Meituan Grocery APP Product Analysis

The growth of user scale and the maturity of delivery business have promoted the development of fresh food e-commerce. So, if we want to achieve better new customer acquisition, retention and conversion, how can fresh food e-commerce products be designed?

In the post-epidemic era, the impact on traditional retail is no longer overnight. Technological empowerment has opened up new horizons for new retail. From traditional e-commerce to the explosion of new retail models, although this track has attracted many competitors a few years ago, the market has gradually focused with the addition of capital. Leading products such as Meituan Maicai , Hema, MissFresh, Duodian Dmall, and JD.com have taken away most of the traffic. They are similar in product positioning and business logic, but also have their own characteristics.

This article will analyze local fresh food products based on Meituan grocery shopping, as a first practice for a product novice~

1. Overview

1. Basic product information

• Product name: Meituan grocery shopping;
• Product version: 5.22.0;
• Slogan: Fresh and affordable grocery shopping experience;
• Global launch time: December 2018;
• Industry: Fresh food e-commerce.

2. Equipment environment

• Model: iPhone SE;
• System: IOS14.7.1;
• Experience time: 2021/8/3.

2. Product Analysis

1. Industry analysis (other predecessors have done a lot of analysis, so this article will not repeat it)

According to the analysis of iResearch, the transaction volume of the B2C market for fresh food e-commerce in 2020 was approximately 1,007.76 billion yuan, a significant increase of 84.9% year-on-year from 2019, exceeding the trillion yuan scale for the first time. This was mainly due to the vigorous layout of comprehensive e-commerce in agricultural products and fresh food categories and the rapid expansion of community group buying and vertical fresh food platforms after the epidemic.

It is estimated that the transaction volume of the fresh food e-commerce B2C market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 31.6% in the next three years and is expected to exceed 200 million by 2023. The penetration rate of the online fresh food consumption market will continue to increase.

2. User analysis

1) Target users

According to iMedia Research data, the age of users on fresh food e-commerce platforms is generally concentrated between 18 and 30 years old, accounting for more than 70%, of which more than 40% are under 25 years old. This type of users generally have received higher education, are highly receptive to Internet products, and are less familiar with offline stores.

2) User core demands

• Purchase the target product;
• Goods are affordable and of good quality;
• Target time delivery.

3. Product structure analysis

1) Overall structural analysis

The bottom of the product is mainly divided into 5 tabs, which is basically the same as MissFresh and Duodian.

① Home page: The home page is mainly composed of classified product pictures and activity guides. The overall color saturation is low, avoiding clutter in the visual effect.

② Classification: Prioritize the vertical display of [Recommended for You] and [Members’ Zone]. Before users select the intended products, intervene to guide them to recommend products and member advertisements, thereby increasing the average order value.

③ Recipe

• The core purpose of this type of APP when designing recipes is: first, to enhance social stickiness; second, to increase the payment rate and form a closed loop of buying groceries - cooking - buying groceries.
• Compared with MissFresh and HEMA, Meituan’s grocery shopping recipe function is relatively weak in social attributes.
• Meituan’s grocery shopping recipes are provided by the platform, and only the “like” function is available.
• MissFresh and HEMA have designed UGC communities here, where users upload recipes and provide interactive functions such as likes and comments.
• From this, we can see that the recipe function of Meituan’s grocery shopping app is mainly positioned to direct traffic to products and become a part of user payment.

④ Shopping Cart

⑤ My

2) Product structure diagram

① Forward warehouse mode, all goods are delivered instantly

Because forward warehouses are set up near communities, all goods can basically be delivered instantly, and the inventory of goods will not change much due to changing addresses.

The impact of this is that although the floors on the home page are different for each person, that is, the address switching floor configuration is different.

However, in the commodity trading system, the process from product details to shopping cart to payment is basically a single, smooth link that is not too complicated. This model is basically the same as Dingdong Maicai.

Among similar competitors, such as MissFresh, HEMA, Duodian or JD.com, their settlement systems are more complicated due to their different business models.

