Xiaohongshu product analysis and optimization plan

1. Product Disassembly and Development History

1.1 Product Disassembly

Secondary analysis of Xiaohongshu app’s “Business-Service”

Xiaohongshu app: three-level analysis of "business-service-function"

(Experience model: iPhone XR, system version: ios13.3; App version: 6.24, experience time: 2019.12)

1.2 Product Development History

The development history of Xiaohongshu can be described in three stages: "starting from the trend, failing in e-commerce, and returning to the community." Although it has wavered between the community and e-commerce, it has always been firm in its positioning as a "lifestyle sharing platform" and has maintained its original intention of building a "beautiful, real, and diverse" virtual city. In the past 2019, it achieved a remarkable achievement of a sharp increase of 100 million users in 6 months, and was sought after by major brands; but it also lost 20 million monthly active users due to 77 days of removal and was blamed for "fake notes." What kind of secrets are contained on this platform labeled as a "grass-planting community"?

Starting from the wind outlet. Xiaohongshu’s slogan is: “Mark my life”. Its product positioning is to provide young people with a lifestyle sharing community and online shopping platform. In 2013, Chinese outbound tourism was booming, with the number of tourists reaching 98 million that year, ranking first in the world, but there was very little information about overseas shopping. The founder of Xiaohongshu seized the opportunity and launched a PDF guide that mainly shared overseas shopping information. It quickly became a hot product on the website, attracting 500,000 downloads, and the Xiaohongshu app was launched at the end of the year. In July 2014, the country recognized cross-border e-commerce at the policy level. Xiaohongshu took advantage of its accumulated 15 million female users and high-quality shopping sharing community to launch its own e-commerce welfare club.

Failure in e-commerce. The establishment of an e-commerce platform is fraught with risks from the very beginning. The biggest challenge for cross-border e-commerce is stocking up. Industry insiders say that if you don’t stock up, you won’t be able to get the goods at all. What is even more fatal is that as a "light" startup company, Xiaohongshu is relatively short of talent and funds, which makes it unable to complete the "heavy" operation of e-commerce infrastructure construction, resulting in a series of problems such as a large number of counterfeit goods, slow delivery, and poor after-sales service. In addition, the introduction of the "408" new policy that affected the fate of cross-border e-commerce has severely damaged the cross-border e-commerce industry. As of 2018, Xiaohongshu’s self-operated e-commerce GMV target of 10 billion has not been achieved, and its market share in the cross-border e-commerce field is 13.4%, a huge gap from the 74% of the first-ranked Kaola.com. The “community + e-commerce” business closed-loop concept has not been realized.

Return to the community. After several years of wavering, Xiaohongshu has resolutely returned to the community, that is, from selling goods to selling traffic. In addition to inviting celebrities such as Fan Bingbing and Lin Yun to join, it also sponsored popular variety shows such as "Idol Producer" and "Produce 101". Celebrity marketing brought huge traffic, making Xiaohongshu the number one platform for selling goods in the circle. The huge user value attracted US$300 million in financing led by Alibaba. In February 2019, Xiaohongshu integrated its two major businesses, community and e-commerce, at the organizational level. In May, it upgraded its brand partner system, which also marked its new commercialization layout.

Over the past seven years, the reason why Xiaohongshu has been able to gain a foothold in the Internet battlefield full of powerful competitors is that it is a "community +" platform with "grass planting" as its gene, and its e-commerce business is more like an extension of community services. Behind this "grass planting" is the insight and guidance on consumption trends screened by Xiaohongshu's 300 million users.

2. Competitive Product Analysis

2.1 Competitive product selection

In the development history of Xiaohongshu, we can determine that its two core businesses are: content community and e-commerce platform. As a result, two major competitors of Xiaohongshu were selected: "Kaola Global Shopping", a vertical competitor focusing on cross-border e-commerce; and "Tik Tok", a leading product in the short video community.

