Meitu Xiuxiu Competitive Product Analysis Report

Beauty photography has become an important tool in daily life, and taking photos and then retouching them has become a daily operation. There are endless beauty-shooting products on the market, and the appearance economy is booming. The author of this article uses Meitu XiuXiu and Xingtu as examples to analyze their five dimensions, hoping that it will be helpful to you.

1. Purpose of analysis

This article compares the core functions, user experience, advantages and disadvantages of Meitu XiuXiu and Xingtu, and puts forward several improvement suggestions for the two software.

2. Market Analysis

According to the iResearch data in the above figure, it can be seen that among the average monthly active user scale of major categories of apps such as beauty photography, food delivery, online travel, and fitness, the number of users of beauty photography apps is significantly higher than that of other categories of apps. As of December 2019, the number of monthly active users of beauty photography apps reached nearly 300 million, and the app penetration rate was 20.3%. The overall user scale is constantly expanding.

With the upgrading of Chinese residents' consumption concepts, the improvement of aesthetic standards and the deepening of the "beauty economy", people are very happy to share their lives with pictures on social media, and their attention to appearance is increasing day by day. Therefore, the demand for picture beautification apps has emerged. At the same time, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, image processing technology has been continuously optimized and upgraded in the wave of artificial intelligence. The powerful image processing technology has provided a solid foundation for the in-depth development of picture beautification apps.

3. Choose Competitive Products

3.1 Reasons for selection

3.1.1 Meitu Xiuxiu

Meitu XiuXiu is a free image processing software developed and launched by Xiamen Meitu Technology Co., Ltd. on October 8, 2008. It has over 1 billion users worldwide and has long maintained a leading position in the ranking of image applications. In April 2018, Meitu launched its community and positioned itself as the "origin of trendy aesthetics", which marked the upgrade of Meitu from an imaging tool to a community platform with the core of "making users beautiful".

As of June 2020, Meitu's imaging and community application matrix has been activated on 2.08 billion independent devices worldwide, with more than 295 million monthly active users. In addition, Meitu currently has more than 823 million users overseas.

Meitu XiuXiu has long been ranked 6th on the App Store's photography and video rankings, and is the most downloaded photo editing software of its kind.

3.1.2 Wake-up picture

Xingtu is a mobile photo editing software launched by ByteDance in April 2020. With the huge traffic and financial support from ByteDance, its overall development speed is very rapid.

Since the app was launched in April 2020, it has reached the 7th place in the app store's photography and video list, and is the second most downloaded photo editing software of its kind, second only to Meitu XiuXiu.

4. Competitive Product Analysis

4.1 Product Positioning

Meitu XiuXiu is a new social product that integrates photo editing, video editing, and community life. It has rich functions, is easy to operate, and can meet the needs of a wider range of users.

The Xingtu page is concise, the photo editing materials are unique and novel, the functions are powerful and interesting, and it can meet all photo editing needs in one stop.

4.2 User Profile

The search index may deviate from the actual effect due to the influence of channels and promotion strategies, and is only used for simple user portrait analysis.

4.2.1 Gender

Data source: Baidu Index

It can be seen from the above figure that the ratio of men to women using Meitu XiuXiu is close to 1:1, and the proportion of men using Meitu XiuXiu is relatively higher than that of women. It can be speculated that the main reason is that Meitu XiuXiu was released early, has a high market share and is well-known. The first photo editing software that men think of is Meitu XiuXiu, so the scale of its use is higher than that of women.

Xingtu entered the market relatively late and had less promotion, and its user base is mainly women who have a better understanding of photo editing software.

4.2.2 Age

Data source: Baidu Index

In terms of age distribution, most users of the two products are young people, mainly between 20 and 39 years old. Users in this age group are mainly college students and office workers, and they have greater social needs.

Among Xingtu's user base, those under 19 years old account for a significant proportion. It can be seen that Xingtu's users are younger and of lower age. Users in this age group pursue uniqueness and like to try new things, which coincides with Xingtu's product features.

4.2.3 Region

Data source: Baidu Index

Judging from the regional distribution in the past six months, the number of users of Meitu XiuXiu and Xingtu is relatively high in first-tier and new first-tier cities such as coastal cities. People in economically developed areas are more pursuing diversity and fun in life and have greater needs for socializing. Due to the large population base, there are also many users in Shandong and Henan.