For example, the first three companies differentiate their products based on instant delivery, next-day delivery and multi-day delivery, and their shopping carts and delivery systems are different during checkout. However, JD.com differentiates settlement based on different stores on the platform, which is more similar to Ele.me's platform + merchant model.

② Wallet and Meituan system are connected

Meituan’s grocery payment system is connected to the Meituan system, so users rely on the “Meituan” brand to operate in the entire payment system, which can generate related systems such as: Meituan monthly payment, Meituan wallet, etc.

3) Detailed functional analysis

In addition to the logic related to the C-end display of the product, from the transaction link of e-commerce products, the core transaction product lines involved in Meituan Maicai include: user system, product center, inventory, order system, shopping cart, payment method, promotion system and after-sales system. This article attempts to show the system logic behind the analysis from the C-end.

① Home page floor display

C-end display mainly relies on product center, promotion system and inventory.

Page elements include:

• First screen: location address, message reminder, search box, banner, fixed information reminder, dynamic notice board, 5X3 product classification entrance;
• Second screen: other promotional sections: super value stores, flash sales, new products, special offers, membership, etc.;
• After scrolling down one and a half screens, you will enter the recommendation section, and the search box and title bar will be displayed on the ceiling: What you may like, Home-cooked Dishes, Special Promotions, and Members' Area.

The homepage functions can be divided into basic and expected content.

• When users have products they want to buy, the information on the first screen: address, search box, and category entrances can directly satisfy their needs.
• When they are not sure what to buy, the promotions and recommendations on the second screen will attract their attention and satisfy their psychological expectation of "shopping around".

② Category page

• When you enter a category page for the first time, a pop-up window of detailed categories will pop up automatically. You can click to close it. This feature design assumes that the user's direct need when entering a category page is to find the corresponding product, and the category pop-up window will help them make a choice directly.
• When it is collapsed, users can filter products by horizontal and vertical categories;
• At the same time, the search box on this page is fixed at the top to help users quickly find the target product and reduce the difficulty of purchase;
• In the add-to-cart scenario, only the add-to-cart button is provided. When the user needs to reduce the purchase, he must return to the shopping cart to operate, which can make the functional scenario of the shopping cart more centralized and focused. In this scenario, multiple add-to-cart and reduce-to-cart buttons are set. I personally think that it is better to only set the add-to-cart option.
• Click on the product display area to enter the product details page except the add to cart button.

③ Business details page

First screen: forward button, shopping cart icon, product image, price range (normal price, member price), monthly sales, member advertisement, product title, guide words, reminder of price difference refund due to insufficient weight, comprehensive quality inspection reminder, and delivery time.

Second screen: promotion label, coupon label, list information, and user reviews.

The third screen: related recommendations (8 SKUs displayed in a horizontal sliding row), recommended recipes (combination purchase price, one-click add to cart, view recipes), and all recipes.

Screens 4567: Display of product details, price, quality, etc.

Screen 8: You may also like (3X4).

[Add to Cart] The bottom is fixed; starting from the second screen, the product title, forwarding, shopping cart, and category columns (products, reviews, details, recommendations) are fixed to the ceiling.

• The main purpose of placing the information at the front of the product details page (delivery, promotion, coupon collection, list) is to encourage users to directly add the selected products to the cart. The add-to-cart button at the bottom occupies a large area and is very obvious.
• Immediately following user reviews are the [Related Recommendations] and [Recommended Recipes] sections, which encourage users to purchase related products and increase average order value.

④ Recipe

Fixed at the top: search box, my recipes, forwarding.

First screen: What to eat (classification, 7 recipe slots displayed horizontally), recipe classification.

Second screen: Double-screen waterfall flow showing recipes by category (pictures/videos).

As mentioned earlier, the recipe function enables users to complete the closed loop of buying groceries, cooking, and buying groceries on the APP.

