This article conducts a competitive analysis of WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugu Reading from the perspectives of product introduction, competitive product selection, competitive product analysis , and summary and suggestions. This analysis report was produced based on the competitive product analysis of three big guys. I don’t have any experience, and I wrote this article to improve my abilities. I hope that readers who see it can give more suggestions. Thanks.
1. Product Introduction
WeChat Reading is the official reading application based on WeChat relationship chain, and supports both iPhone and iPad terminal platforms. While providing the ultimate reading experience, it recommends suitable books to users, and users can check the reading status of their WeChat friends, discuss the books they are reading with their friends, etc. We are committed to carefully polishing the reading experience and discovering high-quality books with friends.
NetEase Wugu Reading is a new reading product launched by NetEase. It supports full adaptation of iPhone and iPad and allows seamless switching of reading scenes. This reading app allows one hour of free reading every day, with the dimension of "time as payment", focusing on in-depth reading of high-quality published books. NetEase Wugu Reading is committed to building a three-dimensional, comprehensive mobile reading community to meet the personalized reading needs of users at different reading levels.
Purpose of analysis: To compare and analyze NetEase Wugou Reading and WeChat Reading, explore possible optimization directions for WeChat Reading, and explore new boundaries in the field of mobile reading applications.
Analysis time: May 9, 2021
Operating system: IOS14.4.2
WeChat Reading version: 5.4.1; slogan: A must-have for reading and listening to popular novels.
NetEase Wugu Reading version: 1.9.8; slogan: Read for one hour every day.
2. Choose Competitive Products
Competitive product similarities:
Similar product positioning: WeChat Reading is a social + reading mobile reading application based on the WeChat relationship chain. While providing users with the ultimate reading experience, it also recommends books to users, allows users to check friends’ reading status and discuss books they are reading with friends. NetEase Wugu Reading has built a comprehensive and three-dimensional reading community with book recommendations by "reading leaders" for users who also love reading. While meeting the reading needs of users at different reading levels, it also provides an immersive and concise mobile reading application.
Similar target users: The target users of WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugou Reading are users in first- and second-tier cities who like to read general publications through mobile devices, have high requirements for book quality, focus on self-improvement, and are willing to pay for knowledge.
Competitive differences:
Although both are social + reading applications, their focuses are slightly different. WeChat Reading relies on WeChat's social relationship chain to expand to reading, while NetEase Wugou Reading starts with reading and then establishes social relationships through common interests.
In order to cultivate users' reading habits and reading depth, NetEase Wugu Reading has adopted a unique method of providing one hour of free reading every day and purchasing reading time. Compared with WeChat Reading, which focuses more on social elements, NetEase Wugu Reading's emphasis on reading experience also has good reference value for WeChat Reading.
3. Competitive Product Analysis
This section of competitive product analysis includes user analysis, functional architecture, three reading scenarios: before reading, during reading, and after reading, other analysis, and version iteration.
1. User analysis
Mobile reading application users can be divided into two categories: core users and ordinary users.
Core users:
The product positioning of WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugou Reading is similar, so there is not much difference in their core users. The core users of both are users who read for hundreds of hours, read a wide variety of books, and continuously create content.
Compared with WeChat Reading, where the distinction between core users and non-core users is not obvious, NetEase Wugou Reading has formed a community with clear distinction between leading readers and ordinary readers. Communication and interaction within this community are more frequent, forming a good reading atmosphere and having a stronger appeal to users who love reading.
Ordinary users:
WeChat Reading: WeChat users mainly enter the app through WeChat reading time or sharing in Moments. Not all of them are interested in in-depth reading, and it is more for social purposes.
NetEase Wugu Reading: It is mainly introduced through channels such as Zhihu. People have a great interest in reading, are willing to spend time on reading, and are willing to pay for knowledge.
2. Functional architecture
1) Before reading
Before reading, readers need to find books, including searching for books and recommending books. Searching for books means that users search for books with a purpose. Users already have target books or categories, authors, etc. Recommending books is when users do not have a clear goal. If you want to solve the problem of book shortage, you need to recommend books that users are interested in.
