Analysis of Himalaya's competitive products

Preface : From Himalaya , I have briefly analyzed the online audio app. I hope to give you some ideas~

Himalaya:

Slogan: Every second of companionship is love, every day’s spiritual food

get:

Slogan: Knowledge is available, listening to knowledge will broaden your horizons, and reading useful knowledge in your spare time

Version Information:

• Get: 9.7.0
• Himalaya: 8.3.18.3

(I am the abominable nail household who doesn’t update)

Network environment: 4G

1. Strategic Level

1. Brief analysis of online audio industry

Note: Mainly from second-hand data

Online audio industry analysis:

P:

The "Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (2020 Revised Edition)" has stipulated that relevant departments should pay attention to the protection of copyrights of audio works and impose stricter penalties on online and offline intellectual property infringements. The policy is conducive to further standardized development of the audio industry. Leading audio apps that own a certain scale of content copyright will have greater room for development.

E:

1) With the improvement of the national economic level, residents' pursuit of quality of life has been further stimulated in various scenarios. Internet users' payment scenarios are no longer limited to physical consumption, but are shifting more to virtual items such as high-quality knowledge and information that enrich the spiritual world.

2) The epidemic has deepened the needs of domestic netizens, the ear economy has risen, the user scale of online audio apps has continued to expand, and various niche audio apps have also achieved certain growth, such as vertical sleep audio apps Snail Sleep and Little Sleep.

Note: The picture is from the iMedia Research report "iMedia Consulting | 2021H1 China Online Audio Industry Operation Monitoring Research Report"

3) Internet users' willingness to pay for knowledge has increased, with the average annual payment per person reaching 202 yuan in 2019; according to the iMedia report, the number of netizens paying for online audio in 2019 has exceeded 70%; users who make infrequent purchases still account for a large proportion, and the proportion of users with multiple purchases still has much room for improvement. There is still much room for improvement in the expansion of online audio content, quality improvement, and human voice reading.

4) With the development of the IP economy, the online and offline cooperation scenarios of many content IPs have been expanded, and the brand value of audio program IPs has been further amplified. Take Himalaya as an example. As early as the beginning of 2020, it had reached cooperation with 26 publishing houses to launch an "audio library" to jointly promote the development of diversified cultural IP.

5) Under the fan economy, netizens' surfing behavior is often deeply influenced by the KOLs and KOCs they follow. Outstanding audio programs and super voice celebrities can easily bring large-scale traffic growth and loyal fans to audio platforms, which is more beneficial to the online audio membership system.

S:

1) Internet users are developing the habit of listening to online audio

The proportion of users born in the 1980s and 1990s who have the habit of listening to audio has continued to increase. Whether it is to relax themselves in fragmented time, to improve their studies at specific times, or to seek sleep aid before going to bed, more and more users are beginning to participate in the online audio experience;

Especially with the development of lot in recent years, the diversified intelligent development of smart terminals such as headphones, car systems, smart homes, etc., the variety of listening tools available to users has increased, and the scenario of listening to online audio has gradually become common.

2) Users who have the habit of listening to online audio tend to use the app more frequently and have a higher willingness to share and spread the word.

According to the iMedia Consulting Report, less than 10% of users said that the number of uses will decrease in the future; and more than 90% of the surveyed users would recommend the platform or platform programs; compared with other apps, online audio apps have the advantage of word-of-mouth effect.

3) Online audio is becoming more and more common in smart terminal scenarios such as in-car listening.

With the popularity of cars and the intelligence of their onboard systems, listening to in-car audio has become a daily habit for car owners. The development of online audio has made up for the line selection and shortcomings of traditional radio. For example, online audio has made up for the shortcomings of traditional radio in terms of program richness, free selection, support for playback and replay, and improvement in sound quality. It has become the only choice for many car owners to listen to audio.

According to the iMedia Research report, in 2019, the proportion of online audio listening through in-vehicle networks has exceeded that of traditional radio.

