2020 Zhihu Analysis Report

Recently, the business direction of the docking has begun to change. The business party has proposed a product plan in the direction of community. As designers, we must be brave enough to take the lead and start to do some competitive product research related to "community products" so that we can prepare for community needs as soon as possible. So here I will also share with you my recent competitive product analysis~

1. Purpose of analysis

Explore the product models and design languages ​​of excellent content community products, extract the essence and remove the dross, learn the excellent experience of existing successful cases in the lowest cost and fastest way, so as to promote the framework construction and information design of community products more efficiently.

2. Industry Background

In 2020, when the Internet market has matured on a large scale, the structure of mature C-end fields such as acquaintance social networking, mobile games, online payment, and search engines has basically been finalized, showing a phenomenon of giants monopolizing traffic. For latecomers to the market, getting involved in the above fields will undoubtedly lead to direct or indirect competition with the giants in the field, which will bring about many risk factors, such as pessimism from the capital market, high customer acquisition costs, channel monopoly, etc.

In order to avoid the above risk factors, the information service entry point of latecomers to the market has begun to move towards socialization and verticalization, especially in recent years when mobile Internet technology has become increasingly prosperous, giving rise to a rich variety of product forms such as online live broadcasts, short videos, and personalized information flows. They continue to gain user usage time from vertical fields that giant companies have not touched upon, thereby achieving the goal of competing for traffic.

Based on the above background information, we hope to analyze from the perspective of competitors, one by one analyzing how unicorns in the field monopolize traffic, how up-and-coming companies complete the market entry into unicorns, and how they compete for traffic.

Today we will mainly analyze the leader in the knowledge question-and-answer community: Zhihu.

3. Competitive Product Analysis

3.1 Introduction

Analysis version: V 6.28.0

Product positioning: Zhihu is an online question-and-answer community product with the slogan "If you have any questions, go to Zhihu".

Market position: In the field of knowledge question and answer and knowledge payment, Zhihu is currently the leader in China.

3.2 Timeline

• In December 2010, Zhihu's official website was opened, adopting an invitation-only registration system.
• In March 2011, it received a US$10 million Series A investment.
• In March 2013, registration opened to the public. In less than a year, the number of registered users quickly climbed from 400,000 to 4 million.
• In June 2014, it completed a US$22 million Series B financing.
• On November 8, 2015, the company raised US$55 million in Series C financing.
• On January 12, 2017, it announced the completion of a US$100 million Series D financing round. After the completion of this round of financing, its valuation exceeded US$1 billion, entering the ranks of unicorns.
• On April 26, 2018, Zhihu announced the launch of an upgrade in user rights protection. For third-party organizations other than trusted search engines, a whitelist licensing approach will be adopted to regulate the use of Zhihu content.
• On June 6, 2018, the original "knowledge market" business was upgraded to "Zhihu University", and a new knowledge market division was established. Previously, Zhihu Books and Zhihu Live were managed by different teams. After the new business unit is established, the original knowledge service teams will be operated together. In July 2018, a new round of financing was completed with a financing amount of nearly US$300 million and a valuation of nearly US$2.5 billion.
• In March 2019, the company officially announced the launch of a new membership service system, Yanxuan Membership.
• On August 12, 2019, it announced the completion of its Series F financing of US$434 million.
• In October 2019, Zhihu's live broadcast function was officially launched. In live broadcast scenarios, users can share knowledge, experience and insights more easily and directly, engage in real-time discussions and exchanges, and get professional answers from the host.

3.3 Positioning Awareness

Judging from the product development timeline and functional evolution, Zhihu's positioning has changed several times:

• Around 2012, Zhihu positioned itself as a small knowledge creation community open to outstanding creators, and users could only join by invitation.
• After 2013, the community gradually opened up, and Zhihu positioned itself as a medium-sized knowledge exchange and sharing community for professionals in various industries.
• As of the February 2020 version, Zhihu's positioning has undergone new changes. It has been transformed into a large-scale high-end social, knowledge Q&A, and knowledge payment community for people with professional knowledge in a certain field. This also indirectly reflects that Zhihu's product strategy goals have begun to shift to stimulating user consumption and monetization .