2.2 Business Division

Business distribution of Xiaohongshu and its competitors

The above picture is a summary of the business divisions of Xiaohongshu and its competitors. After analysis, the author found that:

•At the community level, Xiaohongshu community is vigorously promoting video notes and has a tendency to move closer to Douyin. Xiaohongshu community gives video notes a certain priority in content publishing and display, and uses a recommendation algorithm. For example, video notes are pushed first on the homepage, the "video" button is highlighted on the search results page, and there is an up and down sliding interaction similar to TikTok. In 2018, the monthly growth of video notes on Xiaohongshu reached 265%, and the interaction rate, fan growth rate and exposure rate of video notes were higher than those of picture and text notes. It can be seen that video notes can greatly increase user usage time and stickiness, and are also a catalyst for detonating user commercial value. The difference between the two platforms is that Xiaohongshu’s community is mainly for sharing lifestyles, and its videos are concentrated on functionality; while Douyin is mainly based on short music videos, which are more entertainment and leisure oriented.

•From the perspective of shopping malls, Xiaohongshu focuses on the community and the shopping mall as a supplement; while Koala’s community serves the shopping mall. Kaola.com relies on NetEase's powerful user, capital and media resources. Its positioning has been clear from the beginning. Its core business is cross-border e-commerce, and the community is just a section to assist e-commerce. Xiaohongshu is different. It did not have strong user resources at the beginning and relied on a community for sharing real notes. Therefore, the content community is the main entrance for its traffic and its core business. As the founder Qu Fang said: Xiaohongshu has only one business called community, and e-commerce is one of the commercial models that has grown in the community.

•From the perspective of commercialization, Xiaohongshu can learn from Douyin’s commercialization strategy and learn from Koala’s mall construction. Live broadcast rewards, advertising monetization, e-commerce traffic diversion, and MCN incubation are the four major ways of Douyin's commercialization. Xiaohongshu can learn from its ideas, improve the brand cooperation platform, open up the connection between MCN, KOL, and brands, connect the supply and demand sides, and collect commissions; use good product recommendations and interactive live broadcasts to divert the traffic of the UGC community to the mall, and open up the connection between the community and the mall. At the e-commerce level, although Xiaohongshu will not go bankrupt due to the support of the community, building a complete shopping mall system is a very "heavy" operation. Given Xiaohongshu's size and the competitive environment full of strong competitors, it is necessary to make a good balance in this regard.

2.3 Development History

The development history of Xiaohongshu and its competitors

(Data from Qimai Data, December 2019)

The above is a summary of the development history of Xiaohongshu and its competitors.

•The development of Xiaohongshu can be divided into three stages. From 2013 to 2015, it was initially positioned as an overseas shopping sharing platform, from which it built communities, shopping malls, and warehouses; from 2015 to 2018, it accelerated the commercialization process of the shopping mall; it used celebrities and variety shows to introduce a large number of users; and "Mark My Life" reflected the expansion of Xiaohongshu's positioning into a lifestyle sharing community. From 2018 to 2019, the community and the mall were connected at the organizational level to further improve the community business. In the future, Xiaohongshu will accelerate its commercialization while continuing to build a good community.

•The development of Tik Tok can be divided into three stages. From 2016 to 2017, facing the powerful Kuaishou, Douyin used music to target young people in first- and second-tier cities, laying the tone for the product. From 2017 to 2018, Douyin sponsored celebrity variety shows and added gameplay to attract new users and boost activity; it improved live streaming, e-commerce, and advertising to advance commercialization; and its positioning of "recording a better life" indicated that it had expanded to a short video sharing community focused on leisure and entertainment. From 2018 to 2019, Douyin improved the supervision of its content community. In the next few years, Douyin will continue to strengthen its short video community and accelerate its commercialization.

