APP User Experience Report | Xianyu, how to play with the idle community?

In this article, the author analyzes Xianyu’s user operations and user experience function design from five aspects: experience environment, market analysis, user analysis, product analysis, and overall analysis, and tells the story: How do the leading players in the idle market play the idle community?

1. Experience the environment

Experience product: Xianyu

Experience version: ios6.3.80

Experience device: iPhone8

Experience time: 2019.03.20

2. Market Analysis

1. Industry Environment

With the rapid development of e-commerce and the prosperity of the sharing economy, people's lifestyles and life concepts are also changing. While paying attention to the quality of life, environmental protection concepts such as recycling have become deeply rooted in people's minds.

As a result, idle transactions have become a part of the sharing economy, and idle transaction platforms have also ushered in a new blue ocean with their advantages such as low threshold and easy use.

1. Market size

In 2014, China's second-hand trading industry had formed a relatively established pattern on the PC side: such as 58.com, Ganji, Baixing.com, etc. Taobao Second-hand, the predecessor of Xianyu, was launched in 2013, which was equivalent to seizing the initiative and grasping this time node.

In March 2016, Xianyu, relying on the huge traffic from Taobao and Tmall, announced that its community had 1.25 billion fish ponds in operation and more than 100 million real-name users. According to monitoring data from Analysys Qianfan: Among the current second-hand trading platforms, Xianyu’s exclusive user rate is as high as 64.1%, making it undoubtedly the leading player in the market.

3. User Analysis

1. User scale

As of July 2018, Xianyu ranked first in the user preference index of second-hand trading apps, followed closely by Zhuan Zhuan, with a small difference. Most of Xianyu’s users are directed from Taobao and can enter through Taobao’s “one-click resale”, “sell for cash” and other entrances.

1. User Profile

Mostly men:

Mostly born in the 1980s:

The main forces are mostly located in first- and second-tier cities:

As of March 2019, more than half of Xianyu's registered users are aged 30-39, that is, they have medium spending power and a certain economic foundation (economic foundation determines spending power). The new generation of people born in the 1980s and 1990s are more receptive to new things and are willing to exchange idle items.

Among the user groups, the proportion of males is higher than that of females. Combined with age analysis, males born in the 1980s are facing the life and social pressures of entering middle age, as well as the diversified consumption demands for renting, digital appliances and electronic products, which makes them the main group of Xianyu.

From a regional perspective, the main forces are mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities. First-tier cities have a dense population of renters and strong mobility, which makes it easier to generate a large number of unnecessary idle items and make it easier to get rid of them.

1. Target user classification

(1) Male users born in the 1980s

On the one hand, men pay more attention to electronic products, digital appliances, etc. than women, and electronic products and appliances are more expensive than clothing and other items, and are more suitable for the secondary circulation experience; on the other hand, men at this stage have certain plans for their personal finances, so they pay more attention to cost-effectiveness and are more receptive to second-hand products.

(2) Users with high residential mobility

This group mainly consists of newly employed people or students. Because they live on campus or rent houses, the demand for rental and the resulting idleness have greatly increased. Most of the people in this stage are born after 1990. They pay more attention to individuality and trends, but at the same time their consumption level is also subject to certain restrictions. This makes them a major target group of Xianyu.

(3) Users who are keen on online shopping

This group is mainly composed of women, who are more prone to impulse buying and thus more likely to have a large amount of unused items. Moreover, the transaction volume of Double Eleven is increasing every year. Behind the huge transaction volume, there are more idle items. As the saying goes, "you can make up for it after shopping", the idle items generated by unsatisfactory consumption can be resold.

4. Product Analysis

1. Product Introduction

Product name: Xianyu.

Product type: second-hand e-commerce, Internet idle trading platform.

Product slogan: Make your idle time interesting.

Product introduction: Alibaba's idle trading platform with C2C model. You can enjoy Alipay guaranteed transactions without opening a store. It is simple and easy to publish and purchase goods. It supports entry through Taobao's "one-click resale" and "sell for cash" entrances, and the idle items posted can be seen on Taobao.

1. Product function structure

The main functions of Xianyu include buying and selling idle goods, renting houses, credit recovery and Yutang (idle trading community). Its core function is to buy and sell second-hand and unused items. The top and upper part of the homepage, namely the product search bar and product classification, highlight its main functions. A large part of the middle and lower part is other functional sections. From my personal perspective, the diversity of functions may not be easy for novices to understand and operate.

