Analysis of WeChat Reading Products

WeChat Reading, with its positioning of social + reading, has rapidly risen in the mobile reading market and become one of the current leading products. As the growth of Internet users gradually slows down, solving the problems of user retention rate and user usage time has gradually become the direction of iterative optimization of various applications. Exploration in the social field may become a breakthrough in solving the problem.

1. Functional structure of WeChat reading products

2. Market Analysis

2.1 Product Positioning

WeChat Reading was officially launched in August 2015. It is a mobile reading product based on the WeChat relationship chain. At the beginning, it focused on more "serious" literature, reading, and learning, and mainly targeted users with urgent reading needs. With the iterations and updates in recent years, WeChat Reading has added the audiobook function, and added comics and high-quality public account articles to the book category, attracting and expanding the user base from different levels.

Unlike other reading software, WeChat Reading uses the WeChat relationship chain to provide users with a relatively familiar social environment when they first use the software. A UGC community has been established through reading time rankings, underlining to share ideas, publishing book reviews, and forming reading teams. It is based on social networking among acquaintances and supplemented by social networking among strangers. Through the positioning of "social + reading", users have become more sticky and active for longer periods of time.

2.2 Analysis of Mobile Reading Market

As can be seen from the chart, the mobile reading market is still in its rising stage, but the total number of users has not increased significantly, basically maintaining at around 590 million. Due to the epidemic in March 2020, there was a brief increase, and then gradually declined. Currently, the Internet penetration rate has reached 70.4%, of which the penetration rate in the sinking market is 55.9%. Elderly users over 60 years old are the main group of non-Internet users. Therefore, the growth of new Internet users in the future will mainly come from the sinking market and growing children of school age. The growth of Internet users in the future will inevitably slow down gradually.

The author believes that the future growth of WeChat Reading users can be divided into three directions:

• Attract new Internet users.
• Expand existing Internet users, mainly users in lower-tier markets.
• Convert other app users.

2.3 Competitive Product Analysis

WeChat Reading is a product with "reading" as its core business. Its book categories are mainly published books. In terms of choosing competitors, it has selected iReader, QQ Reading and NetEase Wugou Reading, which also have "reading" as their core business and a certain number of users.

2.4 Business Divisions

From the table above we can see that:

In terms of core business, the data types of WeChat Reading, Palm Reading and QQ Reading are more comprehensive. The difference is that WeChat Reading provides unique public account content.

iReader and QQ Reader mainly focus on a large number of online works, while NetEase Wugou Reader started later and currently only has the reading copyright of published books.

In terms of business model, iReader has a variety of monetization methods. iReader has been online for a long time and has a large user base. In addition to the common monetization methods, there are also two other monetization methods: audiobook courses and ireader readers. WeChat Reading also has advertising revenue, but at the current stage, WeChat Reading focuses on a simple and elegant reading environment and user experience, so it is difficult to add a large number of advertising spaces.

At the event, various software mainly provided free reading, and iReader established a dual mechanism of points and virtual currency. New users of QQ Reading will be given 10 days of VIP for free when they register, and there are also reward systems such as sign-in, upgrades and red envelopes to encourage users to read more and gain more. NetEase Wugu Reading offers one hour of free reading every day and is very popular among light readers. In addition, there is an incentive mechanism for signing in to receive Wugu coins. WeChat Reading has improved user retention and time by attracting new users, answering questions, and forming reading team activities, which has a somewhat complex but well-related structure.

But in terms of the intensity of rewards, WeChat Reading currently has the greatest intensity, and its reward method is also more attractive to users.

In terms of community operation, iReader has been developing for a long time, and its functional iterations are becoming more and more perfect. It has established a community with rich content consisting of "square + popular circles + popular push + topics", and has a huge number of users and is very stable. In terms of the community, in addition to topics and book clubs, QQ Reading's Book List Square provides users with a good UGC environment, and the "Masters Say" module attracts loyal users and promotes interaction between authors and fans. NetEase Wugu Reading is dominated by topics and book review columns, producing high-quality UGC content.