In the new version of Zhihu, the compatibility of its functions also provides users with more choices and brings users a richer usage experience :

• Users can use Zhihu as a platform to acquire knowledge. They can ask questions or pay to get more professional answers from experts in a certain field. The knowledge here can be professional knowledge or life experience.
• It can be used as an information search tool to quickly search for the processed and refined knowledge and information you want to obtain;
• It can be used as a creative platform to spread your thoughts and knowledge to others, and even make a profit from it;
• It can be used as a forum communication platform to conduct relevant discussions around a topic of interest, and at the same time, you can follow people with similar interests.

When promoting itself to the outside world, Zhihu creates the following image perceptions to influence and attract more new users:

• Zhihu is the spiritual home of intellectuals. It has a large amount of high-quality content and is a high-level knowledge community.
• You can see many great people on Zhihu and learn a lot of knowledge. As long as you are willing to share your insights on Zhihu, you can also become an expert in the field on Zhihu. In other words, ordinary people can get more opportunities to become famous in their fields through Zhihu;
• Zhihu is a "holy place" for spiritual communication.

3.4 User Profile

Data from the Baidu Index over the past year (19.02.08~20.02.08) shows that Zhihu users are mostly concentrated in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Among them, men aged 20 to 29 in first-tier cities are the main users of Zhihu.

This group of main users can be roughly divided into two categories: one is the "content producers" who can contribute high-quality content, and the other is the "content consumers" who acquire/consume content. Community interactions will occur between these two types of users and between users of the same type.

Zhihu attracts "content producers" by satisfying the human needs of such users to share and build personal prestige. This will incentivize "content producers" to output high-quality content (which will involve operational control and approval), thereby meeting the needs of "content consumers" to find, explore and exchange professional content , and incentivize "content consumers" to discuss the content and express their recognition and encouragement for the content of "content producers" (people have a herd mentality), thereby forming a closed community loop.

3.5 Product Logic

The following is the product functional architecture:

We can look at the functions reflected in the architecture from the following dimensions:

Content Production

As the core function of Zhihu, the question-and-answer function has also shown a high priority design in the product planning of both ends. A prominent question button has been added outside the search box on the WEB homepage, and the mobile terminal has also integrated the question button into the creation TAB in the center of the bottom navigation bar.

In order to increase the answer rate of questions, we also provide a method for inviting high-quality answerers on related topics and recommend links to similar questions. The above functions have become the core way for Zhihu to produce UGC content.

Now let’s take a look at the answer function corresponding to the question function. Users can actively answer or be invited by the questioner to answer. The system will also provide question recommendations based on the user’s interests. The mobile terminal also provides video answers in addition to traditional text answers (as shown on the left below). The new answer method provides the possibility for Zhihu to expand its content types and lays the foundation for its attempt at short videos (as shown on the right below).

In addition to answering questions, Zhihu also encourages creators to share videos, articles, and ideas, with the intention of enriching content production channels outside of the Q&A scenario, while helping Zhihu transition from a Q&A content community to an interactive content community.

As the creator's level increases, Zhihu will unlock more corresponding permissions and provide more self-services to help creators gain more exposure and revenue, thereby encouraging users to continue creating.

Content Output

From the information displayed on the homepage, we can see that, on the one hand, Zhihu always retains the three different dimensions of content display: recommendations, attention, and hot lists in the iteration of the homepage, and allows search at any time to ensure the ease of use for users in obtaining information.

On the other hand, Zhihu is also working hard on knowledge consumption, exposing paid knowledge content in the right column on the web, and integrating knowledge purchase and paid content in the second member TAB at the bottom on the mobile terminal. It is also strongly exposed in my module (as shown in the figure below), and has begun to try to add a paid view of the full answer function in the answer list.

Community Interaction

Zhihu provides interactive answering methods such as following, agreeing, liking, collecting, and commenting to stimulate and encourage the establishment of relationships between content producers and content acquirers.

In addition, Zhihu has also begun to enter the field of knowledge-based social networking, adding an "ideas" function similar to Weibo status to the content followed on the mobile terminal, and began to strengthen the private message entrance to encourage users to have more direct communication with friends.