Find Books
WeChat Reading:
The bookstore of WeChat Reading is placed on the right side of the search bar on the discovery page. The entrance is not obvious. The bookstore provides a variety of category recommendations, including different themes: novels for boys and girls, audiobooks, book lists, paper books, free books, etc., to meet users' multi-dimensional book search needs. Common sections of the bookstore are also exposed under the search bar on the discovery page, which reduces the cost of searching.
NetEase Snail Reading:
NetEase Wugu Reading's classification uses a card-style interactive design to display books according to rankings and categories, making it convenient for users to browse and find books in their areas of interest. Among them, in addition to traditional categories, books are also classified according to publishers, probably because of cooperation with these publishers. However, the publisher classification and other general classifications are not well distinguished. When users browse the categories for the first time, they may not understand the content of the books in these categories.
Recommended books
WeChat Reading:
Friends are reading: WeChat Reading recommends books to users through the friend relationship chain, which makes users feel more identified. The friends’ reading on the homepage is in the form of cards, which simply but prominently displays the books that friends are reading. However, the waterfall flow format can easily cause fatigue; and the cards display too little book information, and users have too little knowledge of the books, resulting in a high selection cost. The probability of users obtaining books of interest by recommending books that their friends are reading is low. On the one hand, the books that friends are reading are not necessarily the books that the users are interested in, and on the other hand, they are not necessarily the books that their friends are interested in.
Book list recommendation: The book list in the bookstore only contains books but no reasons for recommendation. The book list only contains books, which is more like classifying the books. Users get too little effective information, the cost of selection increases, and it overlaps with the classification list scenario.
Personalized random recommendation: Shake to make random personalized recommendations is a very innovative random recommendation method, which makes users feel interesting and increases the frequency of use, giving more books exposure opportunities.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Recommendations by leaders: NetEase Wugu Reading has created a unique leader reading module, in which high-quality core users become leaders, and ordinary users can discover books of interest based on the high-quality book reviews produced by leaders. Users can follow the reading leader, see the books the reading leader has read and recommended, and discover books of interest. Users can also obtain books of interest through official topics and book recommendations in the recommendation module.
Category recommendation: The recommended books in each category are displayed in a gallery style, showing only the book title and cover. It is simple and prominent, but the lack of information makes it more costly for users to choose books.
Book list and book review recommendations: Book list recommendations not only include recommended books, but also introductions to the books or reading experiences. Users can obtain books of interest through book lists. Sufficient book information reduces the user's selection cost. High-quality book lists are also excellent articles that stimulate users' interest in reading.
2) Reading
For mobile reading apps, core functions include reading books and searching for books. Finding books has been mentioned before, and here we will introduce reading books in detail. The process of users reading books includes two parts: opening the book and reading the book. To open a book in a mobile reading app, users need to easily find the book they want to read and locate it in their own space. Reading a book is the experience of a user reading after opening the book.
Open Books
To open a book, users just need to find a book on their bookshelf and open it. In mobile reading applications, users can find the book in their personal space. The bookshelves or desks of WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugou Reading are users' personal book spaces, where books that users are interested in or are currently reading are placed. Users adding books to the bookshelf are similar to users buying books from a bookstore and putting them on their own bookshelf or desk at home.
WeChat Reading:
Gallery-style design: The bookshelf of WeChat Reading adopts gallery-style design, which is more commonly used. In this way, users can directly see all their books.
Display methods in different dimensions: The bookshelf can choose the focus of book reading information, including updates, progress, and purchases. Users can check book updates, view the reading progress of each book on the progress page, and view book purchase status on the purchase page. However, the book information on each page is hidden deep, and two operations are required to view the book information, which results in high user operation costs.
