Product Analysis | Zhihu App product operation analysis report!

From a niche elite community to a knowledge mentor for 220 million people, how did Zhihu stand out in the question-and-answer community? How does Zhihu respond to the trend of paid knowledge? How to maintain the quality of content after taking advantage of user sinking to increase user base? This article will provide a comprehensive analysis of Zhihu’s current situation and future development.

I started using Zhihu in 2014 after being recommended by a classmate. I had just graduated from high school at that time, and this app opened the door to a new world for me. Now I have graduated. In the past five years, I have witnessed Zhihu gradually develop into China's largest knowledge sharing platform, and then lose its halo as an elite community and netizens jokingly called it a "commercial promotion platform."

As the number of users decreases, Zhihu has been branded as a watered-down entertainment company, with netizens even jokingly saying that its slogan should be changed to "Zhihu - share your newly made story with the world."

At the same time, after the completion of the D round of financing, how can Zhihu, whose commercial development has not yet reached its ideal state, give investors a satisfactory answer?

Zhihu started out as a pure online question-and-answer community and then launched Live, private lessons, Zhihu, and later launched Zhihu Ideas. As I begin to learn how to make products, I hope to analyze this product that has had a profound impact on me, study the product logic behind it, and explore its possible future form.

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

1. Product Framework and User Path

2. Market Analysis

3. User Analysis

4. Functional Analysis

V. Conclusion

“The knowledge, experience, insights, and judgment in one person’s brain that has never been shared is always something that another group of people would very much like to know.”

——Zhou Yuan, CEO of Zhihu

1. Product Function Structure and User Usage Path

1.1 Zhihu product functional architecture

Product Architecture

It can be seen from the Zhihu product architecture diagram that Zhihu has both the attributes of a Q&A community and a paid knowledge community: the Q&A community attribute is the core, and the two complement each other - the Q&A community attribute is responsible for improving user stickiness and retention rate, and the paid knowledge community attribute is responsible for the ultimate commercial realization.

1.2 User Usage Path

User Path 1

User Path 2

User Path 3

2. Market Analysis

2.1 Defining the Market

Zhihu's early positioning was a niche community mainly for people in the Internet circle, which invited more users to focus on topics of interest and conduct relevant discussions in the community through invitation codes.

In 2013, Zhihu cancelled its invitation system and transformed itself into a knowledge sharing platform for the general public.

In 2017, Zhihu launched the "Knowledge Market" and "Zhihu Ideas": the former is aimed at people with learning needs and self-improvement awareness, including Zhihu Live, Zhihu, bookstores and other forms of knowledge payment businesses. The latter aims to promote a fragmented information flow model based on light questions and answers.

In June 2018, "Zhihu Market" transformed into "Zhihu University", transforming from a market middleman to a service provider. In the same year, Zhihu transformed itself and moved down to the lower-tier cities, trying to open up the markets in second- and third-tier cities. Zhihu's market boundaries are expanding.

Zhou Yuan, the founder of Zhihu, said: In the eight years since its establishment, Zhihu has grown from a small community to a large community centered around users, content, and business. As of January 2019, Zhihu has over 220 million users and has accumulated over 130 million answers.

Today's Zhihu is a knowledge sharing platform system with a question-and-answer community as its core, the Zhihu idea of ​​light content as its auxiliary, and the Zhihu University knowledge payment system as a commercial attempt.

2.2 About User Growth

2.2.1 Calculation of the target user volume ceiling

Zhihu's current target users are actually people of all ages and from all industries, who have questions, are curious, have a strong thirst for knowledge, and are willing to share knowledge and experience.

Based on the analysis and screening of Zhihu's target users, the calculation of age and region for users active on mobile devices, and combined with the data from the sixth national census in 2010, we can obtain the number of people in the age group of 15-49 and their proportion of the total population in 2010; at the same time, we also obtained the number of educated people aged 15-49 in 2010 and their proportion of the total population in 2010.

Finally, we calculated that the ceiling of Zhihu's user base is around 530 million; and as of January 2019, Zhihu's total number of users reached 220 million - compared with the estimated ceiling of Zhihu's users, Zhihu still has more than 300 million room for growth in users.

2.2.2 Measures taken by Zhihu to increase user growth and problems encountered

From 2017 to now, Zhihu has taken two measures to increase its user base: one is to sink users, and the other is to acquire more content and users through the expansion of scenarios.

The user sinking measures adopted by Zhihu have not achieved the corresponding increase in users, but have instead led to serious content dilution.

Zhihu, a question-and-answer community that occupies a high position in the hearts of netizens, has woven a network that aims to lower the threshold for content producers and provide more knowledge production scenarios through "column articles" and "Zhihu ideas" in order to attract more users and content.

However, this measure still failed to achieve its goal.

2.2.3 Analysis of Competitive Products in Q&A Community - Wukong Q&A

Wukong Q&A was born out of Toutiao's idea of ​​using its traffic pool to incubate a Q&A community to seize Zhihu's market share. Wukong Q&A has a similar positioning to Zhihu. It poached 300 Zhihu influencers at one time and plans to invest 1 billion yuan to subsidize its development, officially targeting the Zhihu Q&A community.

In the early days of Wukong Q&A, it relied on the practice of “asking questions with AI and providing subsidies based on the number of words in the answers” ​​to achieve rapid accumulation of early content.

However, due to its unclear positioning and tone, and a lot of boring AI-style discussions in its content that try to ride on the popularity of other topics, Wuguoqiaoqiao has gradually been able to expand its user base, occupying user groups that Zhihu has not yet reached, and considering the emerging small town market and young people in third- and fourth-tier cities as a life-saving medicine; however, its product positioning, content, and users are far from what they were at the beginning, which ultimately led to Wuguoqiaoqiaoqiao being merged into Weitao due to the homogeneity and entertainment of its content.