4) The smart speaker market is growing rapidly in the home smart scene, and online audio listening scenarios of smart speakers have become common.

Leading online audio content platforms such as Himalaya have reached in-depth cooperation with smart speaker brands such as Xiaoai, Xiaodu, and Tmall Genie, opening up a pool of high-quality content, helping to upgrade audio scenes, and bringing users a richer smart speaker experience.

T:

The development of cloud services, the Internet of Things, and AI technologies have further deepened the development of online audio technology;

Smart devices such as smart speakers, smart glasses, AI headsets, and car-mounted equipment have achieved closer cooperation with online audio, from single audio listening to today's voice interaction, bringing users a rich auditory feast in all scenarios.

Of the funds raised from Himalaya's IPO this year, about 30% will be used to enhance technology, artificial intelligence, and big data capabilities. It can be seen that empowering the online audio ecosystem with artificial intelligence technology has become a battleground in the audio market.

Observe the development of Himalaya from its important actions in recent years:

2. Online audio market user analysis

1) User base attributes: highly educated office workers, with a large share in second-tier cities

Overall, among the online audio audience, there are slightly more male listeners than female users, and the users have a higher level of cultural acceptance, with more than 50% of the audience having a bachelor's degree.

In addition, the online audio market is dominated by office workers born in the 1980s and 1990s, and netizens in second-tier cities have become the majority of online audio listeners;

2) Reasons for users to listen: mostly to relax and relieve stress, or to learn about the progress of the learning army

According to the report, most users listen to online audio to relax and relieve stress, but the proportion of users who use fragmented time to listen to online audio to learn knowledge and understand information is also relatively prominent, which to a certain extent reflects the strength of users' desire for self-improvement.

3) User listening preferences: pan-entertainment content takes the top spot, knowledge learning is not left behind, and IP is regarded as a treasure

According to the 2021 iMedia Report, the top listening preference of online audio users is still entertainment content that relaxes and relieves stress; and with the advent of the knowledge economy era, the cultural level of listening users continues to improve, and knowledge learning is also a listening content that users focus on.

Among users who listen to online audio content, more than 80% have listened to IP-based program content; and when users choose online audio content, they have a stronger tendency to choose IP; attracting high-quality audio broadcasts and developing and creating super cultural/sound IPs have become the secret to acquiring customers and retaining customers for online audio.

4) User platform preference: Ximalaya ranks first, and other audio apps have an even share of the market

According to the iMedia report, Himalaya, which conducts marketing and promotion through various online and offline activities, has a market share of 65.5%, far exceeding other online audio platforms. Himalaya has formed a certain scale of user base and market reputation by virtue of its many years of experience in audio market development, the creation of multiple IPs such as joint publishing houses/newspapers/TV stations/super voice actors, and the joint development of smart terminals.

Appendix: The number of downloads of Himalaya and Duoduo apps on the AppStore in the past 30 days. It can be seen from the figure that the number of downloads of Himalaya far exceeds that of Duoduo. Duoduo’s current market popularity is much lower than that of Himalaya. This is also related to Duoduo’s less investment in marketing and promotion. Currently, new customers of Duoduo app basically come from recommendations from core users.

Note: The download data source uses Qimai data

5) User platform selection decision psychology: smooth listening is the basis, rich content is the key

The report shows that when users choose an online audio platform, the three primary considerations are: basic functions for smooth listening, platform content quality, and platform exclusive IP; and based on user satisfaction surveys, we can see that users are currently satisfied with the platform's content richness, smooth listening, and other experience; but there is still room for improvement in product prices, the number of anchors, and content quality.

6) User payment trigger point - pay for love, promotion and purchase

Most users initially pay for online audio out of their love for a particular program, or out of support for a program they follow, or because they are inspired by promotional activities run by the platform. It can be seen that how to optimize the platform recommendation strategy through big data, optimize personalized, multi-scenario operation and promotion strategies based on user payment preferences, and motivate users to complete audio consumption are what audio platforms must explore if they want to achieve higher conversions.