In addition to knowledge-based social networking, Zhihu is also constantly making efforts in feedback interaction. In addition to pinning user-related invitations, likes and dislikes, comments and forwarding-related information prompts to the top of the notification list, it has also experimentally added a live broadcast entrance to the mobile homepage, allowing big Vs to communicate and interact with followers in a more direct way.

With the continuous enrichment of the above functions, it can be seen that Zhihu is trying to improve the community ecosystem of "content production-content output-community interaction". The design of content production revolves around incentives for creative users in order to ensure the output of more forms of content, while the design of content output captures the interests and ease of use of content-consuming users, so as to obtain more active retention and even achieve consumption conversion, while feedback interaction promotes the establishment of an active community atmosphere, attracting more new users while ensuring that old users do not leave.

Although the starting point of the function design is good, it can still be found that Zhihu's function framework is very bloated. Although it improves the explorability of advanced users, it is still not friendly enough for novice users, because not every user can fully accept all of Zhihu's complex function designs. Therefore, I personally recommend increasing the user's customized function display (such as WeChat's discovery page settings).

3.6 Experience Design

Information layout

The purpose of most users coming to Zhihu is to read information. So in order to meet user needs, it is necessary to make a good distinction between the primary and secondary information layout on the homepage, so as to ensure that users can find the information they need quickly and conveniently.

Assume that users who read information can be divided into two categories: A. Users who just browse casually; B. Users who know what they want to read.

For Type A users, the design of the information hierarchy on both the WEB and mobile terminals focuses on highlighting the "content area". For example, the homepage of the WEB terminal will reveal as much information as possible, and use left and right lines of sight, large and small cards to distinguish the primary and secondary relationships of information; while the homepage of the mobile terminal is limited by the screen size, and the content information is more highlighted in the screen space ratio, while other secondary information is included in the bottom navigation or secondary pages.

The information provided on the homepage is based on three dimensions: recommendation (weight algorithm), attention (relationship chain), and hot list (hot topic), giving users more information choices.

This design can ensure the ease of use and readability of information for Type A users who visit the homepage, and avoid product derivative functions from competing too much for attention, which would affect the user's need to find information.

For type B users, the search box is placed at the top of the top navigation, allowing users to quickly locate and search on the homepage. The search process also provides designs such as keyword fuzzy matching associations and multi-dimensional matching results to help users find the information they need more conveniently.

Information aggregation/differentiation

Zhihu's pages carry a lot of information and functions. Too much information can easily lead to "cognitive overload" for users. Therefore, it is necessary to aggregate information from the perspective of users' cognitive habits to reduce their cognitive burden.

Zhihu uses the design of aggregate cards for related information:

• Card design has good metaphors, which allows users to understand at a glance that the card represents a certain type of information and has certain interactive expectations;
• As a container for content, cards can be easily enlarged or reduced, so they are a suitable choice for responsive design.
• Cards are also easy to make uniform in terms of overall visual design, which makes users feel pleasing to the eye.

In addition to aggregating information and creating a modular concept in users’ cognition, cards can also be used to distinguish information from different modules. For similar information in a list, Zhihu uses simple lines to distinguish them (white space can also be used to distinguish them).

Process efficiency

Zhihu's main operation process can be summarized in three aspects: "content production", "content search" and "community interaction".

The more operation processes a task has, the more likely users are to get bored; the fewer operation processes a task has, the fewer operations users have to perform, and the easier it is to complete the task.

Zhihu tries to control the operational design of high-frequency task processes to no more than 3 steps. This design can improve the user's operational efficiency and more easily help users achieve task goals (produce content, find required content, and complete interaction).

In addition, on the WEB side, Zhihu's functional process design will try to avoid page jumps. For example, when users need to view the details of an answer, they can click the "read full text button" to expand more details on the current page, or they can directly complete answers, comments, collections and other operations on the current page, reducing the jump links in page operations and allowing users to experience a more efficient experience.

