention to the selected notes and points; Will collect high-end shopping notes, find friends to buy them or buy them yourself when you have time; Occasionally visit welfare institutions and buy beauty products, skin care products, daily necessities, maternal and child supplies, etc. Because of my poor price sensitivity, I don't have time to compare prices, so I will have a high repurchase rate on high-frequency daily necessities.
3. List of product functions
The following figure is the overall functional diagram of the little red book version V4. 1. 1:
Product function mind map
Use the scene
(1) When preparing for a cross-border/Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan tour, select the shopping notes of the destination through Little Red Book, find the most worthwhile goods, and add them to the photo album to form a shopping list;
(2) I bought good things, shared shopping notes in Xiaohongshu, got appreciation and attention, answered questions from other users, and satisfied my sense of accomplishment;
(3) Loyal users optimize the content of notes, apply for selected notes, and cumulatively join the Red Cross members of the month;
(4) In daily leisure time, brush the little red book aimlessly, look at the current fashion trends, and find good goods by the way;
(5) In daily leisure time, visit Xiaohongshu Welfare Society and find good things to buy;
(6) Find favorite products in the note sharing community, find friends to buy them, or go to Taobao to find them;
(7) I have a certain purchase demand (skin care/perfume/coat/exercise), but I don't know what to buy or where to buy it. I browse the corresponding categories or albums in the "Discovery" module of Little Red Book;
(8) Attracted by the little red book push message, enter the App to browse the topic;
(9) Obtain coupons for use before expiration, and purchase products from welfare institutions;
(10) Red Cross members, with monthly points redeemable for gifts/activity privileges;
5. Relationship between core modules
Note community, discovery and purchase are the three core functional modules of Little Red Book, and the relationship among them is shown in the following figure:
(1) Shopping Notes feeds stream (product homepage) is the main function module of Little Red Book, with which the discovery module and the purchase module have information interaction;
(2) All the information in the discovery module comes from the note-sharing community, which can be understood as the classification of the content in the note-sharing community, but it is also an important supplement to the feeds stream, and users can find accounts and photo albums worthy of attention in this module;
(3) The connection between the shopping module and the note community is very clever. Some high-frequency products in the note community have been introduced to the welfare society first. In the product details page, the editor will link the selected notes as product evaluation. In addition, when adding notes, Xiaohongshu also encourages users to associate welfare agency orders. If they are associated, the notes will show the purchase link of goods. Whether the notes are linked to the details page has nothing to do with whether they are purchased in Xiaohongshu.
Next, we will mainly analyze the core product logic of these three modules and compare them with products with similar functions in the process.
6. Efficient and simple Notes feeds stream
It is not similar to other competing products in style. Entering the home page of Little Red Book will give people a simple and clear impression. Generally speaking, this conciseness and clarity comes from the product manager's constraint on the function setting. On the feeds stream, Xiaohongshu hopes to provide users with the best information reading experience.
home page
It can be seen that Xiaohongshu attaches great importance to the perception of note pictures. The picture is spread horizontally across the entire mobile phone screen in the form of a single sheet, leaving no gaps on both sides. This design method stems from the core positioning of Little Red Book-looking for "good things".
So how should we show the "good" side of things? The expressive force of words is always limited, and the best expression is pictures. Therefore, it is often seen that users communicate with Captain Potato to modify the cover picture, and the product itself also provides exquisite stickers and filters to help users make high-quality pictures.
In addition, there is no concept of "note details page" in Xiaohongshu shopping sharing community. A note will only appear in three places: feeds stream, user note list and album list. There is only one reason for this setting, that is, it can meet the needs of any scene without a detail page, which is more efficient. The advantage is to reduce the interference of page jumps on the user's browsing process, so that users can immerse themselves in beautiful things as much as possible without being disturbed.
Few competing products handle feed streams in this way. The picture below shows the screenshot of Pinterest on the left and Sugar Pile on the right. It can be seen that both of them adopt waterfall display mode, with the same purpose, that is, they hope to attract users to continue browsing by displaying part of the next line of pictures. Interestingly, as early as 1 1, Dui Tang began to emphasize that he didn't want to be Pinterest of China, and he still uses Pinterest-like interface interaction until now.
Pinterest & pile up sugar
But look carefully, there are actually many differences between the two. The purpose of Pinterest is very direct, which is to socialize with pictures and let users be moved by beautiful pictures. So Pinterest took the lead in creating a waterfall stream, allowing users to immerse themselves in the process of browsing beautiful pictures and naturally slide down. In this scenario, users don't have a clear browsing purpose, so Pinterest weakens the classified indexing function (the mobile terminal doesn't).
The product positioning of the candy pile is more similar to the little red book, that is, recommending personalized content in a certain (or several) fields, and pictures are only the best means of expression. Therefore, the sugar pile is deeper than Pinterest, and clicking on the web version of the picture will jump to a new page. In order to ensure the efficiency of interaction, Pinterest simply pops up a floating window, which is more conducive to allowing users to focus on the picture itself.
In addition to the big presentation mode, Xiaohongshu also made innovations in some small interactive details, such as:
Click the "All Comments" button, and you will only see a list of comments, and no pictures will be displayed. This setting is also based on the emphasis on the screen itself. On the one hand, for Xiaohongshu, pictures are the core content of a note. Clicking the "Comment All" button means that the user leaves the core scene and enters another functional area. At this time, it is a bit redundant to show the picture in a heavier way.
In the feeds stream, I added a link to buy goods, but I was restrained-I just added a link under some comments in the feeds stream. Note that there are two constraints. "Only in the feeds stream", that is, when you enter the user's homepage, you can't see the link to buy goods. You can think of it as an advertisement in the feeds stream. "Under some bills" means that only a small part of "bills purchased by non-welfare institutions" is selected and inserted into the purchase phase. The reason why we choose non-welfare organizations is that we prefer to introduce objective evaluation of the goods themselves, without interfering with user services, emotions and other interfering factors.
