A comprehensive analysis of "Tik Tok" short videos, the trend of the new era?

In this fast-paced, information-based society, young people need a platform to showcase themselves, and people also need fast food culture to pass the time. Tik Tok satisfies both.

1. Product Overview

1.1 Background

In today's society, with the rapid development of informatization, young people are in urgent need of a platform to showcase themselves, and people also need something to kill time and cheer themselves up in their spare time.

1.2 Product Introduction

Product name: Douyin

Product Type: Short Video

slogan:Record a beautiful life

Product positioning: A music creative short video based on PGC + UGC

1.3 Experience Environment

Device: Android version

System version: 5.1.1

Network: WIFI

APP version: 1.8.7

1.4 User Needs Analysis

1.4.1 User Group

According to the statistics of iResearch APP Index in May 2018:

Currently, the majority of TikTok users are female, with a relatively even distribution of teenagers among users, and the core users are from first- and second-tier cities. In September 2017, Douyin officially announced that 85% of its users were under the age of 24, and the main influencers and users were basically born after 1995. This shows that the current Douyin user population is beginning to shift to the middle-aged group, which is closer to life.

Tik Tok user groups can be divided into two categories:

1. Content creators: record daily life, pursue novelty, have a strong desire to imitate , and gain attention by expressing themselves. Mainly use this platform to express myself.
2. Watching diving: There are certain entertainment needs, but the desire to express is weak, and they mainly use this platform to kill time and get entertainment.

Both types of users are close to Douyin’s product positioning: recording a beautiful life.

1.4.2 User Profile

Scenario 1:

Name: Xiaojuan

Gender and age: Female, 20 years old

Education: Bachelor degree

Occupation: College student

Income: Living expenses 1,000 yuan

Device: iPhone 7 Plus

Characteristics: good looks, good relationships, likes to participate in various activities, loves dancing

Commonly used APPs: QQ, WeChat , Taobao , Alipay , B612, Tencent Video

Scenario:

After dinner, Xiaojuan had no classes in the evening, so she went to the dance studio to practice dancing. After the practice, Xiaojuan asked her best friend to help her record a doula dance with the B612 camera.

After returning to the dormitory, Xiaojuan took out her mobile phone and uploaded the video to Douyin. After beautifying it with special effects until she was satisfied, she selected an attractive sentence and added it to the video. After you’re done, post it on TikTok.

After washing up, Xiaojuan lay on the bed and opened her mobile phone. She saw that the video had a lot of likes and comments. She was very happy and replied to some of the comments she liked.

Scenario 2:

Name: Xiao Li

Gender and age: Male, 26 years old

Education: Bachelor degree

Occupation: Graphic Design

Income: 7000

Device: Huawei Honor 10

Characteristics: Introvert, average looking, a bit of a homebody, likes to listen to music

Commonly used apps: WeChat, Taobao, Alipay, Zhihu, Douban , NetEase Cloud Music

Scenario:

The alarm clock rang at six o'clock. Xiao Li quickly got dressed, washed up, and went out at 6:20. I bought a few buns on the roadside for breakfast and rushed to the bus stop. After getting on the bus, Xiao Li took out his mobile phone and opened Douyin to check. While eating breakfast, Xiao Li is scrolling through recommended videos. If he sees a video he likes, he will click "like". If he sees a video that he has ideas for, he will comment.

When I arrived at the company, I immediately got busy with work. I only took some time to look at my phone during lunch, still scrolling through recommended videos. The work was still busy in the afternoon. After get off work, Xiao Li took the bus home. He took out his mobile phone and checked the new videos he followed on Douyin. After a day of hard work, Xiao Li needs to relax here for a while.

1.4.3 User Demand Analysis

Based on the above analysis of user groups and typical users, combined with the specific functions of Tik Tok, four needs are analyzed.