From the perspective of main functions: In addition to buying and selling idle items, Fish Pond is a major product of Xianyu's "sharing community" positioning. From the homepage, it is almost at the same level as the release, and has been continuously revised over the years, but it has always been controversial. Specific experience and suggestions will be introduced in the functional experience.

The credit recycling under the release button is an upgrade of the original credit quick sale. It is officially purchased for free or at an estimated price and then sold. Dozens of professional recycling agencies such as "Huishoubao", "Guoma", and "Youdesai" are connected. This feature was officially launched in September 2018.

Under the "My" button, there are multiple function options. I personally think it is a bit bloated. Some functions are included and can be merged, such as: My rental house, what I rented. There are also some functions that recommend additional usage guides and other instructions, such as My Red Envelopes and My Auctions.

1. Product Function Experience Analysis

(1) Release Feature Highlights - Taobao One-Click Resale

Publishing idle content is undoubtedly the first demand of users when using Xianyu. Based on this demand, the publish button is set in the center of the bottom navigation bar, and is enlarged and added with a theme color to make it stand out. From the user's perspective, this button can be seen at first glance according to browsing habits.

After clicking the Publish button, you can see that Xianyu has placed almost all function entrances under the Publish button - publishing idle items, credit recovery, publishing rentals, posting (i.e. fish ponds), Taobao resale, free gifts, and scanning codes to sell books. The first four items are at the same level. I personally think that the core functions are somewhat weakened.

The other three functions are located at the top of the release page as the features of the new version of Xianyu. Among them, Taobao Resale connects the user's Taobao account, which greatly simplifies the release process of some idle ones. At the same time, in order to facilitate Taobao users to find this function, I personally think that this function should be highlighted.

(2) Advantages and disadvantages of credit recovery function

This feature was officially launched in version 6.2.2 (released on September 13, 2018).

Xianyu first provides more than a dozen subdivision dimensions, and gives a reasonable estimate online based on the user's description of his or her idle assets.

If the user's Sesame Credit score is greater than 600, he or she can get the money directly. Then, the official and third parties will recycle and inspect the goods. At this time, if the user’s idle goods do not match the description, the user must refund the difference. This function does standardize transactions of large amounts of idle items such as electronic products to a certain extent, but because remote quality inspection is required, there are still risks such as different statements from both parties and transportation losses.

Personally, I think the protection system of this function needs to be strengthened, and its practicality needs to be considered. If the spread of disputes brings more negative impacts to Xianyu, it will be counterproductive.

(3) Posting - New version of Fishpond function

Xianyu was born in June 2014, and the fish pond function was launched in November of the same year. Xianyu has continuously strengthened its community value output.

Yutang establishes social bases through geographic location, interests, etc. On the one hand, it facilitates users' offline transactions. Such semi-acquaintance relationships make it easier to carry out in-depth interactive transactions. On the other hand, the new version of Yutang adopts the "posting" model to enhance user stickiness, thereby contributing more usage frequency and stay time to the product.

However, after the revision (version 6.3.4 launched on January 28, 2019), the weight of the community fish pond and fish pond products was lowered, and the homepage was changed to a pure content information flow oriented towards interest. The fish pond began to try to guide users to shift to higher frequency and in-depth interest communication and interaction instead of transactions as the main focus and communication as the auxiliary focus.

Following the successful community operation of Xiaohongshu and the revision of Meitu's community module, Xianyu also added multiple interest categories to the fish pond homepage. Under each category, there are fish ponds with different themes. Each fish pond has a pond owner, and each post can add topics, forward, like, and comment.

Overall it is more like a place for content-based interaction and friendship, a copy of "Baidu Tieba" plus "Weibo".

After my personal experience, first of all, based on the number of posts, likes and comments on each topic, the user activity of each fish pond is not high enough, and Xianyu needs to strengthen the promotion of the fish pond; secondly, due to the complex types and numerous categories of second-hand idle items, it is difficult to uniformly supervise each fish pond.

(4) Celebrities on Xianyu: Mutual Benefit and Win-Win

By extending the social attributes of the shopping platform and joining the celebrity community, Xianyu has achieved a win-win situation in terms of commercial value, community value, and public welfare value.