2.2.4 Suggestions on user growth

1. Taking Wukong Q&A as an example, Zhihu can stratify Zhihu topics and even users through algorithm recommendations while sinking users to lower-level platforms, so that users with different interests or discourse systems will not meet on the same path in Zhihu, which will affect the user experience of both parties;

2. Hot lists and recommended topics should also be smarter (on June 11, Zhihu launched version 6.0, in which the hot list was divided into sub-lists to distribute more accurately to users with different interests and hobbies, which is consistent with the author's idea);

3. Optimize business in other scenarios to attract and retain more users and content.

2.2.5 Questions and suggestions on Zhihu Ideas

(1) The origin of Zhihu ideas

The creation of high-quality answers on Zhihu relies on PC, which is obviously no longer appropriate today when mobile Internet has become mainstream.

Zhihu has two issues that have been criticized the most: one is the witty answers, which are very short and may not be the best answer, but many of them are ranked high; the other is the long answers. The longer the answer, the more likes it may get, which greatly increases the cost for content consumers because a lot of the content is nonsense that can be streamlined.

The generation of "ideas" hopes to overcome the two problems mentioned above that have been criticized for a long time. Zhihu also hopes that Zhihu ideas can open up new scenarios for a wide range of knowledge consumers and create a better discussion atmosphere.

Zhihu Ideas emphasizes the creation of short content. There is no threshold on mobile phones, so it is suitable for sharing ideas anytime and anywhere on mobile devices. There is no requirement for the number of words, which allows those who do not have the energy to write long articles or do not need long articles to better share high-quality ideas, inspirations, opinions, attitudes, and ideas.

The birth of the idea of ​​Zhihu is also accompanied by two important goals: to open up new scenarios for a wide range of knowledge consumers and to create a better discussion atmosphere.

(2) Problems with Zhihu’s ideas

When analyzing Zhihu, we found that the positioning of Zhihu's ideas was not clear enough, and the current data of Zhihu's ideas was not good enough - the answer given to investors was not good enough, and it did not bring the expected user growth and activity, let alone bring any business help.

Zhihu Ideas is currently of no help to Zhihu in terms of strategy. The business needs to change its development direction, and there needs to be new thinking on the positioning of Zhihu Ideas, otherwise it may face the risk of being cut off in the future.

On June 11, Zhihu version 6.0 was launched. In this iterative version, the “Ideas” function was incorporated into the “Follow” information flow. Unifying "Q&A", "Column", "Ideas", "Advertisements" and paid knowledge content into the "Follow" usage scenario avoids the inconvenience caused by retaining "Ideas" under the tab and causing two information flows to users, but it also incurs the cost of thinking for users to distinguish between different content.

Although centralizing and distributing content with different functions optimizes the information architecture, it also weakens the social attributes.

In addition, different functions have similar forms but cannot be standardized in presentation, which results in poor user vision.

——This operation actually decentralizes the importance of "ideas". The positioning of "ideas" has always been vague. Lowering the importance level of "ideas" coincides with the author's analysis of Zhihu's ideas.

2.3 Zhihu’s Commercialization Attempt

Zhihu’s business model has always been questioned, and a product of such scale should not have such problems.

Zhihu’s current business model is mainly based on advertising and knowledge payment system. Compared with Zhihu's restrained and cautious exploration in knowledge payment, Zhihu seems a bit impulsive in advertising; and Zhihu obviously underestimated the damage that excessive advertising and inducing clicks would cause to user experience.

In terms of knowledge payment, from the "slow" beginning, to Zhihu Live's inability to satisfy users' systematic learning needs, to the launch of Zhihu courses and even the transformation of the business model from selling products to selling services, users' doubts about the quality of Zhihu University's content have led to its opening rate and repurchase rate being insufficient.

2.3.1 Problems and suggestions for Zhihu advertising

1) Question:

There is a vicious cycle in Zhihu's advertising system: Zhihu attracts a group of people who are most likely to advertise. The ads brought by these advertisers are of low quality, which leads to low bid prices, causing Zhihu to need excessive advertising to realize monetization; and excessive advertising brings users a bad user experience.

In addition, what also damages the user experience are various inducements for users to click on advertisements - Zhihu should weigh the relationship between user experience and excessive advertising.

2) Recommendations:

• Improve advertising quality and help Zhihu celebrities realize monetization. Zhihu can improve the quality of advertisements by allowing advertisers to connect with Zhihu celebrities and have them write advertisements, while also helping the celebrities realize monetization.
• Change the form and style of advertising to give users a relatively better experience when browsing ads;
• Expand advertising methods: for example, the opening page of Zhihu, audio advertising dramas before or after the course or book lecture, and the opening page of e-books;
• Reduce the impact of a large number of soft articles from marketing accounts in the answers in the Q&A community on Zhihu Q&A. Including but not limited to placing marketing accounts’ soft articles in the lower middle of the answer through algorithms; improving the reading experience of marketing accounts’ soft articles;
• Combine Zhihu member services with advertising and launch ad-free services for members. Convert the monetization part through advertising into monetization through membership.

2.3.2 Problems and suggestions for Zhihu knowledge payment

1) Question:

When Zhihu launched the paid knowledge platform, it was already several months later than Himalaya FM, Fenda, and Duoduo. Although it is only behind Himalaya FM due to its huge number of users, Himalaya FM has already realized monetization through knowledge payment. Can Zhihu, which has not yet reached the ideal state in the knowledge payment system, afford to "slowly simmer"?

Zhihu's knowledge community of "sharing knowledge, experience, and insights" is different from the business model verified by Himalaya FM:

Himalaya has been operating with a platform mindset since the beginning of the knowledge payment wave, and has seized the opportunity as soon as the knowledge payment trend emerged, including the capture of consumer users and KOLs from various industries, the accumulation of various types of content and the operation of activities. It emphasizes speed, accuracy and ruthlessness, and has brought a large number of users and revenue through the "123 Activity Festival" modeled after the activities of e-commerce platforms.