1. Interactivity: Traditional video media conducts one-way communication between editors and readers, while the reply system established by Tik Tok between uploaders and viewers allows for interactive communication.
2. Entertainment: Grassroots mass entertainment, anyone can join the audio-visual feast of Douyin. The grassroots therefore have a voice that allows them to express and display themselves to a high degree on the Internet. Most of the videos it displays are light-hearted and interesting, making it a channel for the public to relieve psychological burdens and mental stress. It is also a way for people to share information and happiness.
3. "Fast food" culture: In today's fast-changing society, everything seems to be high-frequency and fast-paced. People are increasingly pursuing simplicity in the meaning of time, and Douyin's "short, fast, precise, and anytime, anywhere" came into being in such an environment.
4. Low threshold: With the development of electronic devices and hardware, people can shoot some exquisite videos with their mobile phones.

2. Product Demand

2.1 Product Structure Diagram

From the perspective of hierarchical structure, Douyin's operation path is shorter and the hierarchical division is more reasonable.

Tik Tok’s main functions of publishing and watching videos are at the first level, with automatic repeat playback and sliding switching modes enabled, giving users a good immersive experience. However, Douyin does not pay enough attention to the message interaction part and does not add communities for users to communicate. Maybe Douyin just wants to be a pure short video APP.

2.2 User flow chart

2.3 Functional Experience Analysis

2.3.1 Browsing function

The homepage is divided into two sections: Recommended section and Nearby section.

Recommended section: It is the home page of the APP, which mainly pushes high-quality videos you like. Videos will be played automatically under WIFI conditions. When browsing under data conditions, you will be prompted "Do you want to continue browsing?" Swipe up and down to switch videos, and the videos will be automatically repeated.

Since Tik Tok is a product of Toutiao , the algorithm it uses is also very good. The system will push related videos based on user interests to increase the stickiness of the system.

Nearby section: It uses the user's geographic location to display videos shot by people near the user. The nearby people page uses a waterfall flow to display, giving new users more exposure opportunities. But judging from the popularity of videos of people nearby, the level of attention it received was not high.

Another browsing section is the follow section. Displays videos created by video creators that the user follows.

Experience analysis: Scrolling down to browse videos increases users’ addiction. The waterfall-style sections not only reduce costs but also increase the exposure of video creators. However, the repetition rate of videos recommended by the algorithm is too high.

Suggestion: Increase the amount of video styles and optimize the algorithm.

2.3.2 Shooting function

Logical flow:

In the shooting function of Douyin, you can choose to take a photo, long press to shoot, and single click to shoot a short video no longer than 15 seconds.

During the photo-taking process, users can select special effects props, beautify, select the flash switch, and switch the camera. And users can slide the screen to adjust the beautification filter function. Compared with taking photos, shooting has added speed selection, music editing, and countdown shooting on the basis of the original functions.

The TikTok camera initially opens as the front-facing camera, and then returns to the state of the camera when it was last closed, indicating that TikTok is mainly focused on selfies.

Experience analysis: The special effects props function makes the video effects more diverse, but there are too few elements to choose from. We should continue to add elements to the prop library to make it more diverse.

Special effects props and beautification functions also greatly enhance the user experience, allowing users to take more exquisite photos and videos.

2.3.3 Editing Function

As for Tik Tok users, some are willing to spend a lot of time editing better videos, while others hope to shoot a video in just a few minutes.

For these two types of users, the Douyin team has planned different solutions. For users who are willing to spend a lot of time, Tik Tok provides music editing and creation, the use of filters and special effects, and encourages users to create high-quality and creative works.

For users who want to shoot high-quality works in just a few minutes, they can use original soundtracks created by others. You can use the soundtracks created by others by searching. When you find a good video soundtrack, you can also click the lower right corner of the video to create the same video.

Experience analysis:

While experimenting with the editing features, I found some nice options, but also some issues:

(1) Element misoperation

If too many elements are added to a video, users are prone to make mistakes when continuing to edit it. Currently there are only two options for adding elements: Cancel Element and Save Element.

Suggestion: Add a lock operation. When a user locks an element, no operations can be performed on it.