Customized classification: Bookshelves can be classified to facilitate users to manage books in a personalized way.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Single-card sliding interaction: Using single-card sliding interaction, it not only displays the cover and title, but also displays the reading progress, the number of readers and the topic content in the form of bookmarks. On the one hand, it is concise and beautiful, and on the other hand, the rich information display provides users with more information.
Display up to three books: NetEase Wugu Reading innovatively displays up to three books. More books can be accessed from My Desk in the upper right corner, or by swiping right to the fourth page and entering from the thumbnails. The use of secondary pages to display all books can guide users to read a book more attentively and in depth, reducing decision-making costs and frequent switching between different books.
Reading books
The functions that users use when reading, such as underlining, copying, sharing bookmarks, searching, and adding bookmarks, are similar in WeChat Reading and NetEase Wugou Reading.
WeChat Reading:
Ideas: Users can underline and share their ideas on the book page, or view everyone's ideas on this chapter in the lower left corner. Other users can comment and like. The entry is obvious and the operation cost is low, so users can easily achieve their social purposes. However, to like or comment, one needs to click on the idea to enter the user page, and then click on the idea again to complete the operation, which has a high operation cost.
Listening to books: WeChat Reading supports the listening to books function, and users can use fragmented time to read, which meets the needs of users who want to improve themselves but have less time.
Book Friends: Users can view all people who have read this book, see other people’s thoughts and reading progress, duration and number of notes, follow other users or view all the user’s thoughts about the book, to achieve in-depth social interaction and enhance user stickiness.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Shared reading: Users can find others to read with when reading. This is an attempt by NetEase Wugu Reading to make reading social. Users first need to reach a certain level of points before they can enable the shared reading function. Users who can share the book's shared reading QR code with other users. Users who read together can view each other's reading progress and speed, and can obtain more snail shells. Shared reading is a beneficial attempt to form a reading community among users, and the active competition mechanism and snail shell rewards of shared reading also stimulate users' interest in reading, increase users' reading time, and cultivate users' reading habits. On the one hand, such a mechanism satisfies the users' social needs, allowing them to have more topics to communicate. On the other hand, it reduces users' aversion to passive competition, thus forming a positive promoting effect.
Questions/Topics: There are question or topic entrances on the single card display page of the desk and the reading page of each book. Hot topics can be seen on the book details page, and all users can view and answer them. When users have questions about a sentence or a paragraph while reading, they can select it and write down their questions, and other users will answer them after seeing them. This question-and-answer format enhances interaction between users, making it easier for users to feel a sense of identity and participation when reading, stimulating their interest in reading and thus increasing their reading time. Users' questions form topic content. Users can click on the question button in the upper right corner of the reading page to view all topics. Topics can be sorted by chapter or popularity to meet different user needs. The same topic can generate different answers for different users from different perspectives, which greatly increases the popularity of the topic and stimulates users' enthusiasm for discussion. Users can also view all topic content or add new topics on the single card display page, or see popular topics on the book details page. More perspectives on judging a book will help users choose books more easily.
Annotations: Users can display all their own annotations on the reading page, which are only visible to themselves. Snail Reading guides users to read in depth and facilitates users to accumulate knowledge.
3) After reading
After reading books, users develop social needs and self-realization needs. Social needs mean that users hope to discuss and communicate after reading books, share books with others, and hope to interact with others. The need for self-realization means that users hope to gain recognition from others after reading a book, write book reviews, and rate the book so that others can see their own output and gain spiritual satisfaction.
WeChat Reading:
Share ideas to Moments: Users share their ideas to Moments, receive likes and comments from friends, achieve social purposes, and gain a sense of self-satisfaction.
Hot Discussions: Users can see hot discussions in the three-dot bar in the upper right corner, which displays all the ideas in the book in a waterfall flow. This format makes the information large and messy, making users tired of receiving information, and the uneven quality of ideas leads to a poor user experience.
Friends’ ranking by reading time: Users can follow their WeChat friends, view the reading rankings, and see how their reading time ranks among their friends, thus achieving spiritual satisfaction and motivating users’ interest in reading.