7) Problems with user audio platform usage: mixed quality, inconsistent recommendations, and poor interaction

In order to expand their content, current audio platforms continue to attract amateur anchors. Therefore, as the content expands, quality control is easily lost. The vast majority of users report that the quality of content on audio platforms is uneven. In the process of using algorithm recommendations, they can often only make recommendations based on the user's previous behavior, so there are repeated recommendations and it is difficult to identify user needs.

On the other hand, due to limited technology, the audio quality of the AI ​​anchors on many current online audio platforms is not very high. The AI ​​voices on most platforms are relatively stiff, and the user experience is poor. In terms of playback quality, most platforms do not support the adjustment of multiple sound qualities, and cannot meet the experience needs of users who pursue high sound quality.

3. User Analysis Summary

1. Starting from the content, going into the content, expanding high-quality content, ensuring the quality of platform content, using exclusive IPs to attract new customers and retain old customers, and leveraging the unique word-of-mouth communication advantages of the audio platform to form your own word-of-mouth marketing.
2. Optimize the platform's audio listening experience, optimize and screen recommendation strategies, optimize the weight of re-push and invalid recommendations based on the results, and increase the exposure of high-quality content.
3. Iterate the platform's listening function, improve the richness of AI voice, provide sound quality assurance and high-quality audio selection services, and retain high-value users.
4. Enrich the audio listening scenarios and content of each scenario, and provide a one-stop accompanying uninterrupted listening experience (especially for high-frequency scenarios such as driving, traveling, studying, and sleeping).

4. A brief analysis of the development and business models of Himalaya and Dedao

From the development models of Get and Himalaya, we can see that Get's cooperation in the B-end market and the G-end market is much weaker than Himalaya; Get has not played its professional industry content and high-quality talent circle advantages. Here are some suggestions for the expansion of Get's business model:

Assisting the government and enterprises to cultivate talents internally and externally, and establish a complete talent training system, curriculum support and equipment cooperation

• In terms of B-end and G-end cooperation expansion, Dedao can rely on its own industry knowledge and resources of industry elites to cooperate with more companies, carry out company training courses, establish a course training system, and empower the company's talent training;
• On the other hand, Duoduo can also leverage the advantages of its platform to develop recruitment and talent search modules for its partner companies and provide companies with talent search opportunities.
• The Institute of Advanced Studies can further cooperate with universities to cultivate high-quality, high-level and high-capable fresh talents; on the one hand, it can provide a rich employment guidance and training system; on the other hand, it can cooperate with universities on relevant learning instruments and create IoT cooperation in school scenarios.

Although the current business development strategy of Get is relatively limited, its business in terms of user growth is indeed something that other apps seeking user growth opportunities can learn from;

Get app sharing fission in various forms, invitation design does not disturb:

In terms of acquiring new customers, the design of the Dedao fission mechanism is relatively implicit. It does not use the form of pop-up window prompts for invitation fission when users log in. Instead, it naturally designs relevant invitation red envelopes at the sharing point to further encourage users who are willing to share to share knowledge. When users finish reading an article, the Dedao app will have a small invitation prompt pop up, and the invitation timing is just right.

As for the specific content sharing level, users can freely share the course content, personal underlined notes, book mind maps, messages, etc. on the app;

In addition, an app invitation mechanism was added, where users could get 20 yuan each by inviting friends to download the app. At the same time, a related achievement system was also designed.

For details on the usage increase system, please see the mind map I roughly organized, but I won’t go into details:

2. Scope Layer

1. Himalaya core functions

The core function of Himalaya is to listen to sounds. The album-program-listening process in the user path is simple. After opening the album, the sliding overlay design of the program listening card and the underlying album introduction hit my aha moment. It feels like an upgraded version of the album presented on the second floor of Taobao.

While listening to audio, users can use the [Kacha] function to record wonderful sound clips in the form of pictures or videos and then post them to the listening circle or Kacha notes for storage. The start time of the Kacha audio is automatically set to the time when the audio is played when the user clicks to enter Kacha.