WeChat Reading uses an intelligent recommendation algorithm to recommend popular public accounts, hot short videos and good books based on user interests. At the same time, users can check what their friends think and what they are reading. In contrast, the WeChat Reading community is mainly based on algorithm-recommended content and social networking among acquaintances, with less UGC content.

2.5 Development History

Summarizing the development history of WeChat Reading and other competing products, we can see that:

Users' awareness of payment and copyright is gradually increasing. These four reading products have launched different payment models based on their own characteristics. iReader and QQ Reading actively purchase copyrighted books, and WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugou focus on publishing books. This not only shows that users' copyright awareness has increased, but also that in the content industry, in addition to entertainment and leisure content, learning and growth content is also gradually growing, and the content is tending to be of higher quality.

With the increasing number of young users, comics have become an important part of digital reading. While introducing copyrighted comics, iReader and QQ Reading are also attracting readers by adapting their own novels into comics. WeChat Reading follows the trend and actively introduces domestic comics.

In recent years, with the gradual popularization of various audio platforms, listening to books has become an important demand of users. Therefore, WeChat Reading, iReader and QQ Reading are all striving to improve the book-telling functions on their platforms, and have launched functions such as book narration by big names and audio hosts.

Users' desire for communication and interaction has become stronger, and the four reading products focus on building communities to bring together users with similar interests to communicate and interact.

2.6 Summary

By analyzing and comparing the functional services of various competing products, we can see that the functional differences between the applications are not significant. The most attractive parts for users are exclusive copyrights, mature UGC communities and more cost-effective payment methods.

The problem with WeChat Reading is that relying on WeChat's traffic is more conducive to social reading, but the advantages of social reading have not been well demonstrated. Functions such as underlined notes can better guide users to output content, but they are too fragmented and a complete UGC community has not been established. The book categories are comprehensive, but there is a lack of original platforms of its own and insufficient online literature resources, resulting in the current online literature business model of "contracted writers → works → electronic charges → book publishing rights → mobile reading rights → mobile games or web games → film and television adaptations → comics, animation → online games → overseas copyright transfer" not functioning well. The interface is simple and the reading experience is good, but the simple interface means fewer advertising spaces, which reduces advertising revenue.

Putting aside the issues of business model and payment conversion, the current number of WeChat Reading users is not large enough compared to other applications. The focus should still be on increasing the number of users and improving user stickiness.

3. User Analysis

3.1 User Profile

Liu Yuan, 26 years old, male, education industry

I love literature, have good reading habits and have high requirements for books. I have a dedicated reading time, and I also use fragmented time to read.

I have the habit of taking notes while reading, and I also create some literary works. I often post my thoughts and comments on WeChat Reading and discuss issues with book friends. Because of the high-quality content published, many users pay attention to it and even ask to make personal book lists for sharing.

Li Xiaohua, 20 years old female student

Li Xiaohua is a female college student. She has loved reading various novels since junior high school and is also a TV drama fanatic. Since there are few online novels in the school library, buying paper books is not cost-effective and there is no place to store them, so paper mobile reading software is often used. Recently, a novel I liked can only be read on WeChat Reading, so I downloaded WeChat Reading to read the novel.

When I see exciting plots in a novel, I will habitually click to check out what other book friends are discussing, which feels very lively. Sometimes I feel that reading reviews is more interesting than reading novels, and I have started to learn to post some interesting comments myself.

Li Qi35 years old male department director

Li Qi is a department director of a listed company with a stable income. However, in this rapidly developing and changing Internet era, he also feels the progress of the times. In order to keep up with the trend of the times, he has to constantly improve himself. I used to buy paper books. But every time I buy a book, it takes me a long time to finish it, and I have never developed a good reading habit.