•Kaola.com also uses a syllogism. From 2015 to 2016, Kaola positioned itself as a cross-border self-operated e-commerce company, with white-collar workers and new mothers as its target users. It entered the market with a "low price" and established a supply chain around the mall function. From 2016 to 2017, Koala used events and variety shows to attract new customers; it launched live broadcasts and communities to increase consumption scenarios in the mall and further improve the supply chain. From 2018 to 2019, Kaola continued to improve relevant functions around the mall and announced its entry into the comprehensive e-commerce market. Alibaba acquired Kaola because of its market share and huge traffic in the cross-border e-commerce industry. In the future, Kaola will work with Tmall International to help build Alibaba's EWTP global e-commerce platform.

•The three stages of the three are similar. In the first stage, they all perfect functions and lay the foundation for the product; in the second stage, they attract new customers, promote activation, and start commercialization; in the third stage, they perfect core businesses and expand their own positioning.

2.4 Data Analysis

Data analysis of Xiaohongshu and competing products

(Data from Analysys, May 2019)

The above is the data analysis of Xiaohongshu and competing products. We can see that:

• The number of active users, usage time and retention rate of Douyin are much higher than those of Xiaohongshu

There are three main reasons.

First, from the perspective of user needs, Douyin provides short video content mainly for leisure and entertainment, while Xiaohongshu provides notes related to lifestyle. The demand for leisure and entertainment is more common, the user base is larger, and the time it takes users to meet their needs is shorter, so they can complete them in fragmented time.

Secondly, from the content point of view, Douyin's content is divided into the beautiful category of cute babies and pets, the interesting category of funny actors, the novel category of satisfying curiosity, and the useful category of spreading knowledge. It is accompanied by brainwash music with simple melody and light rhythm, and the content is more diverse and novel. However, most of Xiaohongshu's content is functional and less attractive.

Thirdly, from the perspective of interaction, full-screen immersion allows users to be immersed as much as possible, automatic loop playback stimulates people's vision and hearing, sliding down to switch gives people instant satisfaction, unpredictable content provides intermittent variable rewards, and the powerful recommendation mechanism personalizes user needs. The interaction of Douyin can be said to have taken the addiction mechanism to the extreme. Although Xiaohongshu's video notes imitate the interaction of Douyin, the content of the graphic notes is more rational than the video, and will not produce an immersive experience like Douyin.

•Kaola.com’s market share is much higher than Xiaohongshu’s

Kaola's slogan is "Buy imported products on Kaola", and its target users are white-collar workers and new mothers. It has built a relatively complete self-operated e-commerce system. In terms of product selection, we adopt direct sourcing from the place of origin to ensure product quality. The categories covering maternal and child, beauty, clothing, home furnishings, etc. are precisely matched with target users. Products come from more than 80 countries including Japan, South Korea, the United States, Australia, etc., and the quality control measures are strict. Warehousing is centered on bonded warehouses, and its bonded warehouse area ranks first in the industry, and logistics has achieved "next-day delivery"; in terms of after-sales, cross-border bonded goods have a 7-day worry-free return policy; in the supply chain, we have reached in-depth partnerships with nearly a thousand top brands and service providers in the world.

Xiaohongshu's slogan is "Mark my life" and the core of its product business has always been a lifestyle note community. Although it intended to build its own e-commerce from 2014 to 2017, it did not achieve the expected results under the pressure of internal and external environment. The inadequacy of its e-commerce infrastructure has led to a series of problems such as a large number of counterfeit goods, slow logistics, and poor after-sales service, which has caused it to lose user reputation to a certain extent; and its "community-e-commerce" idea of ​​bringing traffic from the UGC note community into the mall needs further improvement. Therefore, its market share is not high.

2.5 Summary

Advantages, disadvantages and improvements of Xiaohongshu

From the advantages point of view:

•Xiaohongshu’s content community is its core competitiveness. According to official data, as of May 2019, the number of Xiaohongshu users has exceeded 250 million. As a UGC content platform, 97% of Xiaohongshu's content is produced by 250 million users, and real experience records are its core value as a content community.