Compared with Zhihu, Himalaya FM has a wider range of users and a larger number of users - after all, Himalaya FM is an audio app, and its audience is almost everyone who wants to listen to the radio and books.

Himalaya FM has already achieved monetization. Before entering the knowledge payment track, Himalaya's revenue mainly came from three parts: traffic advertising, community and hardware. After launching knowledge payment, the revenue brought by the entire content payment in half a year has exceeded the sum of traffic advertising, community and hardware.

Zhihu’s main source of monetization today is still advertising.

2) Recommendations:

• The quality of Zhihu users is higher than that of Himalaya FM users. Many users in Zhihu Q&A community do not need courses (or do not need some lower-level courses). Zhihu should improve the quality of its content and make its courses more systematic, so that the content on Zhihu matches the consuming users;
• Help more content producers realize monetization while maintaining the quality of their content, forming a virtuous circle to help solve the problem of low-quality content;
• Regarding marketing accounts: Courses that direct traffic from marketing accounts to WeChat or other platforms will remain on the Zhihu platform. This requires that the Zhihu platform enables marketing accounts to realize their profits, and that the platform is convenient and reliable enough for users and marketing accounts to complete payment and learning activities on the platform;
• Make the Q&A community monetizable, including rewarding highly praised answers and changing the scene from Q&A to courses; (During the product analysis process, I found that Zhihu App has launched Q&A community rewards, which is consistent with the author's idea)
• Attract more potential users through some measures: A. Advertising; B. Event operation.

3. User Analysis

3.1 User attribute analysis dimensions

3.1.1 Educational Background and Age Structure of Users

(Data source: iResearch)

(Data source: iResearch)

1) Data description:

The educational level distribution of Zhihu users in 2019 shows that among Zhihu users, 4.8% have a high school degree or below; 15.1% have an associate degree; the largest number of users have a bachelor's degree, accounting for 64.5%; and the second largest number of users has a master's degree, accounting for 15.6%. People with high education account for 80.1%, which is a large proportion in the App.

According to the age structure, the users are mainly between 24 and 35 years old, followed by those under 24 and then 36-40 years old. The lowest proportion is those 41 years old and above.

2) Cause Analysis:

① Invitation system and elite community:

Zhihu is positioned as a high-quality question-and-answer community.

The participation of some big names in the technology industry, such as Kai-Fu Lee, has won a certain amount of attention for the product, and also played a certain role in ensuring the quality of the Zhihu community. These measures have kept many ordinary players out - because only users in a certain professional field can be invited to register, which also almost limits the academic qualifications of Zhihu users; even though the invitation system was later cancelled, Zhihu's "aloof style" has already been formed.

In addition, Zhihu has always been focusing on the elite community route, which makes Zhihu users generally have a higher educational level.

② Content:

"Share your knowledge, experience and insights with the world"——Zhihu's former slogan.

Zhihu has kicked away people's traditional prejudices about question-and-answer communities, and advocates that users should constantly think and expand their thinking based on the answers to form insights from different angles. However, there is a threshold to forming high-quality answers, and the lowest threshold is to have received a good systematic education. On this basis, it is the result of users' in-depth cultivation in different vertical fields.

The threshold for answering questions and the desire for high-quality answers are two points that are more likely to be seen in people with higher education. Therefore, Zhihu users generally have higher education levels.

We have reason to speculate that when the quality of content declines, the number of Zhihu users may decrease a lot, especially those with high education levels. As the number of highly educated users decreases, less high-quality content will be produced, which will be a vicious cycle.

③ Age and needs:

Most of the people under 24 years old are college graduates or below, and they are more curious and eager to learn.

Among the 25-35 age group, there are students as well as a large number of working people. People aged 25-35 are more mature than those under 24 years old, and have greater demands for the quality, breadth and professionalism of knowledge than students. At the same time, they also have more targeted question and answer needs in terms of career, family or relationship than those with a bachelor's degree or below.

The 36-40 age group only accounts for 15.59%. Users in this age group should have worked in their field for a long time, have deep accumulation in their field, and have a certain influence and social status. However, Zhihu has relatively few users in this area, which just reflects that Zhihu has not done enough to explore users in vertical segments of various industries.

3.1.2 Occupation and content

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

1) Data description:

From the "Zhihu Mainstream Occupations" chart, we can see that Zhihu users are ranked by number according to their occupations: students, product managers, college students, freelancers, programmers, engineers, designers, Tencent, teachers, and human resources (HR).

2) By invitation:

The invitation system that was once implemented has made Zhihu always maintain a bias towards the Internet industry; therefore, product managers and programmers occupy the first and fourth place in the rankings respectively. Product managers need to understand market trends, user needs and more comprehensive abilities, so the number of product manager users in Zhihu is relatively large; while programmers with higher technical requirements may pay more attention to some technical communities.

3) Positioning:

Zhihu is a question-and-answer community, and a high-quality one at that, so it is understandable that students account for the largest proportion - after all, students are a group with limited cognitive abilities and vision, but are full of curiosity, have a strong thirst for knowledge, and have a greater need to understand the bigger world and improve themselves.

4) Topic content:

Since Zhihu is a question-and-answer community with a focus on the Internet, it is curious that Tencent, as a category alone, ranks seventh on the list. This may be because Tencent, as one of the three major Internet companies, has a large number of employees, and its employees have a strong desire to improve themselves and broaden their knowledge in Internet companies. At the same time, the company's product managers may also have a greater say in Internet-related topics.

5) Users and Content:

As a UGC community, the relationship between content and users is often mutually reinforcing.

