WeChat reading product operation analysis!

When using a product, do you suddenly wonder, if I were the product manager of this product, how would I design it? It is very interesting to observe the characteristics and development of different products. The author of this article takes WeChat Reading as an example to analyze its development, hoping it will be helpful to you.

1. Everything has a trend

Trend is a judgment of the future development of things from the current cognitive perspective:

• Automotive trends: core mobile terminals for the Internet of Things;
• Trends in the property market: housing is not for speculation, quality core areas are stable and rising, and suburban areas with rigid demand are waiting to be taken over;
• Xiaomi's trends: IoT center, technological smart manufacturing;
• Alipay's trends: life service platform, super APP;

Before developing product features, the most important thing is to "change roles" - transform yourself into a prophet and see the future direction from a prophet's perspective. However, most of the time, we think we are prophets but are actually clowns.

The only difference between a prophet and a clown is a "product manager".

2. Everything is about human nature - Douyin, Pinduoduo

A product manager is first and foremost a psychologist. In 2020, Netflix produced a documentary " Surveillance Capitalism: The Social Dilemma ", which revealed that with the rapid development of brain science, neural networks and big data, large companies use data to intervene in users' cognition. In it, I see more of the product form formed in this context - physiological products.

The following is its definition: physiological product: establish personality model through big data analysis, use personality model, extract and analyze its features based on psychology, and then control users from product content and interaction methods. Therefore, physiological products in most cases bypass the "active consciousness" and go directly to the "passive consciousness" (subconscious).

1. Tik Tok – The epitome of KOL and instant feedback

In the book "The Social Animal", Eliot and Joshua, two outstanding contemporary psychologists, revealed to us that humans, as social animals, inevitably have group paradigms in our genes. In the research on "conformity", role models (KOL: key opinion leaders) are the core. KOLs will greatly weaken self-awareness, although most people may still think they have found "like-minded" people.

In Tik Tok, when you actually see hundreds of thousands of likes, professionally dressed people with jumping background music, and people saying words that you don’t quite understand in the areas that interest you, you have already been genetically controlled.

In the book "Attention: The Science and Training of Focus", Philippe Lachat, an outstanding French neurocognitive scientist, reveals to us the operating mechanism of "attention", the originator of timely feedback, in the brain. The abstract concept of attention is actually the recognition bias of the brain, that is, which information flows in the physical world first activate the neuronal activity of which parts of the brain. The greater the contrast in the physical world, the more it will focus our attention.

In Douyin, every up and down swiping operation gives timely and strong feedback in terms of "hearing" and "vision". The music on Douyin is all fast-moving consumer goods, with clear rhythm and direct meaning, which will bring the music to a climax within one second. Combined with various edited videos, there is no foreshadowing and the meaning is clear. So once I start scrolling through Tik Tok, I can’t stop at all, because every swipe brings a new round of stimulation.

2. Pinduoduo — Best Practices for Cognitive Dissonance

Also in the book "The Social Animal", a basic social motivation is "compensation for cognitive dissonance." When people's practices deviate from their expectations, there will be cognitive contradictions and disharmony. In order to make up for these disharmony, they will compensate, usually through irrational, self-deceptive behavior to meet expectations.

Don't simply think that "trying hard" or "cutting prices" is just about getting a bargain. That would be too superficial. In fact, when users look at the gradually approaching progress bar and the price gap, they have already experienced "cognitive dissonance" when they make their decisions at the beginning. In this case, with the help of copywriting and animation stimulation, people will enter an emotional state and irrationally not consider whether it is "really worth it", but will subconsciously initiate sharing.

But compared to Douyin, this product model that creates "cognitive dissonance" based on "small profits" is not effective for everyone, because those with better financial capabilities will not enter the market because of "small profits" at the beginning. This type of user group pays more attention to "quality", so judging from the data, the sinking market is indeed Pinduoduo's core scenario.

3. Back to the topic: What other value can WeChat Reading provide?

Back to WeChat Reading, after all, this article is still to discuss the product itself. The above is just some background to establish the final design of WeChat Reading.