From a product perspective, Xiaohongshu's core business is a lifestyle sharing community. Numerous UGC contents have formed Xiaohongshu's real word-of-mouth database. You can search for tips on eating, drinking and having fun on it, which is like an encyclopedia of lifestyle. From an operational perspective, with financial support, Xiaohongshu has invited a large number of celebrities and KOLs to join, thereby introducing a large number of new users. Xiaohongshu, which focuses on video notes, must make great efforts to increase user retention and commercialization.

Xiaohongshu's note community is unique in the domestic e-commerce field. Looking at other e-commerce platforms, the communities serve the shopping malls and are highly commercialized. It is difficult to cultivate a community with such a large user base and high loyalty. However, Xiaohongshu's community has a huge user base, high stickiness, high activity, and is dominated by female users, which has made basic preparations for its commercialization.

From the disadvantages point of view:

•The pace of commercialization is slow and user resources are not fully utilized. Although Xiaohongshu has been building its own mall section, its shortcomings lie in the fact that supporting facilities such as merchant tools, logistics standards, evaluation systems, warehousing, etc., which are crucial for e-commerce, are not mature; and the "community-mall" business closed loop lacks key links, which leads to users browsing on Xiaohongshu, comparing prices and placing orders on other shopping platforms, resulting in a large amount of traffic loss.

•The production and supervision of community content needs to be further improved. Fake notes, tobacco soft articles, health care product notes, and the removal of Xiaohongshu from the shelves in August 2019 have caused Xiaohongshu, which was originally extremely dependent on high-quality community content, to face a crisis of trust. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a set of quantifiable community atmosphere and content quality maintenance mechanisms. Only by ensuring the quality of community content and the trust of users can we retain users, which is also the fundamental prerequisite for exploring business models.

From the perspective of improvement strategy:

•At the community level, a systematic mechanism for content production and supervision should be established.

First, use the brand partner system upgraded in May 2019 to raise the threshold for KOL cooperation, screen KOLs with more fans and exposure, strengthen their traffic support, cultivate more creators, fill the platform's content "shelves", and at the same time strengthen supervision of their behavior, punish private orders and data falsification; screen and evaluate MCN agencies. The platform needs to rely on MCN agencies to manage the platform's KOLs, and also cooperate with MCN to produce higher-quality content and jointly promote the platform's ecological construction.

The second is to strengthen the review of platform content. Xiaohongshu officially stated that the company has an anti-cheating team of dozens of people, an audit team of 500 people, and more than 100 sets of data models to combat cheating behaviors such as ghostwriting and brushing. However, the 77-day removal incident objectively shows that the intensity of the audit still needs to be improved.

The third is to create more “little red hearts”. In May 2019, the "Little Red Heart" rating system digitized the user reputation of more than 3,000 products based on the real experience of nearly 500,000 Xiaohongshu users and the principle of "one person, one vote, and every vote has equal rights". This kind of real usage evaluation is exactly what users need and is also the core of Xiaohongshu's "grass planting" model.

•At the commercialization level, efforts should be made in both the advertising system and the e-commerce system.

In November 2019, Xiaohongshu announced the launch of three major platforms: brand cooperation, product recommendations and interactive live streaming, which also represent its three major commercialization levers.

From an advertising perspective, the brand cooperation platform is a marketing and promotion platform that establishes connections between creators and brands. It connects MCNs, KOLs, and brands, builds its own advertising and marketing system, connects both supply and demand, and collects commissions from transactions. Xiaohongshu needs to first put KOLs in its own basket, and then further improve its advertising and marketing system.

From the e-commerce perspective, in addition to strengthening the e-commerce infrastructure. It is also necessary to establish necessary connections between the products in the content and the mall, and to direct users of the UGC community to the mall. The product recommendation platform and the interactive live broadcast platform are two powerful tools. The product recommendation platform reports to the brand and the platform, inserts relevant products into the notes, and allows users to go directly to the product introduction page of the mall with one click, thus forming a closed loop of "see-buy". Live streaming interaction strengthens the connection between bloggers and users, which not only brings in a certain number of new customers and improves user stickiness and usage time, but more importantly, live streaming is a proven sales tool by Taobao and Douyin, giving users a simulated offline shopping experience, thereby driving traffic to the mall.