Zhihu's invitation system has been biased towards the Internet from the beginning, so most of its users are from the Internet industry. The large number of Internet users has again promoted the content to be biased towards the Internet, which is a cycle. The discovery of KOLs in other industries and other fields needs to be improved, so that it is hoped to attract more users from different fields.

3.1.3 Region

Data source – iResearch

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

1) Data description:

In 2019, Guangdong ranked the highest in terms of user usage region, accounting for 9.38%, nearly one-tenth; what was more surprising was that Shandong ranked second, followed by Jiangsu in fourth and fifth, and Zhejiang in sixth, and Hebei - this is different from the previous situation that we knew that most Zhihu users are located in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

In the city rankings, the number of people gradually decreases in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The following reasons may be responsible for the above situation.

2) Cause Analysis:

• Zhihu has started to expand its user base in the third- and fourth-tier cities, and has achieved some success in terms of regional share.
• In the city rankings, there are relatively more users in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. It is worth noting that the number of users in Chengdu and Wuhan has surpassed Shenzhen, which shows the speed of development. In recent years, there have also been some Internet companies rooted in these two regions.

3.1.4 Gender and content

Gender ratio of Zhihu users in 2017 (data source: iResearch)

Gender ratio of Zhihu users in 2019 (data source: iResearch)

1) Data description:

It is worth noting that in terms of the gender ratio of users, the proportion of females increased from 51.00% in 2017, which was higher than the male proportion of 49%. In 2019, females accounted for 53.46%, while males accounted for 46.54%. The gap in the proportion of male and female users is widening.

2) Cause Analysis:

We can look at what operations Zhihu took from 2017 to 2019 that may have affected these data: Between 2017 and 2019, Zhihu hoped to increase its user base by sinking its users. Although the increase in users was not satisfactory, the users it attracted did affect the quality of Zhihu's content.

Since then, Zhihu began to slide down from an elite community and was branded as "watered-down content and pan-entertainment-oriented". It is obvious that news from the entertainment industry has quietly climbed onto the hot list and replaced previous topics, and afterwards, the gap between female audiences and male audiences has become even larger. The relationship is probably that women are more interested in entertainment gossip-related topics, while most men are indifferent or even bored with such topics.

Zhihu should have corresponding strategies to deal with such changes in terms of user sinking, topic control and content quality supervision; otherwise, Zhihu may lose its original intention and become a women's community focusing on relationship issues and entertainment industry issues.

3.1.5 Leisure and entertainment

Data source - Official account (Yiyu's blackboard newspaper)

1) Data description:

According to the above figure, the leisure activities that Zhihu users like are as follows: fitness (32.91%), movies (24.60%), photography (23.72%), travel (15.42%), and reading (3.37%).

What is more curious about the data is that Zhihu, which focuses on being an elite community, has only 3.37% of users who use reading as a form of leisure, while fitness, movies and photography rank the top three.

2) Cause Analysis:

Through the data, we can know that with Zhihu's huge user base, there are very few people who can produce high-quality answers. This is also something that should attract attention. As users sink and content quality declines, if big Vs have difficulty monetizing and leave, then who can guarantee the content quality of Zhihu?

In addition, although most Zhihu users choose fitness, movies, photography and travel as their leisure activities, the number of KOLs in these four fields and the quantity and quality of related topics are not enough. Perhaps we can tap into opinion leaders in these industries and more people who are interested in these fields.

3.2 Typical User Characteristics

3.2.1 Typical Characteristics of Zhihu Users

(Data source: iResearch)

Based on the characteristics of Zhihu users, we can find that:

1. Zhihu users pursue fashion, pay attention to brands, and emphasize style. They are the pursuers of quality life.
2. Zhihu users focus on self-improvement and maintain good reading habits, and are the knowledge-based middle class;
3. Zhihu users have diverse interests, like new things, love to play and share, and are a new group of people in the new era.

3.2.2 Zhihu User Types

(Data source: iResearch)

Zhihu is inseparable from professional content producers, and Zhihu has accumulated a large number of user groups that contribute high-quality content, including creative and influential opinion leaders in various industries, such as Lang Lang, Wang Luodan, Kai-Fu Lee, Li Yinhe, Raymond Wang, etc., as well as curious knowledge-seeking people and new knowledge groups, such as Ge Jin and zilch, etc.

iResearch believes that in the era of information explosion, creating a good community atmosphere through active operational strategies and encouraging high-quality content producers to continuously produce high-quality content has become a core barrier to platform competition. At the same time, it also depends on people who have a strong demand for these contents. These people are usually young people with high education and eager for self-improvement.

As an online question-and-answer community, Zhihu must have people asking questions, people answering questions, and of course people just watching the fun.

We can define Zhihu users as follows:

1. For people from all walks of life or who have doubts in life and want to get relatively professional answers;
2. People who have deep insights into the fields they are rooted in or familiar with and can provide answers;
3. Those who want to see everyone's divergent opinions on different topics;
4. Marketing accounts and brand agency accounts that use the Zhihu platform for publicity and traffic generation; (the above four categories overlap)
5. Users who have traffic needs such as advertising and recruitment.

Regarding Zhihu University launched by Zhihu, we can define Zhihu users as follows:

1. Experts in various fields who provide private lessons/live/book lectures/paid consultations;
2. Novice users who learn through Zhihu University. (There is also overlap between the above two)

3.3 Build user portraits and usage scenarios

Daming, male, 35 years old, a programmer in an Internet company, married.

Daming is a typical science and engineering guy. He has a successful career and has started a family, which consists of a virtuous wife and two naughty sons. For him, the identity of a 35-year-old programmer brings him not only a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, but more importantly, the inconsolable frustration and anxiety caused by work, the precarious relationship between husband and wife/husband and parents/wife and parents, and the disappointment and frustration encountered in parenting.