Later, I used WeChat Reading on the recommendation of a friend. This software can not only record the reading time per week, but the ranking list can also help motivate yourself to study. So he made a list of books to read this year and insisted on reading on WeChat every day. Every time he saw that his friends on the rankings had spent so much time reading, he would be motivated to spend more time reading. After finishing work, I will use WeChat reading to improve my knowledge in my spare time, and I can even relax myself by listening to books during lunch break. Whenever you have spare time, you can open WeChat Reading to study. This is how I went from reading a book every few months to reading a few books a month.

Wang Xiaoying 40 years old female housewife

Wang Xiaoying is a housewife with a 12-year-old child. Her daily life revolves around her child. In my spare time I like reading and doing sports. Heavy books are inconvenient for her to carry, so she likes to read and exchange ideas on WeChat Reading. After her children go to school, she usually uses WeChat to read and listen to books while doing housework. After finishing all the chores at home, she would make a pot of tea and read her favorite books on WeChat Reading.

She believes in making friends through books, so after reading each book, she will write down her thoughts in the book review function of WeChat Reading. Through WeChat Reading, she met many friends with similar interests.

Since she started using WeChat Reading, she feels that in addition to her children, she also has a group of book friends with similar interests, and her life has become more fun.

3.2 User Research

Based on the above analysis, the author believes that WeChat Reading has done a relatively good job in user growth through various invitation mechanisms, but WeChat Reading’s community business lacks a UGC content ecosystem and is still in the embryonic community stage.
Therefore, this survey will collect user feedback and investigate community building, aiming to discover users' potential needs and verify whether the direction of functional optimization is correct.

3.2.1 Research Questions

1) Basic information

gender? age? Position? Income situation? City of residence? How long does it take to read?

When did you start using WeChat Reading? How often do you use it per week? In what scenarios is it used?

How did you learn about WeChat Reading? What was it that attracted you to continue using it?

Do you use other reading apps while using WeChat Reading? Which one is used more? Why?

What do you usually read on WeChat Reading? Which functions are used?

2) Questions about community ecological construction

When reading, do you like or comment on the underlined ideas that you agree with? Would you like to express some thoughts yourself?

Do you read the review section before reading a book? Will you watch it after you finish it? Will you comment?

Have you created your own book list in the bookshelf? Why create a book list?

Do you often read the contents in “Take a Look”? (Including popular article recommendations, short video recommendations, good book recommendations, and new publications that friends are reading) What content do you read? Will you like or comment? Don't want to see any content? Why?

Do you often check out “Friends’ Thoughts”? Will you like or comment? In what scenarios would this be done?

3.2.2 Survey Results

3.2.3 Survey Results

From the survey results, we can see that there are two main reasons why people choose to use WeChat Reading: simple interface and unlimited card activities. In terms of functional usage, reading is the most important, followed by listening to books.

In the construction of community ecology, users use the marking function more frequently. The marking function can encourage users to express their opinions and increase UGC community content. At the same time, it makes the content of communication between users clearer and the communication experience better.

In order to enrich the reading content on WeChat and attract users to consume short content, the "Take a Look" function has introduced information flows of recommended articles and videos from public accounts and Penguin accounts. However, actual user feedback is not optimistic. The user usage rate is not high, the user experience is poor, and it even has a reverse demand effect on some users.

In my opinion, as a product positioned as a social + reading product, the launch of the "Take a Look" function of WeChat Reading has not achieved the expected effect. The problem of user retention and the construction of UGC community can be achieved through other more ways.

4. Functional Optimization

4.1 Optimization ideas and solutions

According to user survey analysis, WeChat Reading can be optimized in the direction of social reading. Currently, WeChat Reading mainly focuses on social interaction among acquaintances. The advantage of this is that users are closely connected and can influence each other to improve retention rate. However, for the large number of new users attracted through various unlimited card activities, some new users do not have a relatively complete social environment with acquaintances, making it difficult for them to give full play to the characteristics of social reading.

In the construction of community content ecology, attracting users through emotional resonance between people is a great advantage, but not many friends around us like to express their ideas or book reviews, and there is little UGC content. How to stimulate users’ desire to express themselves and get more users involved is the key thing WeChat Reading needs to consider next.