3. User Analysis

3.1 User role map

Xiaohongshu User Role Map

According to relevant data from iResearch in May 2019, female users account for 80% of Xiaohongshu's users, most of whom are between 20 and 30 years old, mainly in first- and second-tier cities, and middle- and high-end consumers account for a large proportion. With 250 million users, Xiaohongshu has enormous user value. While other e-commerce companies are struggling with traffic peaks, Xiaohongshu is undoubtedly guarding a "gold mine".

If we want to understand the internal operating mechanism of the Xiaohongshu platform, we must not only clarify Xiaohongshu's target users, but also clarify the three hidden players on the platform, namely: brands, content producers (MCN agencies), and brand partners (KOLs). This has to start with Xiaohongshu’s brand partner system. There are three main backgrounds.

First, in 2018, Xiaohongshu invited a large number of celebrities to join the platform, sponsored popular variety shows and TV series, attracted a large amount of traffic, and became the number one platform for bringing goods in the circle. In addition to inviting a large number of celebrities to join the platform, several suitable popular variety shows and TV series also helped Xiaohongshu become the number one platform for bringing goods in the circle;

Second, as content platforms have grown from niche to mainstream, content watering seems to be an unsolvable problem. However, the huge user value has attracted many people to Xiaohongshu, so there have been frequent reports of fake and ghostwritten notes, health care product notes, and tobacco notes. The quality of Xiaohongshu's content has declined, and a crisis of trust has emerged.

Third, Xiaohongshu’s road to commercialization has not been smooth. The self-operated welfare club established in 2014 has been repeatedly exposed to problems such as counterfeit goods and poor after-sales service. By 2018, the goal of 10 billion GMV has not been achieved and no profit has been realized. It urgently needs to find more outlets for monetization. Therefore, Xiaohongshu upgraded its organizational structure in February 2019 and launched a brand partner system, connecting the brands, MCNs and KOLs, and extracting commissions from them in the future to explore new commercialization methods.

The upgrade of the brand partner system in May 2019 further reflects its efforts in community maintenance and commercial exploration, and there are two measures.

First, new brand partner entry requirements will be implemented for KOLs: 1. Number of followers ≥ 5,000; 2. Average exposure of notes in the past month ≥ 10,000. It is also necessary to sign a contract with the content partner (MCN). In the past, Xiaohongshu’s requirements for brand partners were to have more than 1,000 fans and an average exposure of more than 1,000 notes in the past month. The number of KOLs who have been disqualified has reached 12,000. In addition, severe punishment measures will be imposed on brand partners who remain and take orders privately and falsify data. It can be seen that Xiaohongshu is using a tough attitude to screen high-quality KOLs and regulate their behavior to ensure the content production and commercialization standards of the platform.

Second, for MCN agencies, if they sign contracts with less than 10 brand partners, their cooperation qualifications will be revoked after one month. The MCN agencies that stay must pay a deposit of 200,000 yuan. If the agency is involved in "taking orders privately, falsifying data" and other behaviors during the cooperation period, the deposit will be deducted and the cooperation will be terminated for one year. Similarly, Xiaohongshu used an almost tough attitude to screen and recruit MCN agencies, requiring them to restrain the behavior of their KOLs and strictly regulate their business practices.

From this we can get a glimpse of the great significance of the brand partner system for community maintenance and commercialization.

On the one hand, we should raise the threshold for cooperation, screen high-quality content creators, punish those who accept private advertisements and falsify data, control MCNs and KOLs, and thoroughly regulate the content of the entire site, so as to establish a standardized content production and maintenance mechanism;

On the one hand, they built their own advertising and marketing system to connect the supply and demand sides and collect commissions from transactions. This is similar to the early days of Weibo, when the platform’s KOLs took on a lot of brand advertisements, but they had nothing to do with the Weibo platform. In order to make a profit, Weibo developed its own advertising system. The fact that Xiaohongshu’s official MCN platform will charge a service fee of 10% from KOL’s transaction volume is a clear proof of this.