Reading Notes: Users can view all their reading notes, which are classified by book, and display ideas and underlines by chapter, allowing users to review their reading notes, accumulate knowledge, and achieve the goal of self-improvement.
Create, share, and collect book lists: Users can create their own book lists, share them with friends, and view and collect book lists.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Create book lists and book reviews: Users can create book lists and write introductions and insights about books into the book lists. Together with the embedded corresponding books, this is a review of the user's own reading history, assisting in the review and accumulation of knowledge.
Review annotations: Users can view all their annotations, classified by book, and displayed in text view or card view according to chapters or events, to help users review reading notes and accumulate knowledge.
Sharing: Users can share book reviews, book lists, bookmarks, etc., obtain comments and likes from other users, achieve spiritual satisfaction, and also receive rewards such as snail shells to stimulate users' enthusiasm for reading.
other:
This section mainly introduces the book content, user incentive mechanism and membership functions of the two apps.
4) Content
WeChat Reading:
WeChat Reading includes published books, audio content, comics, online novels, and public account articles, and the published books are already very comprehensive. WeChat Reading has added a large number of online novels. Although this will bring a large number of users to WeChat Reading, it will mean a decline in experience for other users.
Take a look: WeChat Reading’s “Take a look” includes friends’ thoughts, today’s updates and friends’ likes. Friends’ ideas are the reading ideas of all the friends you follow in WeChat Reading. Users can know the books their friends are reading and the ideas they have expressed. This is also another highlight of WeChat Reading’s social + reading model based on the friend relationship chain. The entrance is obvious and the user operation cost is low. Today's update brings together WeChat audiobook recommendations, public account article recommendations, article recommendations read by friends, popular articles, etc. It is an enhanced version of WeChat Discovery's text and picture focus. It has changed the video + picture format of WeChat Discovery, and displayed it in a waterfall flow format, highlighting the title and header image, which is more concise and comfortable. The disadvantage is that less information is displayed and the user selection cost increases. Official accounts are a key component in the WeChat ecosystem and a distinctive competitive point of WeChat Reading. A friend liked the reproduction of the same module of WeChat's "Look". Like today's update, the simplified presentation format is in line with the characteristic that users can accept a higher selection cost when using reading apps, and it also maintains the overall simple style of WeChat Reading.
Paper books: WeChat Reading allows you to purchase paper books and have them shipped offline, or you can invite friends to help you purchase books at a low price. The lower price has opened up the online and offline reading transaction models, and also gained a part of the user market that loves traditional paper book reading.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Snail Reading currently only publishes books and the content is not rich enough. The philosophy of Snail Reading is in-depth reading and providing high-quality reading content.
Leading reading: It is a special feature of NetEase Wugu Reading, which aims to allow KOLs with a certain degree of popularity in the reading field, or core users who have a certain basic reading volume and unique views on certain books to post book reviews and recommend good books.
On the one hand, it meets the needs of professional readers to increase their industry influence and shape their personal brand image, while at the same time it also satisfies the sense of achievement of ordinary users to become KOLs and gain more privileges;
On the other hand, it also provides ordinary users with an effective way to obtain books in their areas of interest and creates a good reading community atmosphere.
The reading page also includes columns such as daily new books, book lists, snail readers, article columns, activities, stories, book excerpts, and book crawling. It uses a waterfall flow display to meet the different needs of users when reading, and is updated almost every day or week. The continuous flow of high-quality content also has a huge appeal to users. The comments and interactions under each column also liven up the reading atmosphere of the entire user group. However, the waterfall flow displays information without selection, and the information is too diverse, which increases the selection cost for users.
User incentive mechanism
WeChat Reading:
The friends' reading time ranking stimulates users to compete with each other by ranking the weekly reading time of users and their friends, so as to increase the reading time of users. On the reading rankings page, users can like their friends, and can also poke friends who have not started reading this week to remind them to start reading. The accumulated reading time within a week can also be exchanged for book coins to purchase books.