By establishing the function of "online reading club", we can expand the user audience, inspire users to create more forms of works around reading, improve the content of the UGC community, and then attract more users to join, thus forming a virtuous circle.

Unlike music and video, reading books takes more time and energy, and is more difficult to share and discuss with friends. At the same time, everyone's reading list is different, and it is even more difficult to find individuals or groups who have read the same book. The establishment of online book clubs has further improved the function of reading social networking and met the needs of users for communication. Unlike book reviews and ideas, real-time voice communication is more convenient and provides a better communication experience. There is still room for expansion of the functions of the reading club. It is not limited to users' discussion of book contents. Users and officials can use this function to communicate and interact in other aspects. Authors can communicate with readers face to face through the online book club function.

Increase the engagement of both light and heavy users through individual and official organized events.

4.1.1 Function List

4.1.2 Book Club Business Flowchart

4.1.3 Function Home Page

Book Club Home

According to the design style of WeChat Reading, the homepage of the reading club is simple and efficient, and mainly consists of four parts:

• Room Search: Search for relevant rooms by entering keywords.
• Popular book discussion room: This book is currently being discussed by a large number of people in the relevant rooms and is very popular, so it is recommended.
• Create/quickly join a room: You can create a new room or select a room to join from the system.
• Room list: Based on the algorithm, official and historically read book rooms are recommended first.

For users with clear purposes, they can search for rooms by keywords or create their own rooms. For users with vague purposes, they can choose to quickly join a room or choose a room recommended by popular bookstores. The system will also prioritize the room list based on the books the user has read.

Through these four functions, users can basically complete the operations of searching, creating, and joining rooms.

4.1.4 Entry

Combined with user habits and scenario requirements, the entrance to the homepage of the book club function is set up in three parts:

Entry 1: A new page entry option is added to the homepage. Allow users to better discover new features and view their use.

Entrance 2: After reading the entire book, add a card to invite users to enter the book club page. After clicking, the room search will be carried out according to the name of the book just read for users to choose.

Entry 3: Send the invitation link to WeChat users or WeChat Moments. Users can click the link to jump to WeChat Reading and enter the shared room.

4.1.5 Popular bookstore functions

The algorithm calculates the currently popular books and makes recommendations. The heat value is affected by the number of rooms and the number of people in the room.

4.1.6 Create room function

Users can customize the room name, introduction, set associated books, passwords and other operations.

4.1.7 Room Page

The structure and functional design of the pages inside the room are the most important core part of the entire reading club function. The focus of the demand is to improve the user experience, allow users to communicate effectively, and solve operational needs during the communication process.

The core function part sets up text communication and voice communication as the main communication methods for users. Set host permissions so that users can manage the room and the opening of voice positions. At the same time, functions such as sending pictures, article excerpts, and book list links are set up to assist users in communicating.

V. Conclusion

In the field of mobile reading, iReader and QQ Reader started early and have occupied a large market share. However, the market has now reached saturation, and the total number of users is growing slowly. Improving user retention rate and usage time are issues that current reading products need to consider.

WeChat Reading has accumulated a large number of users in a short period of time through the form of social networking + reading and relying on the traffic of WeChat. However, the UGC community is not well established, there is little high-quality content, and the forms of user-generated content are relatively simple. Although the launch of the "Look" function has enriched the content types and creation forms, it is inconsistent with the positioning of WeChat Reading itself and the effect is not obvious.

Based on the characteristics of WeChat reading and social networking, a reading club function is designed to meet the users' needs for communication and interaction, increase users' usage time, and attract users with relevant needs. At the demand level, social needs are basically met, and when using the functions, users can get their needs for respect met.

In the future, the construction of UGC communities will be a necessary direction for mobile reading products. We hope that WeChat Reading can establish a good content community through the advantages of social reading and output more high-quality content.

Author: Yanbian Rice Sausage Terminator

Source: Yanbian Rice Sausage Terminator