7. Discover the product logic of the module
From the closed loop of the whole community information, the "discovery" module of Xiaohongshu goes beyond the definition of "discovery". There are three common uses of "discovery":
The first is to carry other functions besides the main functions of the product, such as WeChat for the public and Mo You for the minority. When users click "Discover", it is obvious that they want to access a separate function (such as WeChat's "Friends Circle" and Mo You's "Activities"), and this function has a certain mutually exclusive influence on the main function. Generally speaking, this method is more likely to be used when a product wants to develop a new dimension of function beyond its main function.
Second, simply discover the unknown content, such as mass products such as Zhihu, and minority products such as Nian and Tu Shou. Feedstream is responsible for presenting the information you care about, while "discovery" is to find new undiscovered concerns and recommend them to users for free. In this case, there is no clear purpose for users to access the discovery module. This method is more suitable if the product has been classified in the feeds stream or can no longer be classified.
Third, we need to find information in a certain field, such as Weibo for the public and the strategy module of cicada travels for the minority. If the user has a very clear classification information search scenario, but it is difficult to realize it in Feedstream, it is very suitable for this way.
In recent years, Weibo has gradually eliminated a large number of low-quality content accounts, making a number of producers of highly readable content stand out and basically completed the transformation from social to media. This year, I began to try vertical domain content, and found that the module mainly carries this strategic goal. On the basis of a large number of travel notes deposited, cicada travel notes have made great efforts to compile their own destination travel guides, providing users with clear travel needs with the best travel guide experience.
Little Red Book's "discovery" is basically a combination of the second and the third. The top row of buttons (category, brand, destination, theme, talent) is the classification and integration of note information in different dimensions. The following are the recommendations of popular albums and notes.
Destination discovery
If the user has a clear purpose-such as planning to travel to a certain place and making a shopping list-then the user can find the entrance in the first time. And if the user has no clear purpose and just browses the feeds stream and wants to see what else is interesting, he can ignore the first line and continue browsing. Generally speaking, information classification can meet the specific needs of users, while popular recommendation is to increase user stickiness.
I have two views on the discovery module:
(1) At present, the efficiency of information classification is not high, and it needs to be optimized slowly. For example, my screenshot, choose the destination-Japan, a total of more than 300,000 notes, countless brands (about 5 minutes to the end, search is not supported).
First of all, in the remarks section, if we count the distribution of users' browsing screens, we guess it must be far lower than the home page. Users can't browse so many notes, and the number itself will make everyone flinch. As for the brand part, it is very likely that users will choose it as a targeted brand, so many brands are a little tired without searching.
In fact, it can be seen that the most valuable function in this scene is theming. At the beginning of the launch, Xiaohongshu was crazy about the topic of high-quality destination shopping. The attraction of the topic content can be seen, so I think we can consider putting the topic in the default position. At the same time, we should optimize the display mechanism of notes and brands.
(2) Hot recommendation is an important supplement to the whole product, but it will gradually weaken as the product matures. Hot content discovery is difficult to appear as the core function of the product. In Douban version 2.0, "discovery" was once regarded as a strategic function, hoping to increase the frequency of users' use by bringing surprises.
I can't judge the final result, but judging from the fact that Douban 3.0 abandoned the "discovery" function, it should not achieve the expected effect. When users open an application, they either have the purpose of accessing a certain function (usually the core function) or form a specific usage habit. In the early stage of the product, when the overall number and average content of notes that users pay attention to are not so sufficient, popular recommendations can help them discover new things. When the product matures, users develop an inherent information acquisition mechanism (paying attention to rich accounts and topics), and the importance of popular recommendations will gradually decrease.
8. Interactive innovation of procurement sector
20 15 two products have appeared in the field of e-commerce. The first is the vertical e-commerce in the niche field, which has outstanding domain characteristics in product design, commodity design and operation, such as the decoration of snails and owners; The second category is the combination of socializing (or community) and shopping, such as little red books, piling up sugar and going to the kitchen.
For the latter, the most innovative design is to introduce community content into the product details page as product reviews. Traditional e-commerce websites, the low quality of comments is a big pain point. The commodity evaluation areas of Taobao, JD.COM and Suning are full of invalid or even false comments. The comment area is not a complete community in essence, and it can't effectively motivate users to write high-quality comments. The combination of social and e-commerce just solved this pain point.
But the social+shopping model also has pain points. In the traditional e-commerce product system, evaluation is a tool for users to check and balance businesses. In the process of shopping, any dissatisfaction with the service and the goods themselves can be encouraged to solve through low-scoring evaluation. On the product details page of Xiaohongshu and Sugar Stack, only a few shopping notes selected by the editor can be seen. Although Xiaohongshu uses many shopping notes from non-welfare organizations to link to the product details page, a single user only knows how good the product is and has no concept of logistics and after-sales service quality. This is a big weakness of this model, and I haven't thought of a solution for the time being.
From the whole shopping process, Xiaohongshu is as simple as possible. On the product details page, only the Add Shopping Cart button is available; There is only one shopping cart, and the harvest address information is placed at the cashier, while the general logic of traditional large-scale e-commerce is shopping cart 1- shopping cart 2- cashier. Under this simplified process, users only need four steps from selecting goods to buying, which is very simple and convenient.
In Android version 4.1.1,the original label of "Welfare Society" was renamed as "Purchase". Behind the name change, it represents a strategic change, and the e-commerce platform is gradually becoming the strategic core of Xiaohongshu. However, any product can only have one main function. The development of e-commerce will inevitably mean the weakening of the note community. How to find a balance in this process will be a huge challenge.