The mechanism of reading ranking is very in line with human nature, but reading is a relatively private behavior, and competition is not the primary purpose of reading. Therefore, some users are rather disgusted with reading rankings, especially the two-sided nature of the competition mechanism. People with higher rankings will spend more time reading, while people with lower rankings will be more likely to be averse to reading.
NetEase Snail Reading:
Realm points: It is a user points system of NetEase Wugu Reading. Realm points are used to quickly measure the user's ability level in the field of reading. The system is updated once a day based on the user's behavior. Users can quickly improve their realm points by persisting in reading, posting book reviews, asking questions and answering them, participating in discussions, liking and sharing, etc. After reaching a certain realm point, users can enjoy more privileges: apply to become a leader reader, redeem e-book discounts, etc. The setting of realm points can encourage users' reading behavior and more communication and interaction within the community. The daily update setting also gives users timely feedback and provides a threshold and a convincing basis for the selection of readers. The reading time and footprints in the realm point function can respectively view the user's reading time over a period of time and all reading footprints in the application, meeting the user's self-realization needs.
Snail Shell: Users can redeem e-books by purchasing snail shells. Users who redeem e-books with snail shells enjoy unlimited reading rights, which means they are no longer restricted by reading time and can read continuously anytime and anywhere. At the same time, reading time can also be exchanged for snail shells, with one snail shell being rewarded for every hour of reading. The setting of Snail Shell provides users with another option. Users can buy books instead of purchasing time to read them, which meets the needs of users with different reading habits. At the same time, when users read a book repeatedly, they will not feel at a disadvantage because of purchasing time to read it.
"One hour of free reading every day" and purchasing reading time are an innovation of NetEase Wugu Reading in the reading payment model. First of all, one hour of free reading time can meet the needs of most users. Moreover, this one-hour free reading time is not automatically sent to the user's account every day. Instead, the user needs to manually click on the pop-up window to claim it. This sense of ritual increases the probability of users opening the app, and after claiming it, they will try to use up the one-hour free reading time, thereby slowly cultivating the user's reading habit. Defining the value of a book by the length of time it takes to read it, at a time when the Internet demographic dividend is almost exhausted, being able to successfully gain users’ time is a victory. This method can also reduce the user's trial and error costs. Users can read different books within their reading time, thus having greater freedom in choosing books. The free one-hour reading every day also allows some users who pursue low prices to read a book for free.
Of course, this model also has its disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is that it increases users' reading anxiety. At the same time, the time purchased by NetEase Wugou Reading is calculated based on natural days. For example, the time you purchased on a certain day will automatically be reset to zero at midnight of the next day. That is to say, if you purchased a day's reading time at 10 o'clock in the evening, then this time will expire after two hours. This calculation method will cause dissatisfaction among some users, and may not conform to the reading habits of most users. After all, the largest number of users of mobile reading apps is before bedtime, and there are still a large number of users who have not fallen asleep after midnight. Resetting the reading time to zero at this time will cause a bad reading experience for users. But on the other hand, it may also be to create a sense of urgency and scarcity to urge users to develop the habit of fragmented reading and persistent reading.
3. Membership Function
WeChat Reading:
Unlimited Membership: WeChat Reading has launched a free unlimited card, which provides users with one month of privileged service when they first use the APP, promoting new users and improving activation and retention. Membership benefits: free reading of all published books, free listening of all audio contents, redemption of reading time for book coins, no limit on the number of books on the bookshelf, ad-free reader, 100-yuan paper book coupons every month, exclusive fonts for the reader, exclusive backgrounds for the reader, incentive money returned for book purchases, free reading of some online novels, event privileges for welfare venues, and exclusive prop cards for daily answers.
WeChat Reading membership is 30 yuan/month, and continuous renewal is 19 yuan/month. The main promotion is for memberships with continuous monthly subscriptions at 19 yuan/month, and the discount for annual card users is only 19 yuan/month.
NetEase Snail Reading:
turbo members: exclusive library, reading with 50 people, iPad version, ink version, multi-device login, 20% off on book redemption.