Despite its tough attitude, Xiaohongshu, which is trying to survive by cutting off its own arm, must strike a balance. It must not only ensure the quality of the platform's content, but also think about ways to monetize the platform, and more importantly, balance the relationship between the platform and relevant stakeholders.

3.2 User Profile

User Profile 1

User portrait 2

User portrait 3

User Profile 4

4. User Research and Product Optimization

In order to better optimize the product functions, the author conducted in-depth interviews with 10 Xiaohongshu users, including 3 ordinary users, 3 deep users, 2 bloggers, 1 new user, and 1 uninstall user, in accordance with the two optimization paths discussed in the previous article: community experience and commercialization; and sorted and analyzed user reviews from the app store in the past six months (data from Qimai Data, December 2019). The following 6 suggestions are finally summarized.

4.1 Commercialization Direction

Commercialization is mainly divided into three paths: improving the advertising and marketing system; consolidating the e-commerce infrastructure; and directing users from the UGC community to the mall. The analysis and discussion here mainly revolves around building a "community-mall" business closed loop.

4.1.1 Add live broadcast function

User needs and product status

•At the user level, users hope to establish a deeper connection with bloggers, use their free time to follow their favorite bloggers, learn about their daily lives, give rewards to their favorite bloggers to increase their popularity, and strengthen their connections with the bloggers; at the same time, they can also obtain valuable interactions provided by bloggers, such as listening to the bloggers’ daily sharing on skin care, dressing, etc., listening to the bloggers’ experience in using a certain skin care product and asking corresponding questions to get real-time answers.

•From the platform level, we found that "short video—Vlog—live broadcast", the video content is getting longer and longer, and the production and business data of video notes are stronger than ordinary picture and text notes. Live broadcast can help the community maximize the time users stay in the community and enhance stickiness; Xiaohongshu’s previous attempts at commercialization in e-commerce were not satisfactory, and it also made it eager to find another commercial outlet. On Double Eleven in 2019, Taobao live broadcast transactions reached nearly 20 billion. Douyin is also building a closed loop of short videos to attract fans, live broadcast + e-commerce monetization, and e-commerce live broadcast is proving its strength through outstanding results.

Product Planning

• Positioning: Xiaohongshu is essentially a “grass-planting community”, and “sharing real life” is the key to its grass-planting fans. However, e-commerce live streaming is a form of content presentation with strong shopping logic. Therefore, Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast must strike a balance between “lifestyle sharing” and “selling goods”, and introduce goods on the basis of providing valuable interactions for users.

• Product selection: Based on the characteristics of Xiaohongshu’s users, which are mainly women, mainly from first- and second-tier cities, and with strong purchasing power, some products with high decision-making costs and high repurchase rates are more suitable for conversion through the all-round promotion of Xiaohongshu anchors. This not only helps to differentiate itself from Taobao, Douyin and Kuaishou, but also the high value-added products are more in line with the brand's interests.

•Entrance: The first is the host avatar entrance. For hosts who are broadcasting live, the avatar on their personal homepage will prompt “Live Broadcast Now”, and users can click it to enter the live broadcast room. The second is the follow page entrance. For hosts you have followed, “Live Broadcast Now” will be displayed at the top of their follow page. The third is the discovery page entrance. In addition to the hosts’ fans who can see the live broadcast on the follow page, non-fan users can also see it randomly on the “discover” page.

Live broadcast function planning

•How to play: There are four forms: “red envelopes, online connections, product promotion, live broadcast + notes”. The red envelopes are to attract users, the connection is to introduce the PK format to stimulate user activity, and the product shelves can bring traffic to the mall. The main discussion here is the "live broadcast + notes" format unique to Xiaohongshu. As shown in the figure, during the live broadcast, when the anchor talks about certain topics, the corresponding note link can be displayed to guide fans to jump to the note page; in the note details page, a floating window of the live broadcast page is added, and users can directly enter the live broadcast room from the note page. The two complement each other. Live streaming can connect with users in real time, which is conducive to selling products, while notes can provide more in-depth content to improve user retention.