He found the "Zhihu" App, which is positioned as a question-and-answer community, in the App Store. After downloading it, he discovered that it contained an unfathomable pool of topics, live question-and-answer sessions, and paid consultations.

As an IT guy who knows his own needs very well, Daming often searches for keywords related to his problems in the Zhihu search bar, such as "middle-aged unemployment", "marital relationship" and "child-rearing". In a large number of answers, he sees analysis from professionals in the industry, analysis from professionals in different industries, and successful bosses who talk about their experiences...

Through the Q&A sessions on Zhihu, he gradually realized that he was not the only one who encountered many problems, and that he could get relatively systematic or complete answers to many of his questions on Zhihu, and use them to adjust his own methods and strategies for solving problems. In addition, he has made some achievements in his industry and often gives professional answers, which have received up to 14K likes and over 2,000 comments.

Through answers and comments, he gained a more comprehensive and objective understanding of his field. He also often lets his wife look at other people's answers and his answers on Zhihu. Other people's answers about marital relationships, family relationships, and parenting concepts often make her think, triggering their thinking and discussion. Gradually, she also began to solve some more difficult problems through Zhihu. Now they often see each other's answers on Zhihu.

Benben, female, 21 years old, a junior student in a 211 major, unmarried.

Benben is a very ordinary girl, neither good nor bad in all aspects. She also has the same determination and impulse as most girls, who are unwilling to be ordinary and occasionally want to strive for progress.

The Zhihu App was recommended to her by her best friend. Junior year was a rather confusing period for her. She wanted to work hard to improve herself, but she didn’t know where to start and how to begin. So she often browsed Zhihu and entered broad keywords for search, such as “job hunting”, “college students making money”, “how college students can become better” and “book list”.

Most of these keywords have quite a lot of topics. Benben often happily flips through one topic after another, reading the highly-rated answers one by one. Her eyes often light up, as if she is going to accomplish something big tomorrow. As a result, she put many answers in her favorites, seemingly confident about her bright future, but those answers were rarely looked at again.

In addition to her personal growth, she is also interested in gossip about the entertainment industry. After seeing some hot topics on Weibo, she would search for the topics on Zhihu using the keywords of celebrities or events. She would often see netizens collecting evidence from all sides to bombard various celebrities.

Some of the attacks made her want to slap her thigh and cheer loudly, but she would just like it and forward it to her bestie on WeChat, and the two of them would comment on it together; there were also times when her favorite people were attacked by cyber trolls, and at this time, she would angrily press the "disagree" button, accusing the netizens of being biased, muttering "he works very hard" and "if you don't like it, don't watch it".

Zhihu can indeed quickly soothe her fears about the future, but those "sudden" efforts to make progress will end hastily with just a few days of "seemingly hard work." At the same time, the lives of the highly educated people on Zhihu often make her unconsciously substitute her own identity, as if her future would be like that. The effect is probably like a cool article with elegant packaging.

Xiaoxian, male, 28 years old, ordinary employee of XXX company, unmarried.

For Xiaoxian, Zhihu App is his tool to deal with fragmented time, in the toilet, on the subway/bus during commuting, and in countless moments of waiting. At the age of 28, Xiaoxian has stopped dreaming. What he worries about most every day is how to have more rest time.

Xiaoxian uses Zhihu App to kill time. He has no special interests or hobbies, but he reads various topics on Zhihu, those system analyses that seem to make sense, and those followers with long comments. These things seem to be integrated into his blood and make his brain work.

Yes, when he sees answers that he likes, he often sighs inwardly, "Well, that's what I thought too." There are also times when he thinks, "Wow, this answer is very thoughtful." Sometimes certain answers take him into another world. Similarly, the feeling of “what a mess” also exists, but Xiaoxian almost never likes or comments. Just a writer who keeps following different topics and responses that touch him.

Qingqing, female, 34 years old, housewife.

Qingqing used to be a working professional, but after she got married and had children five years ago, she became a full-time housewife. Previously, when she was struggling in the workplace, she was an avid user of Zhihu. As she had less and less time, she spent less and less time on Zhihu. But the various problems around her and her own worries urged her to seek a way out in life, and she needed someone to give her guidance.

Whenever she encounters a difficult problem that she finds difficult to solve, her first reaction is to go to Zhihu to see if anyone has encountered the same problem and what her/his problem is. What kind of person would give her/him what kind of answer? Do they provide any ideas or paths to solve the problem?

The first thing to be affected is of course her own problems, regarding self-cognition and sense of accomplishment. She tried to find answers on Zhihu about how housewives can adjust their mindsets, but the questions about housewives on Zhihu often brought her more anxiety and pressure.

Xiao Hei, male, 22 years old, an assembly line worker in a factory in a fourth-tier city. (Small town youth)

Xiao Hei is a common young man in third- and fourth-tier cities. After graduating from junior high school, he did not continue his studies due to family and personal reasons, and started working in a factory at the age of fifteen or sixteen. In fact, Xiao Hei's only entertainment besides work is playing cards with colleagues or going to the Internet cafe to play games. With the advent of the mobile era, Xiao Hei goes to the Internet cafe less frequently, and his leisure time has gradually shifted from spending mainly on watching TV dramas, variety shows or playing mobile games to spending on Kuaishou and Douyin.

I got to know the Zhihu app by chance, and then downloaded it and browsed it for a while. I also began to marvel at the fact that there are a large number of people in this world whose lifestyles, perspectives, and ways of thinking are completely different from my own. I felt it was incomprehensible at first, then I could understand it a little bit, and then sometimes it turned into a sour lemon. However, I know very well that Zhihu is not very friendly to young people like me. The topics suitable for me are very limited, and these topics are often ridiculed and attacked.