The turbo membership time division is more detailed. On average, the ordering time and price are almost the same every day, satisfying users with different reading interests.
IV. Summary and Suggestions
NetEase Wuniu Reading and WeChat Reading have similar product positioning and target users, but their focus and iterative optimization directions are different:
WeChat Reading: "Social + Reading", social interaction based on acquaintance relationship chains and fragmented reading;
NetEase Wuniu Reading: "Reading + Social" is a community and in-depth reading centered on books for book lovers and KOLs.
Different focuses determine different iterative optimization directions. NetEase Wugu Reading still needs to improve in the following aspects:
Provide a variety of options for calculating duration to reduce users' reading anxiety: Specific plan: Provide two calculation methods: natural day and 24-hour timing day to meet the different needs of users: users who want to cultivate an interest in reading and use fragmented time can choose natural day calculation duration, and users who want to engage in continuous, in-depth and focused reading can choose 24-hour timing. After the two methods are determined, they need to be adhered to for a specific period of time, such as 20 days, before the timing method can be changed. Increasing the cost of choice can help users overcome the difficulty at the beginning and develop habits.
Add some audio radio stations. The audio book market is active now, and high-quality audio content helps users increase their interest in reading. Specific plan: Select popular books with high reading volume for audio recording, focus on enhancing the audio reading experience, and provide high-quality audio books. In order to reduce optimization costs, you can add a "whether you want to listen to the book" button on the details page of each book reading page, count the number of people who want to listen, and audio it when a certain standard is reached. The delayed time cost can make users value audiobooks more, and can reward creators to encourage user participation.
WeChat Reading needs to improve in the following aspects:
Promote the growth of UGC content, encourage users to create more, and establish a more complete reward mechanism. Specific plan: Support users to add text content such as introduction or insights about the book when creating a book list, support users to write book reviews, and share book reviews or book lists to Moments. This form of secondary creation stimulates users' interest in reading, as well as their enthusiasm for sharing, thereby increasing user stickiness and usage time.
Improve the format of waterfall flow content display, display it in a concise and clear classification, and reduce the impact of excessive direct information on users causing fatigue. Specific plan: Change the waterfall flow into a foldable form. Click to collapse the column, so that users can view the columns of interest according to their own selection. You can also add a back to top button when the waterfall flow is displayed, which will allow users to choose more categories, lower the criteria for switching categories, and find books of interest more quickly.
Passively ranking friends by time spent together increases user resistance, and a single evaluation criterion is not suitable for users with different reading habits. A more reasonable competition mechanism should be adopted to increase user stickiness. Specific plan: Give a comprehensive score to users' reading behaviors, including reading, writing book reviews, writing ideas, number of likes, number of comments, etc., and divide them into different levels. The higher the level, the greater the book purchase discounts they can enjoy, and the rankings among friends are displayed to promote users' active reading and activity, and increase user stickiness.
Recommending books by friends in the way they are reading meets social needs, but the recommendations may not be books of interest. A more complete social recommendation system can be established: Specific plan: Use friends’ reading thoughts, underlining and other reading behaviors as indicators to measure friends’ interest in the book. If they are very interested, recommend it. Change the sliding display of single cards that friends are reading to left and right sliding card interaction, and put multiple books that friends are reading into the card chute to reduce interface occupancy. At the same time, the most popular idea is displayed at the bottom of the card to stimulate readers' interest in reading.
Idea - Competitive product analysis:
User scenario demand analysis: List all users, scenarios, and demand cases based on [time period-reading status-purpose], assign different weights, and calculate the most core cases for analysis.
User experience element analysis: Compare and analyze the functional framework, list the core functions and special functions, and conduct in-depth interpretation.
User scenario requirements + user experience elements analysis scenario process: Combine the two to analyze the app’s current interactions, design, etc., and conduct an in-depth analysis of the process.
Version iteration analysis: Determine the optimization direction and focus of the product, and point out the direction for future product optimization.