4.1.2 Optimize the path from notes to products

User needs and product status

Many product recommendations notes display product reviews and purchase suggestions, but do not provide purchase links. After viewing the notes, users may think the product meets their needs and want to consult and purchase it, but there is no one-click direct purchase link. In this case, users may exit Xiaohongshu and start searching, consulting, comparing prices, and placing orders on other shopping platforms. The content on Xiaohongshu does have a strong consumer conversion rate, but it has not mastered the key link of "planting grass-placing orders", resulting in the loss of a large number of users with strong consumption intentions, and even creating an embarrassing situation where Xiaohongshu diverts traffic to other shopping platforms.

Product optimization suggestions

• Improve the brand partner system: In order to display more products in notes in the form of product links, Xiaohongshu must establish and improve a clear and quantifiable mechanism connecting brands and creators, allowing KOLs to recommend products and recommend products in a standardized manner, and negotiate with creators on reasonable commissions for "content-product" diversion. The platform will lead the efforts of multiple parties to better tap into the gold mine of Xiaohongshu.

•Optimize the interaction of the note page:

Improvements to the graphic note page

As shown in the picture, when the picture and text notes are about multiple product reviews, multiple product cards will appear below the picture, requiring users to swipe left and right to view them. Some users said that the inconsistency between pictures, texts and products meant that after reading a long passage of text, they had to go back to the top of the note to search for pictures and product cards again, which resulted in a poor user experience. There are two solutions to this problem. For example, Redesign Effect 1 sets the "picture-text-link" method to make it easier for users to understand product features and click on product links. Redesign Effect 2 sets a "Related Products" section and places product cards at the end of the text, allowing users to view all products more clearly, maximizing the exposure and click effect of product cards and driving traffic to the mall.

Video Notes Page Improvements

As shown in the figure, when the video notes involve recommended products, there are no related product links. The user’s urgent need to learn about the product after being recommended by the video is not met, thus missing the perfect opportunity to direct traffic from the community to the mall. Therefore, a "Buy Same Item" button is set at the lower right corner of the page to meet the user's psychological needs of wanting to get the same product as the one in the video after being attracted by the product. The product details page will then pop up for users to view and understand, and they can even jump directly to the mall to complete the community-mall connection.

4.2 Community Experience Direction

From building a community by using the information asymmetry of overseas shopping as a pain point, to inviting celebrities to join and attracting new users through popular variety shows, it has become one of the largest platforms for selling goods with 250 million users. The foundation of Xiaohongshu has always been its UGC content community centered on "planting grass". Therefore, improving the community experience is the foundation of Xiaohongshu and the basis of its commercialization. Here, the author mainly focuses on three dimensions: retention, activity, and preventing churn.

4.2.1 Add a "Related Notes" section at the end of the note [Community Retention]

User needs and product status

During the survey, some users reported that a note sometimes could not fully meet their needs for the topic. For example, user Xiao Hui wants to check the notes of cooking tutorials, so he finds Note A through search. When he finishes reading the note, he feels like he has not read enough. However, it is troublesome to return to the homepage to look for similar notes of the same type. Therefore, it is necessary to add a "Related Notes" section of the same type at the end of the note to fully meet user needs. At the same time, the author found that the comment section of Xiaohongshu presented all the notes, some of which even had hundreds of notes, resulting in redundant content. The comments at the head are more valuable and have more likes and replies, but the comments at the end are of little significance to users, so they can be folded.

Product optimization suggestions

Added "Related Notes" section on the notes page

As shown in the figure, adding "Related Notes" actually reduces the path for users to obtain target content. It changed from "Read Note A - Exit Note and return to the homepage - Find a note of the same type - Enter Note B" to "Read Note A - Find and click on Note B of the same type". By shortening the user path, users can obtain content that fully meets their needs with fewer operations. This is like providing a network structure of similar content. Users only need to get to one point to find more content. The folding of the comment area is to filter out more valuable information and provide it to users.