On the other hand, when using Himalaya to listen to audio, if the phone is in external speaker mode, you can also increase the volume to the maximum level, which is a little surprise for the external speaker experience.

2. Get the core functionality

The overall functions provided by the app meet the users' needs for learning knowledge. Before learning knowledge, users can make quick decisions and screening through the classification and collection of content by operators.

During the knowledge learning process, the text provides functional modules such as mind maps and popular notes to enable users to understand knowledge; after learning knowledge, 20 red envelopes are given out to encourage users to share knowledge and invite friends to read together.

However, there is an obvious problem in the experience: once the playing page is exited, the play bar at the bottom of the page will disappear automatically if no operation is performed; if you want to find the current playing page and adjust it later, the link is long and the operation is cumbersome.

On the other hand, the playing horizontal bar that briefly appears at the bottom of the app cannot adjust the time progress and is less convenient.

3. Structural layer

1. Product functions and information structure

1) Home page

The recommended content on Himalaya’s homepage is mainly album listening lists, but the recommendations are in the form of list feeds, which are relatively messy, with little identifiable effective information and a high cost for users to make listening decisions.

On the other hand, the ability to identify the listening orders that users are interested in is weak, and there is no good association with user searches and user collections, and it is impossible to deduplicate and recommend listening orders that are highly similar to the listening orders that the user has already added. (Heart-beating card)

In order to emphasize solving puzzles and learning new things, Dedao sets the tab at the bottom of the homepage as "Discover", encouraging users to find solutions to puzzles and find new ideas. And its course recommendation strategy is even better, focusing on the issues that users care about and introducing lectures or related audible books.

You can set up the [Recently Learning], [List], and [Everyone is Learning] card modules on the homepage, and the simple cards directly present the courses.

Taking the design of the get list function as an example, it adopts the form of 4 small cards in parallel. Each small card represents a list, and users can quickly slide to understand the relevant information.

In addition to the large-scale cardization of related quick navigation modules, 10 highly clickable navigation icons are also retained on the home page icons to help users achieve rapid diversion on the first-level page, further reduce user decision-making costs, and help users quickly locate target orders, which has the concept of rapid, intensive listening and intensive learning.

Himalaya includes relevant rankings and categories in the five icons on the homepage. The user path is longer, but the content included is richer. For users who do not have clear goals, it is more redundant and more like the concept of seeing more and hearing more.

The homepage of the app has set up relevant sign-in reminders and a red dot design on the information center button, which emphasizes the knowledge learning on the site and the reminder function of new courses.

However, Himalaya’s homepage does not have an entry for in-site information reminders, but has a module for today’s hot topics, which places more emphasis on delivering social hot topics to users. This may be related to the core user preferences of the two apps.

2) I listen vs. buy

Ximalaya emphasizes "follow-up reminder mentality" and sets up a related [follow-up] tab, where users can view the listening list of the current updated album, and emphasizes "learning progress control" and sets up a [progress filter bar];

The classification of the interface of Himalaya I Listen adopts the top navigation design that emphasizes the timeline, including follow-up, subscription, history, and download. This classification navigation has a poor user experience for users who log in infrequently. In addition, in the design that emphasizes the timeline, the re-exposure of old listening lists in the subscription list is extremely restricted, and there is a certain inconvenience for users to view.

The top category navigation adopts all, courses, audiobooks, and e-books, which further distinguishes the forms of the listened content. It is highly popular among the public's habit of viewing by category.

3) Discovery vs. Knowledge City

Himalaya focuses on more diverse content, and has set up navigation tabs such as Plaza, Fun Dubbing, and Video, covering everything from users' daily lives to personal insights, book reviews, and information interpretations, possibly injecting a "learning through fun" design and operation strategy.

The tone of "professionalism and learning" has been strengthened, and the content recommendation strategies in the three tabs of attention, recommendation, and video are basically composed of book reviews, consulting interpretations, phenomenon interpretations, problem solving, etc., and the publishers are basically professionals such as publishers.