Xiao Hei downloaded this app and watched it for a few days. Later, he would only open it to browse after a long interval. Gradually, it became just a quiet icon on the phone, and he didn't know when it might disappear from the phone. Even though Zhihu can bring him into a new world, this entry is very superficial, just like buying a ticket for a visit. It is difficult for him to have a life like that of a Zhihuer. Even though there are so many high-level analyses and methodologies in the answers, Zhihu for him does not have the sense of satisfaction brought by Kuaishou and Douyin, nor is it as close to his life as these two apps.

Dapang, male, 40 years old, writer (Zhihu celebrity).

When Zhihu first came out, Dapang was already a writer and had published several books, but neither the books nor he became a big hit. Dapang was invited to join Zhihu. In the past few years, Da Pang has accumulated some knowledge about himself because of his previous books, and he is also good at writing, so he is often invited to write answers and columns.

Dapang and Zhihu have grown up together. Dapang has gradually gained nearly 1 million fans on Zhihu and has slowly enjoyed the benefits of being famous, but his fame is limited to Zhihu.

Before Zhihu launched the paid knowledge service, Dapang still made money by writing books and writing articles for some public accounts or columns. After Zhihu launched the paid knowledge service, Dapang was secretly happy because he now had a channel to monetize the fans he had accumulated on Zhihu. So he followed the trend and launched his Zhihu Live and courses.

Zhihu launched its paid knowledge platform in mid-2017. In the beginning, he could earn around 20,000 yuan a month from paid knowledge platforms on average. Gradually, his income from this platform dropped to less than 3,000 yuan. Maybe the quality of his courses is really not good enough and a lot of it is just empty talk, or maybe it's because Zhihu has lost users who pay for knowledge. Probably it's a combination of both reasons.

Nowadays he is often invited to answer questions. To be honest, many people invite him to answer questions, and as the number of users decreases, the quality of the questions begins to decline. What makes him depressed is that he is invited to answer questions in all kinds of fields. He would probably spend an hour or two every day to check out Zhihu, answer invited questions, interact with fans, and think about how to teach his courses.

Since he had accumulated enough fans in the early stage, his answers to questions were almost "politically correct", which made him proud. After all, everyone wants to be someone else's life mentor and gain the respect of a lot of people. Zhihu can bring him a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that people only enjoy in middle age. Unfortunately, his large number of fans is also difficult to monetize.

Amy, female, 26 years old, operates the marketing account of XXX learning institution.

Amy is the operations specialist of XXX learning institution. She has two Zhihu accounts, one belongs to their company and the other is for her own use. Her job is to often write soft articles under relevant questions on Zhihu. The so-called soft article is to throw out some successful cases at the beginning (especially write about some experiences of going from a novice to a big boss) to attract readers' attention and make them feel that what you say makes sense, so they naturally want to see how you did it. At this time, leave a company's official account or the WeChat account of the company's customer service at the bottom of the article.

Due to the large number of Zhihu users with a high degree and a strong need for self-improvement, people who generally ask and browse these questions have needs. When they see your WeChat account, some people will think it is an advertisement, but even so, they will still follow the official account with a fluke mentality. Then you can use Zhihu to guide some potential customers into WeChat, and even make them your own customers.

In addition to finding potential customers on Zhihu, Amy also often uses Zhihu to promote their company. In addition to this work account, Amy sometimes uses her Zhihu account to recommend some skin care products and clothing brands. For her, Zhihu can provide her with some sense of security and trust, compared to Xiaohongshu and Weibo, which are full of marketing accounts.

The answer on Zhihu seems to be an answer from the heart. Even though Amy herself runs a marketing account, she also knows the tactics used by these marketing accounts. But she always can't help but believe the answers on Zhihu, and turn to Xiaohongshu or Taobao to buy things.

4. Functional Analysis

4.1 Analysis of Zhihu University Module Functions

The "Zhihu University" module mainly provides relevant courses as well as reading club membership and paid services to users who have the demand to pay for knowledge. The Zhihu University module in the Zhihu App has different types of search methods and learning entrances for members and non-member users who have the need to pay for knowledge.

According to the division of knowledge payment entrances, it includes home page search (mainly for users with certain professional search preferences), member entrance and my module (mainly for people who have opened Zhihu membership).

According to the form of knowledge payment, it can be divided into classroom (including three types: video private lessons, private lessons, and Live), reading clubs (including three types: lectures, e-books, and magazines).

For Zhihu, "Zhihu University" is a commercial attempt to monetize a large number of users and is a very important core module of Zhihu. Good design of this module can directly lead to higher conversion rates, and can also improve user retention rates by allowing users to consume high-quality paid knowledge content.

The user processes involved in the knowledge payment module mainly include: users browsing the membership page, exploring related paid services, trying out courses or reading e-books.

After users initially anchor to the products they are interested in, they will reach the product details page and make a purchase or open a membership. The whole process presents a typical funnel shape (since Zhihu users are mainly between 24 and 40 years old, and 80% of users are highly educated, it can be seen that Zhihu users have a relatively high demand for self-improvement). The question is: how to shift from acquiring knowledge through question-and-answer communities to acquiring knowledge through "Zhihu University"?

In addition, attracting users to enter and browse the "membership" interface to explore related paid services will result in a relatively high user loss in the process.

For the time being, we divide users who enter the "Member" interface into three categories:

1. The user who clearly understands his needs is called A;
2. Users who have certain preferences but are vague about their needs are called B;
3. The user who is just browsing around is called C.

How can the “Membership” interface set up scenarios to trigger emotions and retain these three users? What touch points in the user usage path can guide users step by step to complete their needs exploration and ultimately participate in the course?

For the knowledge payment module, if the value of the course/book club itself cannot be accurately and quickly conveyed, the trial listening/watching is not attractive enough and cannot encourage users to pay, resulting in user loss.