4.2.2 Add "Hot Topics List" to the search page; add "Related Topics" to the topic page [Community Retention]

User needs and product status

•At the user level, users want to know what is popular in the Xiaohongshu community recently, such as what is the most popular topic on Xiaohongshu today, which cosmetics are recently launched, etc., but Xiaohongshu does not have a similar topic list.

•At the product level, for content communities, the accumulation of high-quality content requires continuous screening of user information and solving the distribution of high-quality content. Take Zhihu as an example. It uses questions as indexes to spark discussions in the forum. High-quality content is selected by users through likes and collections, and the connections between topics allow users to browse more content by following the tree structure. Xiaohongshu's traffic growth and content distribution rely more on KOL and celebrity effects, so the introduction of topic lists will not only allow bloggers to perceive hot topics in the community and produce content spontaneously, but will also increase the stickiness and usage time of ordinary users.

Product optimization suggestions

Added "Hot Topics List" and "Related Topics"

As shown in the figure, the search page is the traffic gathering place second only to the discovery page, and the logic of the search page is that users actively look for relevant content to their needs and add hot topic lists, which is in line with product logic. In the process of list operation, the official can consider factors at three levels: "content that users pay attention to + platform recommended activities + traffic to the mall" to create a hot topic list exclusive to Xiaohongshu. Adding a "Related Topics" section on the topic page has a similar function to "adding a related notes section at the end of a note". It fully meets user needs through the association of topics.

4.2.3 Set up check-in points rules [Community Activeness]

User needs and product status

The "hey check-in" function was launched by Xiaohongshu in February 2019. This function encourages more fragmented and real content. The path from selecting materials to sending check-ins is short and the operation is simple. Users can take photos and send them at any time. Compared with the fine polishing of notes and the pursuit of beauty, and more content about consumption, the check-in function can better highlight the positioning of Xiaohongshu as a lifestyle platform. However, according to the author's research, most users do not know the location and function of this function and rarely use it.

Product optimization suggestions

If you want users to develop the habit of checking in, you must give them a benefit point. Rules can be formulated for earning points by checking in. Points can be exchanged for goods or discounts within the APP, making the points more valuable to users. At the same time, check-in points can be connected to the membership level of Xiaohongshu, allowing users to enjoy the sense of honor that comes with increasing levels within the platform. A closed loop has been formed with “check-in - points earned - points consumed - mall activity, level upgrade - incentives for check-in behavior”. Therefore, the check-in function can not only increase user activity and cultivate loyal users, but also guide users to the mall and stimulate consumption by receiving coupons.

4.2.4 Officially deleted notes should be saved to the draft box and an appeal should be provided [to prevent loss]

User needs and product status

The emergence of a community trust crisis, such as fake grass-planting notes, tobacco soft articles, and health care product notes, has made Xiaohongshu, which was originally extremely dependent on real and high-quality community content, face an unprecedented trust crisis. Whether the official has raised the cooperation threshold for KOLs, punished data falsification and private advertising, or collected deposits to incorporate MCN agencies, they all want to use this drastic method to make the content of the entire site undergo a thorough rectification. But under the new regulations, there will inevitably be a number of accidental injuries. For example, many amateur users have accumulated a lot of likes and collected notes, which have been deleted and can no longer be found on the platform. If the users do not have local backups at this time, they may uninstall Xiaohongshu in anger. Most of the uninstalls and bad reviews in the Apple Store are due to this.

Product optimization suggestions

For notes that violate the rules, messages should be pushed to inform the user in detail of the new platform rules and the reason for the note being deleted, and the deleted notes should be saved in the user's local draft box to prevent the user from having no backup. At the same time, a certain appeal process should be set up to allow accidentally deleted notes that do not contain advertisements or violate the rules to reappear, thereby retaining high-quality note content and saving the disappointed hearts of users.

Author: Dida Product Notes

Source: Dida Product Notes