The interactive column under each content on the Himalaya Discovery page expresses the comments of the first user to comment, and has designed a comment guidance module to focus on the interaction of users within the site.

The interactive modules are relatively conventional, focusing more on the delivery of the content itself and increasing the number of listeners of related courses and books.

4) My

Himalaya further strengthens the emotional interaction, including between users and users, and between users and the platform; a creation tab is set up at the top, and a [Recording and Live Broadcast] button is designed on the personal information card, with listener circles, Xiaoya Study Room, etc. set up below.

The emphasis on personal learning achievement lies in the perception of identity and honor, such as designing buttons such as learning time, learning data, student ID, medals, certificates, and credits;

Himalaya has opened functional modules for scenarios such as [Mom Growth] and [Accessibility], optimizing the recommendation and listening experience for special groups of people. Compared with Get, Himalaya pays more attention to strengthening the membership experience on My Page, which shows the importance of Himalaya's membership system to its commercial business.

Instead, we pay more attention to strengthening the sharing mentality on my page, highlighting invitation rewards, achievement sharing, etc., in order to achieve fission.

2. Operation process and experience

In the process of experiencing Himalaya and Dedao, I personally prefer Himalaya's "one-center" architecture to Dedao's multi-focused form. Therefore, I will focus on Himalaya's user operation process:

From the user's main operation flow chart, we can see that the overall core of the Himalaya app revolves around album listening lists; users can experience the rich program listening lists included in each album through search and push, and users can click on the listening list to start automatic playback immediately; this design is quite different from the Get app. After clicking on the manuscript in the Get audiobook app, the user needs to choose to play it by himself before the sound starts playing.

When listening to music, Himalaya users can enjoy the full volume +4 if the phone is played out loud. They can also control the sound quality, but there are currently only three popular sound quality modes to choose from: smart, standard, and high quality. They cannot also personalize and replace the human voice during the listening process. At least they can choose "Luo Pang" hh~

If Himalaya users hear content that they want to record and share, there are various ways to share it, including regular sharing and Kacha video/Kacha note sharing, and the operation is extremely simple.

In addition to sharing, users can choose from more forms of interaction including commenting, leaving messages, liking and following. Users can also directly cheer for the host on the listening list. If the platform plans to introduce relevant celebrity reading/sleep-aiding story sharing in the future, the cheering function will greatly enable the platform to utilize the fan economy.

4. Overall Summary

1. Product business development suggestions

get:

In the current situation where the fission mechanism is difficult to attract new customers, we can explore cooperation with governments and schools on the B-end and G-end, and help governments and enterprises form a good talent development system of internal training and external recruitment with high-quality knowledge content and high-quality talent circles;

At the same time, through cooperation, we can expand new C-end users and jointly develop platform IoT devices; IoT devices should not be limited to current readers, and new devices and new methods of knowledge learning derived from AR\VR can be organically combined with the knowledge content obtained.

Himalaya:

Focus on user growth within the platform, i.e. user invitation and user retention within the platform;

In terms of user retention, the current membership privileges of Himalaya are relatively thin, basically limited to e-book privileges, and lack of appeal. We can start with value-added services, such as expanding the sound quality of the listening experience and enriching the selection of human voices, to attract users to purchase Himalaya membership, exclusive big names before listening, and exclusive selection privileges for celebrity voices, etc.

In addition, in the process of platform user fission invitation and expansion of new customers, relevant achievement reward systems can be set up/personalized sharing cards can be designed to encourage users to share meaningful audio content and promote word-of-mouth communication among users.

2. Suggestions on product iteration direction

Here are some suggestions for my love-hate Himalaya iteration:

(1) Recommended strategy

• Currently, the recommended content on the homepage is messy. We can add relevant label filters to allow users to choose the recommendation type independently; at the same time, we can use this to obtain users' recent audio demands.
• Combined with the recommendation algorithm, the recommendation weight of recommended content subscribed by similar users can be appropriately lowered based on user click-through rate, etc., to reduce duplicate recommendations; at the same time, users can discover more high-quality content on the platform. You can also adopt a demand guessing module design in the form of relevant extraction of favorite albums. Users can extract the provided albums by swiping up and down, and the system can also use this to judge the user's preferences (this is just an example of a sudden inspiration).