(2) Start shooting directly

Tik Tok has added a direct shooting function, but after many experiments, the author found that this function cannot shoot video clips. It can only be used to experience some special effects, but the experience of shooting effects is more comprehensive. Therefore, the author believes that this function is repetitive and affects the experience of new users.

Suggestion: Cancel this function, or Douyin has not yet perfected this function.

(3) Share after editing

After editing a video, it cannot be saved directly locally and must be published to TikTok first. Although the content can be set to be visible only to yourself, this behavior still has a certain degree of compulsory sharing.

Although Tik Tok is a short video APP, mainly used as a video sharing software, some users only want to create high-quality videos through Tik Tok. This compulsory behavior will make them choose to quit Tik Tok and choose other APP software.

Suggestion: Tik Tok can give users the freedom to choose whether to publish.

3. Market Analysis

3.1 Current status and analysis of the short video comprehensive platform market

According to the Analysys Qianfan Index data:

In June 2018, only Kuaishou , Douyin and Huoshan Video were the dominant short video platforms, and the monthly index growth rates of Kuaishou and Huoshan Video were not good, far lower than the currently popular Douyin.

In the APP Store's June 2018 rankings , Tik Tok ranked first in free APP downloads, and Tik Tok was the only comprehensive short video platform to enter the top ten.

Through the above data analysis , the development of short video comprehensive platforms still has great potential, but it is currently at a certain bottleneck.

Kuaishou is invested by Tencent and Baidu, while Douyin and Huoshan Video are subsidiaries of Toutiao. Among the other companies, only Tencent Weishi has grown rapidly, which shows that without major breakthroughs, the development and changes of short videos will not be significant.

3.2 Development History and Current Status of TikTok

According to the above data analysis, Douyin's users have slowly begun to decline from its previous period of rapid growth, indicating that Douyin is about to enter a state of user saturation. In the future, the number of Tik Tok users will gradually stabilize. As to whether the trend of short videos will gradually fade away over time and the number of users will begin to decrease, this will require time to verify.

4. Iterative Analysis

4.1 Iteration Path

It can be seen from the version updates that Tik Tok has been constantly improving and adding features since the beginning, from music, challenge activities to special effects, the increase of backgrounds and the addition of live broadcast functions. The update frequency is maintained at about once every half a month.

4.2 Iteration Analysis

From the version iterations, we can see that Douyin cares very much about the user experience, and constantly improves and perfects the special effects, backgrounds and filter effects during shooting. It also puts a lot of effort into the viewer's visual experience and the overall layout of the homepage recommendation page.

From the constantly updated versions of Tik Tok, we can see that it has always been committed to making short videos without forgetting its original intention. The only function added is the live broadcast service for followers, and the product strategy has always adhered to the service scenarios for mid- to high-end short video users.

5. Competitive Product Analysis

5.1 Industry Analysis

According to the big data of China Industry Network:

As of December 2017, the number of short video app users reached 242 million, with one short video user for every three mobile Internet users. The user growth rate in 2017 did not drop much compared to 2016.

5.2 Identify competing products

According to the big data of China Product Network, in April 2018, only Kuaishou's APP had higher monthly active users than Douyin. It can be said that Kuaishou is now Douyin's biggest competitor.

5.3 User Analysis

5.3.1 User scale

It can be seen from the figure that in 2017, the number of Kuaishou users was about 2-3 times that of Douyin. After February 2018, the number of Douyin users increased significantly, Kuaishou was warned to rectify, and the number of users began to decrease.

5.3.2 User Comparison

From the comparison, we can see that Douyin and Kuaishou target different groups of people. Kuaishou mainly targets the lower classes of society, while Douyin takes a high-end approach.

5.4 Page Analysis

5.4.1 Home Page

Kuaishou on the left and Douyin on the right

Judging from the homepage, Kuaishou's homepage is a video cover. Before watching a short video, you need to return to the homepage and click on the next one, which greatly affects the user experience. The common characteristics of products that please users are: saving users trouble, not changing habits, fewer choices, simpler interactions, and less learning requirements. Kuaishou’s return page requires users to filter the next video, thus reducing the immersive experience.