Through celebrities operating Xianyu accounts and posting idle items, it seems that the distance between ordinary people and celebrities has become closer. While celebrities are attracting traffic to the platform, they are also using this down-to-earth community to interact deeply with young fans and reshape their personal IP. It can be seen that celebrity stays are one of the major reasons for Xianyu’s success.

Based on the experience of (3) and (4), the following suggestions are made from the user's perspective:

1. Strengthen the honor incentive system for fish pond owners, encourage them to manage their fish ponds, and increase the official rewards for each fish pond's best posts to stimulate users to post;
2. You can combine the celebrity effect ("Celebrities on Xianyu" section) or cultivate more IPs, and introduce short videos, long videos, live broadcasts and other tools to consolidate the fish pond.

Since there are currently many products with community-based e-commerce models, these vertical products have already cultivated a good community culture and atmosphere due to their precise positioning and target audiences. If Yutang does not change its model, it may not have much advantage in content and interaction.

V. Overall Analysis

1. Version iteration

According to Qimai data records: Xianyu updated its version 26 times in 2018 (15 times in 2017, 14 times in 2016, 15 times in 2015, and 13 times in 2014), and its enthusiasm for version updates is relatively high.

The following extracts some key points of the iteration:

From recent versions, we can see that Xianyu has continuously improved the user experience through a large number of optimizations in the buying and selling of idle functions. Among them, the voice and video functions of private chats, the "read, unread" status of messages, intelligent valuation and automatic reply functions make communication between buyers and sellers smoother and consolidate the core needs of users. By introducing a large number of celebrities and players and allowing interactions (transactions) between celebrities and fans, Xianyu’s user traffic and credibility have increased.

1. Download Analysis

Using estimated downloads to approximate download volume analysis, Xianyu's download volume has increased significantly after a series of updates. The direction and results of the core demand revision are worthy of recognition.

1. User Feedback

Overall, Xianyu's version updates were relatively successful. In 2018, as the platform was improved, it continued to optimize its core business, meet user needs, optimize the experience, and provide users with more professional transaction services.

However, there are also shortcomings while optimizing. We have captured some recent one-star bad reviews and the latest evaluation analysis, which shows that users are more concerned about the experience of idle posting and purchasing. This is also the core function. It is recommended that Xianyu invest more energy in system stability and transaction supervision platform.

VI. Conclusion

Through this user experience analysis of Xianyu, I found that there are many things worth learning and thinking about. From a personal perspective, I would like to make some suggestions for Xianyu, which are listed below:

1. Simply speaking from the perspective of user interface and usage experience, the operation of Xianyu’s homepage is not simple enough. Functions such as “free purchase” and “credit recovery” can be further simplified, and the complaint entrance is too deep and often cannot be found.
2. It can be seen from user comments that users are more concerned about the core functions - idle publishing and purchasing. It is recommended to make more optimizations in this direction to consolidate the stability of the platform.
3. Transaction security is an eternal problem in the idle trading market. As long as there are open trading platforms, this type of problem cannot be avoided. Although Xianyu has taken some measures to reduce transaction risks in this regard, it is recommended to continue to increase manual complaints and supervision efforts.
4. The content and products of Yutang coexist in the form of parallel sections. It is neither a pure content community nor a complete store. Moreover, there are many categories in the community, making it difficult to be refined. It is recommended to combine with the celebrity section, add live broadcast, short video and other forms, cultivate IP, Internet celebrity sellers, etc., to increase visibility and increase the utilization of fish ponds.
5. The credit recovery function has set up a platform evaluation agency, but there are still many disputes in remote quality inspections. The spread of disputes can easily affect Xianyu’s overall credibility. It is recommended to improve the quality inspection mechanism of this function, such as local quality inspection, etc.

Finally, as an old user of Xianyu, I think Xianyu is a relatively successful app overall.

With the support of national policies, national consumption concepts and e-commerce transactions, the share of idle transactions will only grow. As the leading app for idle transactions, Xianyu not only draws on the platforms of Taobao and Alipay to attract traffic, but also solves part of the trust mechanism and reduces transaction risks.

At the same time, we attach importance to the user experience of core functions, and through continuous optimization, increased publicity and celebrity effects, we successfully stimulated idle circulation and increased traffic and user activity. However, Xianyu currently integrates transactions and communities, and the operation of fish ponds needs to be improved to avoid confusion among users about the positioning of fish ponds and Xianyu.

Source: Little Fox!