(2) I listen to the page

• Currently, the tab at the top of the "I Listen" page is not very convenient for users to filter the subscribed content. The historical playback is sorted according to the time logic, which makes it difficult for users to find a specific listening list. The "I Listen" interface can provide more functions for users to collect and classify by themselves/system intelligent classification, and classify the subscribed albums;
• In addition, users can be provided with the function of editing personal listening plans, incorporating the listening lists in "I Listen" into personal plans, setting the listening duration, content, etc., so that users can listen directly when they log in next time.

(3) Playing button

Currently, the third tab at the bottom of Himalaya is the playing button, which can be clicked to enter the historical playback list and start playing automatically.

However, in actual use, if users want to pause the playback after exiting the interface, they need to enter the listening list again to pause the playback, which is too cumbersome. Why not use the design of sliding up the "Now Playing" button to pop up the listening list? On the one hand, it is convenient for users to listen and close the music immediately. On the other hand, the sliding-up design of the listening list also maintains consistency with other button interaction designs.

(4) Provide more sound quality options

The three sound quality options on the current platform do not differ much in experience, and can provide users with more functional options such as dual-channel and surround sound quality, thereby enhancing the user's immersive listening experience.

(5) Improve the popularity of document support on the platform, and provide functions such as document note editing, content collection, and classification to help users absorb content.

(6) Improve the conversion rate of the platform's own products: Provide the anchor/brand with a product showcase function during order listening to improve the instant conversion efficiency of order listening.

get:

(1) Optimize the on-air adjustment experience

Taking the home page audition as an example, after the current user clicks on the audition, the playback bar below will automatically disappear as the user slides, and the user cannot enter the related playing page to pause the audio. The user can only exit the app directly or wait for the audio to finish playing and switch to new audio. On the other hand, the playback bar at the bottom of the page itself cannot control the playback progress, and is inconvenient to use.

(2) Optimize the problem that the current homepage cannot return to the top

(3) The recommended content on the homepage is rather messy. We can add discovery and information delivery functions.

• Currently, the recommended content on the homepage is in the form of questions to attract users to try out related recommended content; however, the recommended content list is long and complex, making it inconvenient to directly retrieve and locate the target content; relevant bookmarks can be added to classify the recommended content and present it in a regular format.
• The current content types of recommendation cards are fixed, and are basically recommended courses, e-books, tips, etc. They cannot immediately inform users and allow users to log in to the app and choose to listen to the courses they are interested in or the latest information in the industry.

(4) Listening process

• A speed-up function is provided during course learning, allowing users to choose the playback speed according to their personal learning habits and make better use of their personal time.
• Provides a focus mode, in which users cannot switch screens, which can help some learning attackers improve their self-learning control;
• When listening to books, more human voice options are provided to enrich the reading experience. In addition to human voice, relevant scene sounds and sound quality configurations can also be provided based on the content of the book to optimize the reading experience.
• Optimize the trial reading experience. After the current trial reading starts, if you exit the e-book page, the reading will be automatically interrupted, and the initial experience of listening to e-books is not good.

(5) Optimize the current learning plan making module

• The current learning plan skills are edited based on the courses the user has purchased. Later, a comprehensive learning plan for e-books, audiobooks, and courses can be formulated according to the user's personal learning needs.
• On the other hand, the scope of learning plan selection should not be limited to content that users have purchased. It can be combined with search and push to expand other resource content on the site, thereby attracting users to join the learning plan and improving the conversion of resources on the platform.

In summary, the current iterative optimization directions for Duode and Himalaya app can focus on: optimizing recommendation strategies and improving the on-air experience.

Friends with other insights and opinions are welcome to discuss in the comment area~~~

Author: XXL

Source: XXL