The homepage of Tik Tok is a full-screen playback page that plays automatically. There are no distracting elements on the homepage, the page is simple and immersive. The random video content makes users more excited about the next video content, thus achieving a better immersive effect.

5.4.2 Follow

Kuaishou on the left and Douyin on the right

On the follow page, Kuaishou still uses video covers. This allows users to choose whether to watch new videos released by their followers based on the cover, which increases the user's autonomy in selecting on this page, but the problem of poor user immersive viewing still exists.

At the top of the Tik Tok page is the icon for entering the live broadcast page, which accounts for two-thirds of the video content and is browsed in a sliding manner. This reduces the number of selection steps for users, but the page is relatively small and the sense of immersion cannot be achieved to a good extent.

5.4.3 Same City

Kuaishou on the left and Douyin on the right

On the same city page, Kuaishou and Douyin use the same page design and add same city live broadcast recommendations. Tik Tok has added text introduction and location switching functions, which allows users to choose to watch videos of a certain area, making it more enriching. From the interface point of view, Kuaishou appears more compact and has better visual effects.

5.4.4 Shooting

Kuaishou on the left and Douyin on the right

On the shooting page, Douyin has more special effects options than Kuaishou, and the effects shot by Douyin make users more satisfied. There are only two steps to shoot on Kuaishou, and you will enter the publishing page after shooting. There are three steps to shooting on Douyin. After shooting, users can also make fine processing on the video, which greatly enhances the user experience.

5. Business Model

Douyin's profit model is mainly based on advertising. It inserts off-site advertisements in the Slide column and other pages, but the advertising style is not much different from the overall style of Douyin, and the number of advertisements is not large, which basically does not cause user disgust. This is worth a thumbs up.

However, Douyin is not profitable at present. Douyin has billions of traffic and has a good accumulation in content accumulation, event operation and topic operation . With the continuous development of Douyin, it can be foreseen that the Douyin team will definitely develop a monetization model that suits its own positioning.

(1) Paid gifts

Tik Tok has gradually begun to develop live streaming functions, and making profits through paid gifts, platform commissions, etc. is also more easily accepted by users.

(2) Big Data Profitability

Nowadays, with the development of big data, the number of users has become increasingly important, and in the future we can even make profits through big data.

VI. Conclusion

6.1 Reasons for the Popularity of Tik Tok

1. Unpredictability of content: Users can change videos by swiping their fingers, but they have no idea what the next video will be. This random stimulation coupled with TikTok’s algorithm makes users addicted to TikTok.
2. Special effects of likes: Different red hearts will fly out when clicking on the like button on Android and iOS, giving users certain feedback, which not only stimulates viewers but also stimulates video publishers.
3. Automatic loop: Tik Tok is set to automatically play after entering the video, and automatically loop after playing, and the limit is 15 seconds. Users have a feeling that the video is interrupted before they can enjoy it enough, and they can't help but watch it several times.

6.2 Disadvantages

• The content has a high repetition rate: The recommendation algorithm used by Douyin will make recommendations based on the user's interests, and the recommended content has become increasingly homogeneous over time.
• Unable to unbind mobile phone numbers and unable to cancel existing Douyin accounts: This prevents users with multiple accounts from merging them into one, affecting the user experience .
• Once you set your disinterest, you cannot undo it: Once you set your disinterest in a video, you cannot remove it from the disinterest list again.

6.3 Development Trend Analysis

As the cost of shooting videos on Tik Tok becomes increasingly high and it is banned by Weibo, it is slowly shifting from being trendy and cool to being popular among the general public.

The author believes that TikTok will begin to increase the development of its community attributes and, as the number of international users increases, will slowly begin to develop an international route.

I hope Tik Tok can find its own way.

Author: Lu Xiaoqi, authorized to publish by Qinggua Media .

Source: Everyone is a Product Manager