As a reading APP, WeChat Reading has been developing well since its launch in 2015, but this is more due to the times and market development, rather than the unique product features of the APP itself. In other words, backed by WeChat's massive user base, the achievements of WeChat Reading so far, in my opinion, are in line with expectations.

I will not go into the usual information about WeChat Reading in this article. There are already quite a lot of product and competitive analyses on the website that are worth a look.

Let's get straight to the point. Suppose Xiao Ma and Xiao Zhang are attracted by our talents and, against all odds, insist on having us become the product managers of WeChat Reading, what should we do?

To know what needs to be done, we need to answer a soul-searching question: What value can WeChat Reading provide? Or to ask it another way, what other services do users need in reading?

My answer is: community.

4. Don’t get the concept of “community” wrong

Reading is one of the behaviors that mobilizes the highest level of "active consciousness". It is easy to lose attention (because active consciousness consumes too much brain energy), so the next core value that WeChat Reading needs to bring is "how to make users focus on finishing the book and be happy."

At present, WeChat Reading has made reading easy. In order to better realize the above core value, what the product side needs to do is to make "reading a journey together", and this is the practice of the community.

"Community": A group of people with the same matching characteristics. In the current scenario, it can be defined as a group of people in the NPS ( Net Promoter Score) communication link of one or more books.

WeChat Reading already has some social networking genes at this stage, and has also added many related elements to the product: review system, reading rankings, reading teams, fan mechanism, "Look", etc., but I want to say that these are only necessary functions. The real social networking should revolve around the "book" itself, because books are the bond that establishes relationships.

Therefore, the design of the "community" function needs to emphasize "books", and this weight even exceeds that of users.

Here I would like to mention the "question" function of Snail Reading. In my opinion, this is a very "Aha" function. As an in-depth user of WeChat Reading, when I finish reading a good article and have complex emotions in my heart with nowhere to vent, I draw a line and want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. However, the mobilization mechanism of "questions" is completely different. Both the questioner and the answerer can gain a full sense of "identification", and it is easier to mobilize the user's emotional release. Furthermore, the discussion of such related topics is the bond for establishing a trusting relationship between users.

"Asking questions" is just a small point, the purpose of which is to introduce the concept of building user community relationships around the "book" itself, thereby driving interaction, forming the community's own KOL and KOC, and establishing strong "user association relationships." Ultimately, this correlation will be reflected in the increase in new customer acquisition and stable retention of the "Paid Unlimited Card".

I want to emphasize again that we should never underestimate the "community". The ultimate form of community is similar to family, religion, and political party, and they have a very strong correlation. This correlation will greatly mobilize and focus users' attention and stickiness in reading, and through social interaction, they will have a deeper understanding of the book itself. Finally, from a commercial perspective, the membership fee model brought by the community approach is the most effective.

This is my judgment on the development trend of WeChat Reading.

5. Specific product features

From the above discussions on trends, human nature to communities, my idea has always been to focus on "physiology" because I believe that the first principle behind it (human nature) is certain.

So I hope to use the community to improve the stickiness, loyalty and happiness of users throughout the entire reading process.

However, I don’t have the behavior data of WeChat Reading users, so I can only make some suggestions for imaginative functions:

• Add book discussion function: before, during and after reading, the balance with evaluation function needs to be considered;
• Add a reading circle function: Provide a mechanism, but rely on users to organize and establish a reading circle. This function is not easy to implement and there are many details.
• Add book fan function: turn books into content IPs, enhance surrounding relevance, and link up with the above discussions and reading circles.

6. Summary

Sometimes I feel that if one day there is a very in-depth study of the brain, combined with the analysis capabilities of big data, the form of products will change greatly, and it is foreseeable that many current models that seem to be very effective will be broken.

Do you need to convey information? In the past, they would provide a good writing pen, and in the future, they might provide a pair of VR glasses :)

Author: niko

Source: niko