Quick Operations

Zhihu's mobile interactive design maintains the characteristics of flexibility and speed, and sets up some quick gesture interactions:

• The gesture interaction of swiping left and right with one finger to switch TAB pages is retained;
• A single-finger swipe up and down gesture is also designed on the content details page to switch to the previous/next answer;
• The iOS version retains the single-finger right swipe gesture to return to the previous page, while the Android version uses the system back button by default;
• The iOS version retains the single-finger double-click on the top status bar to return to the first screen, while the Android version requires clicking a specific back-to-top button. Both versions support the single-finger click on the bottom navigation button to quickly return to the first screen (without refreshing).
• Supports double-clicking the bottom navigation button with one finger to quickly return to the first screen and refresh the page data.

Fault Tolerance

Zhihu has added fault-tolerant design to the experience process at both ends. Zhihu will try its best to retain the user's input content to avoid the loss of input information due to user errors (such as refreshing the page, APP crash).

Zhihu has a "draft" function on both the web and mobile versions. All information that users have entered but not published will be uploaded to the server at a regular interval. Users can find the content they entered in the draft at any time without worrying about losing content due to changing browsers or devices.

When a user deletes an answer, the deleted answer will not disappear completely but will still be saved on the server. The user can undo the deletion operation under the corresponding topic, and the likes and comments data of the previous answer will also be restored.

Consistency and standardization

The consistency and standardization of Zhihu's design are reflected in the following aspects:

• Consistency of visual hierarchy: blue buttons are the most important actions, followed by wireframe buttons, and finally text buttons. This rule is used uniformly throughout Zhihu.
• Consistency of interaction forms. Taking the mobile terminal as an example, no matter which page you are on, the Sheet interaction control is used to view comments, so that users can form a unified understanding of this functional interaction.
• Consistency of copywriting: Use uniform naming for the same operation in different modules to avoid user confusion;
• In line with the real environment, taking the follow button on the WEB as an example, different follow texts will be displayed according to the user's gender, which is more in line with the real environment.

Assist in identifying and repairing anomalies

When users encounter abnormal situations, Zhihu will explain the error message in simple and clear language, accurately point out the cause of the problem and propose constructive solutions.

Taking Zhihu's mobile version as an example, when network anomalies affect page data loading, the page will give a "network error" prompt and provide a "refresh and retry" button to help solve the problem of data missing caused by temporary network anomalies; such as on the search results page, when there are no corresponding search matching results, Zhihu will also propose corresponding follow-up suggestions.

Humanized considerations

As a community-based product, Zhihu emphasizes the concept of "people" rather than a simple service provider, so it also takes human nature into consideration in its functional design. For example, when a user searches for the keyword "suicide" in the Zhihu APP, a psychological assistance guide will be forced to pop up.

3.7 Existing Problems

With the continuous iteration of versions and the continuous changes in product strategies, some problems of Zhihu have gradually become more and more obvious. These problems can also serve as our reference:

The quantity of content has increased, but the quality has decreased

After the full opening of UGC, the variable increased the output of Zhihu content, but it also brought a new problem: professional and valuable answers began to be diluted by some "watery" answers, increasing the difficulty of exposing professional and valuable information, and dealing a blow to some highly professional "content producers". Some users even violated the spirit of professional rigor and began to fabricate answers to attractive topics to get more likes, resulting in the emergence of sarcastic voices among Zhihu users such as "Bianhu, share the story you just made up", affecting the atmosphere of the product community.

Lack of problem filtering

On Zhihu, the same question is often asked many times, such as: How to check your number as a registered user on Zhihu. The proliferation of similar questions will cause the answers to be scattered, which does not allow users to quickly find the most valuable answers.

Incentives and recommendations need to be improved

There are relatively few official incentive systems on Zhihu, which usually rely on users' spontaneous likes on recommended answers. As Zhihu's user base has stabilized, some big V users have monopolized fan groups in a certain professional field, making it difficult for latecomers to attract attention and even more difficult to obtain spontaneous incentives from users. The irrationality of the recommendation algorithm has also led to a lack of exposure for some high-quality content, ultimately causing new content producers to lose to other platforms.

Author: Fool Qin

Source: feather-wit