Regarding the first question, I think the topic answerers can add recommendations for related "knowledge payment" content under their own answers in the "Q&A Community" - this can not only attract "Q&A Community" users to "Zhihu University" to expand learning scenarios for users, but also provide certain monetization for topic content producers.

4.2 Analysis of Q&A Community Functions

1) Improved functions:

Iteration of monetization support for creators.

2) Suggestions for modification:

With the iterations of the creator-centered monetization, we hope to provide users with better answers by recommending paid content that is more relevant to the answers.

In addition, content producers recommending each other's high-quality content can help deepen the connection between big Vs or content producers and even facilitate more cooperation.

It is hoped that this method will enable the continuous production of higher quality content - through the author's recommendation, more users will be attracted to "Zhihu University", which will provide better services to users while also bringing certain monetization to content producers, thereby increasing user (content producers/browsing users) stickiness.

3) The solution is as follows:

4.3 Problems and Suggestions

1) Problems:

Member page - the pop-up window "Zhihu University" function is not directly displayed to users on the page entering the App, but the "Member" function module is equivalent to the "Zhihu University" module.

However, for novice users who want to pay for knowledge, they are not clear about what "Zhihu University" includes, nor do they understand Zhihu's superficial logic of equating "membership" with "Zhihu University." In the original "Knowledge Payment" module, the first interface that reaches users is the "Course" interface, which is the default page of the "Membership" interface.

2) Suggestions for modification:

1. The first interface of entering "membership" should give users the most intuitive scene experience. Users feel the scene and trigger emotions, and then through the user-specific touch points set in the system, users can achieve their learning goals, and at the same time, content producers can also successfully monetize.
2. The default interface of the "Member" interface is particularly important for Zhihu's commercial attempt through knowledge payment, because it is related to whether users can successfully stay in "Zhihu University" and pay for knowledge.
3. When a user enters the "Member" interface for the first time/enters the "Member" interface as a "Member". A pop-up interface introduces "Zhihu University" to the user, and then the page prompts the user to select "keywords". The system records the user's needs and interests, and then intelligently distributes content to the user at the corresponding location.

3) The solution is as follows:

4) Problems:

The "Member" interface consists of "Member Recommendation", "Classroom" and "Reading Club". The “Member Recommendation” module hopes to integrate “Classroom” and “Reading Club”, while also providing more information for Category B and Category C users.

However, when I used Zhihu University, the following bad experience occurred due to the intersection of these three contents:

• First of all, the structural logic of Zhihu University is clear to Zhihu internal staff, and may also be clear to those who have studied it carefully, but it is rather confusing for users.
• Secondly, the interface of the usage path of each module of Zhihu University provides users with too many entrances, too many colorful logos and pictures, too much fragmented and messy information, and many interfaces with the same functions but different structures. The combination of these things creates a long and chaotic user usage path that consumes the user's patience before reaching the destination.
• Many function keys that exist in a parallel relationship mean that users have 3-4 or even more paths to reach the same goal. Entering the same interface in different ways at different times will give users a feeling of confusion. After multiple "different paths to the same destination", users have to spend their brains to remember one of the paths.
• In addition to the confusing three major sections of content in the "Membership" interface, there are also many contents in "My" that overlap with "Membership".

5) Suggestions for modification:

1. The author divides the "Member" interface into "Guess What You Like", "Classroom", "Reading Club" and "Member Center", hoping to use "Guess What You Like" to integrate the content of "Classroom" and "Reading Club";
2. At the same time, it can distribute content to users through algorithms. In addition, making the "Member Center" independent of "My" can also make the functions clearer for member users and non-member users.

6) The solution is as follows:

7) Problems:

Keyword selection is the first touchpoint for users, which brings users into the "Zhihu University" module, and there are some prompts before use to help users better use Zhihu's paid services.

The second touch point set for users is the "learning function": first, when the user clicks on paid content (topics/courses/reading clubs), the page prompts the user to add the topic content to the "learning goals" to develop a corresponding learning plan.

8) Suggestions for modification:

When making a study plan, users can set the estimated completion time of the topic, the daily task completion time period, and customize or system-generate daily study tasks. The system will remind users to complete tasks every day, and will also launch the day's learning efficiency chart and corresponding suggestions at the set time every day.

Secondly, combine the point system (or salt value) with "learning goals". For example, users with 0-500 points can only use the subject content as the content in the "Learning Objectives", users with 500-1000 points can customize courses on the same topic, and users with more than 1000 points can customize a variety of courses. In addition, points can be redeemed for some courses that members also need to pay for.

The setting of the "Learning Goals" function is mainly intended to increase the retention rate of paying users and promote user activity; at the same time, it can also encourage users to open memberships and renew membership services, thereby promoting user monetization.

If the keyword selection as the first touchpoint creates a scenario similar to "selecting corresponding subjects and finding classrooms" for users in "Zhihu University", then the second touchpoint can be understood as the creation of a scenario of "entering the classroom and making a course schedule".

9) The solution is as follows:

• In the "Make a Study Plan" interface, the daily plan tab will set daily study tasks for users based on the courses they have selected. Users can also customize daily study tasks.
• When users join a learning plan, the feedback column will provide users with feedback on today's learning every day.
• In addition to initially entering the "Make a Learning Plan" interface through the system guidance, users can also view the progress of the learning plan and make a new learning plan through the logo above the "Member" interface and the "Member Center".

10) Problems:

Based on the survey of Zhihu users, we can find that the producers of high-quality content on Zhihu are creative and influential opinion leaders in various industries, as well as the general public who are curious and seeking new knowledge.

Zhihu occupies a high position as a question-and-answer community in the minds of users, which determines that most users use Zhihu with a serious attitude of seeking knowledge, rather than using it as an app to kill time. At present, "Zhihu University" only provides one-way knowledge output to paying users.