Currently, recipes only support official uploads. The user's main operations on this interface are: collect recipes/click on recipes to purchase products. It can be considered that its main purpose is to promote users to select products and increase customer orders, with no intention of expanding its social functions. Compared with the [Recipe] function of its competitor MissFresh, it is more inclined to be a UGC community, with corresponding functions such as commenting, liking, and uploading recipes.

Dingdong Maicai’s recipe area focuses on the live broadcast function, and it is expected that it will also focus on live broadcasting to bring goods in the future~

⑤ Shopping cart

The shopping cart is the most core step in the conversion of e-commerce transaction products. Different platforms have different business orientations and different settings for shopping carts.

For example, Pinduoduo did not design a shopping cart function because its customer orders are low and it mainly relies on direct payment in a group-buying model. Adding a shopping cart would make the conversion path longer. On the other hand, Ele.me has a shopping cart when selecting products in a single store because its platform includes many merchants. There is also a shopping cart for storing added products from all merchants.

For fresh food products, the shopping cart also has two core functions: converting users to purchase additional items and increasing average order value through marketing. Let’s look at Meituan’s grocery shopping cart from this perspective.

The most prominent visual element on the page is [Checkout], followed by [Delete], and then the product information in the middle area. So this also follows the priority of the shopping cart function:

1. Facilitate users to place orders and settle accounts;
2. Facilitate users to manage products;
3. Increase average order value through promotional activities.

After comparing several competing products, I found that because the platforms are motivated to use shopping carts for marketing, they can easily make the shopping carts too fancy. From a single-page visual perspective, compared to Hema and MissFresh, the shopping cart section of Meituan Grocery is heavier, so it is a bit cluttered. Of course, this is a professional aspect of design, I am just expressing my personal opinion.

From a functional perspective, the shopping cart basically includes: coupons, membership guidance, exchange, product display, expired product reminders, and several items you might want to buy. There is not much difference in modules from competing products, mainly in the design of some details. for example:

• The estimated price of discounted products is displayed, allowing users to perceive the discount more clearly.
• Expired products leak [Arrival Reminder] and [View Similar] to guide users to purchase other similar products. Since fresh products are highly substitutable, I think it is better to strengthen guidance in out-of-stock scenarios.

⑥ Checkout page

Compared with similar competitors, Meituan’s grocery shopping checkout page is very simple, with only one screen of information, including the delivery address, payment method, delivery time, product list, membership activation and price range.

It can be seen that the most core path on the checkout page at this time is to guide users to pay, and no unnecessary marketing information will be displayed. The only advertisement is membership, but because membership is only involved in price calculation, users can make decisions relatively quickly before settlement, so it is more reasonable.

Compared with similar competitors, the page is relatively simple and clear.

• In terms of functional differences, MissFresh and Duodian have an [Out of Stock] option, but perhaps because Meituan Maicai, Hema, and Dingdong Maicai have more comprehensive forward warehouse inventories, there are fewer out-of-stock scenarios, and invalid products have been filtered out on the shopping cart page, so it is not designed on this page.
• Competitors place the [Invoice] entrance on the checkout page. Meituan’s grocery shopping invoice function is placed in the order list and in a small label under [My]. Consider placing this function on the checkout page. However, it is understandable that the [Invoice] entrance is not placed to make the settlement path smoother.

Conclusion

Among the current e-commerce products, Meituan Maicai, Dingdong Maicai, MissFresh, Hema, JD Maicai and Duodian have certain differences due to their different business models, but the overall transaction chain is in line with the e-commerce system. Users have a strong purpose when using fresh food apps, and increasing user stickiness is of paramount importance while attracting new users. Therefore, product experience and shopping experience (goods, delivery, after-sales, etc.) are important links to promote retention.

Judging from the functional design of the shopping cart and checkout page, Meituan Maicai has done a good job in balancing the increase in customer orders and user experience. The first goal of the product is GMV, so all functional designs are subject to this goal for priority confirmation.

Meituan Maicai has its own advantages in this regard, but in a payment system that is directly guided by preferential promotions, how to prevent user loss is an experience issue that must be taken seriously.

Author: Kick

Source: Kick