Most Zhihu users are middle-aged young people with efficient learning needs. Therefore, for "classrooms" and "reading clubs", the scenario of users "taking notes" and using notes is particularly important.

11) Suggestions for modification:

In addition to taking notes on learning content, users can organize the content of different chapters of the same "private course" into a "notebook"; they can also mark keywords and organize notes with the same keywords into a "notebook" to facilitate users' review and create a note-taking scenario for users; and the sense of accomplishment brought by the "notebook" can not only deepen the logic of "Zhihu University", but also increase user stickiness and activity.

12) Problems:

In addition to adding the "note-taking" function to "Zhihu Live" and "Private Class", the author found some interactive issues that he hopes to iterate during the use of "Courses":

• In "Zhihu Live" and "Private Classes", the courses in the form of PPT or manuscripts are not uniform.
• The document cannot be scrolled.
• PPT can only be updated with the speaker's progress when the screen is small, but it is difficult for users to see the content clearly due to the small screen size.

13) Suggestions for modification:

1. Zhihu can provide content producers with unified manuscripts or PPTs;
2. When the PPT is played on the big screen, you can also follow the progress of the speech. In addition, the manuscript and PPT can be edited and notes can be taken;
3. The PPT is available for download, and paying users can add mind maps to remember chapters/course outlines.

14) The solution is as follows:

(15) Problems:

The author has found some interactive problems in the process of using the "Book Club":

1. In the "Lecture Book" function, different course manuscripts have different formats, and the manuscripts will not scroll along with the content of the lecture;
2. The small icon of the playback function that appears when reading a book often affects the reading of the manuscript, and when reading the manuscript, you have to return to the playback interface to adjust the playback speed, which is a bit inconvenient.

16) Suggestions for modification:

"Book Lecture"

1. A unified manuscript format was introduced, and a function was added to the manuscript that scrolls along with the content of the lecture and marks the content being spoken. This also applies when exiting the manuscript page and returning to the manuscript;
2. Place the play pause button and the buttons for forward 15 seconds, rewind 15 seconds, and adjusting the playback speed at the bottom center of the document page. The play function icon only appears when you exit the document page and are not on the play page;
3. Add a link to the original book to the "book narration" function to guide users to continue reading the book after listening to the narration.

"E-book"

1. Change the function of "e-book" notes being equivalent to "ideas" to allow users to freely choose whether to publish the notes in the "e-book" as ideas;
2. Added e-book page turning modes, such as simulation/smooth/overlay/up and down;
3. Added note-taking function to "Book Lecture" and "E-book". When reading or listening to others' book lectures, you can write down your own feelings about the corresponding content, and you can also see other people's feelings and communicate with them. Finally, you can export all your feelings as a simple book review.
4. Add a column for notes to the table of contents on the left side of the e-book.
5. In addition, a "reading group" function is added to "e-books". For some users who want to develop their own reading habits, reading may be a boring task that requires persistence in the early stages. Adding a "reading group" can be understood as setting up a scenario for users to "enter the library" and study with others. In addition, the reading ranking of the "reading group" can promote user reading by stimulating the user's competitive psychology;
6. Finally, add a "read" function to the "e-book", where users can read the e-book themselves or invite friends to read the book and thus form an "audio book", generating certain income.
7. Users can read a certain number of chapters of the e-book and their own thoughts every day, and can choose to publish them in the form of "ideas". Adding the "e-book" format will lower the threshold for content production and allow paying users to output something during the passive input learning process and increase the fun of learning.

17) Problems:

Many functions of the "Member Center" are duplicated with those of "My"

18) Suggestions for modification:

Separate members' special rights and some functions from the "My" interface.

19) The solution is as follows:

20) Problems:

Through surveys of different users, it was found that the favorites in the Q&A community are a pain point for users. Users usually save the answers to their favorites after reading them, hoping to use them later. However, the learning scenario of users usually ends after saving them.

21) Suggestions for modification:

Added function: Members - Q&A community favorites iteration

• Set up a search function in favorites, add systematic classification by keywords, and add time sorting. The collected answers to the same question can be put into the same small pocket.
• More importantly, when member users try to save answers into favorites, they are reminded to organize their notes and export the favorites notes for later viewing. The note organization function can deepen the user's learning scenario and greatly reduce the time users spend viewing favorites content.

22) The solution is as follows:

V. Conclusion

Although Zhihu App has long occupied the top position in the minds of netizens in the question-and-answer community, and has launched Zhihu University with the help of the popularity of knowledge payment, there are still some questions worth thinking about.

How to ensure the content quality of the Q&A community while expanding user base?

The decline in the quality of Zhihu content is one of the issues that many Zhihu users have been criticizing. It seems that achieving user growth by sinking users seems to be something that must be done at present. However, balancing the increase in users and curbing the decline in quality is something that must be done, otherwise the decline in quality will inevitably lead to the loss of some original Zhihu users. Therefore, Zhihu needs to take some measures to maintain a balance between the two.

How to improve the course quality of Zhihu University? Compared with other knowledge-based payment apps, Zhihu App is a UGC platform, and currently lacks top IPs with their own traffic to produce high-quality course content.

How to stimulate Zhihu's users to produce more and higher-quality content? How to establish an incentive mechanism to enable users to continuously produce content? High-quality content can drive more users to continuously renew their Zhihu memberships, improve the monetization of Zhihu and content producers on Zhihu, and increase user retention and stickiness.

How to deepen the construction of learning scenarios? The trend of knowledge payment is gradually dissipating. The remaining users after filtering out in this process have a high demand for knowledge payment content. In addition, in addition to one-way knowledge output, how to deepen the construction of learning scenarios can even enable better interaction between paying users and content producers and improve content quality by deepening the scenarios.

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Author: Bubbles

Source: Zhijing Camera