On the other hand, although Xingtu is only one place behind Meitu Xiuxiu in the app store rankings, the number of users using Meitu Xiuxiu far exceeds that of Xingtu, so Xingtu still has greater room for development and growth.

4.3 User Experience Comparison

4.3.1 Meitu XiuXiu

4.3.1.1 Meitu Xiuxiu—Picture Beautification

Beautify the image process and interface

Camera function flow and interface

The main interface of Meitu XiuXiu is mainly white and pink, and the page style is cute and fresh. It can be mainly divided into two sections: "Picture and Video Beautification" section and "Community Content Creation and Exchange" section.

Analysis: In the camera function, after taking a photo, the page that jumps to only has two buttons for users to choose from: "Save" and "Share to Meitu Xiu Xiu". If the user wants to edit the photo, such as adding filters or stickers, he can only click "Share to Meitu Xiu Xiu" before entering the picture editing page. This is not user-friendly for users who only want to edit and save photos. Although it increases the community traffic to a certain extent, it may cause users to be disgusted.

Suggestion: If you want to make the sharing community as prominent as saving pictures and thus increase the activity of the community, you can jump to the picture editing interface as the first step after taking a successful photo, and set two small buttons in the upper right corner of the interface - "Save" and "Share".

4.3.1.2 Meitu XiuXiu—VIP Function

How to open Meitu Xiuxiu membership 1

How to open Meitu Xiuxiu membership 2

Analysis: There are two ways to activate Meitu VIP. One is to click on the free trial on the personal homepage, which will provide a 7-day free trial period. The interface also provides clear instructions on how to cancel the automatic unsubscription, which increases user conversion rate without reducing user loyalty. Another way is to have a dialog box appear when you save a picture after trying the VIP function, saying "Subscribe to membership and use the materials for free". After the trial user sees the VIP effect, the user is reminded to pay for membership, which effectively increases the chances of the user becoming a member. It is worth mentioning that the icon of Meitu XiuXiu VIP is a pink diamond, which is both vivid and consistent with the cute and pink style of the software.

Suggestion: Make the description of VIP functions on the interface that reminds users to activate VIP more specific. For example, the text of "Unlock all spring-limited materials, experience massive materials, and personalized functions" can be changed to "Unlock all spring-limited materials, experience 3,000+ materials, and personalized functions". More specific numbers can make users have a more intuitive feeling of VIP rights and interests and increase users' motivation to activate VIP.

The main usage paths of the Meitu Xiuxiu app are as follows:

4.3.2 Wake-up Picture

4.3.2.1 Wake-up picture - picture beautification

Beautify the image process and interface

Open the Xingtu App, enter the main interface and import photos for photo editing. The upper part of the main interface contains special features that are updated timely based on popular hot topics and can be swiped left and right. The bottom navigation bar of the editing interface integrates all photo editing functions together for users to use in a unified way.

Analysis: Xingtu's interface is clean and simple, with white as the main color and a flat design style, which meets the aesthetic needs of contemporary young people who pursue simplicity. It has the lightweight features of a tool app, simple interaction, and low user learning cost. You can import photos for editing by opening the interface, and all editing functions are integrated together for users to use in a unified way.

Suggestion: Set up a photo-taking function in the upper right corner of the homepage. Most of the existing photo editing software integrates photo taking and photo editing. The lack of a photo-taking function will result in the loss of some target users.

The main usage paths of the Xingtu app are as follows:

4.4 Product Function Comparison

4.4.1 Overall Function Comparison

According to the overall function table, Meitu XiuXiu provides 12 major functions and Xingtu provides 6 major functions. Since Xingtu was launched later and focuses on photo editing, it lacks many major functions compared to Meitu XiuXiu. Picture beautification and portrait beauty are the two most frequently used image processing functions by users, and are also the core of photo editing apps. Xingtu has also launched a community module, but it is only open to some users. Ordinary users can only use templates already prepared by community KOLs, which reduces the sense of participation of ordinary users.

Although many of Xingtu’s functions are not perfect, its high ranking and rapid user growth mean that each of its functions is very powerful and attracts users to use it. With the support of ByteDance, a huge company, it can promote its products on Douyin, a platform with sufficient traffic, which gives it an inherent advantage.

4.4.2 Comparison of image beautification functions

According to the table above, MeituXiuXiu has all 13 image beautification functions, and Xingtu has 10 of them. It is obvious that Meitu XiuXiu has more functions. Xingtu does not provide commonly used functions such as mosaic and background blur, which means that users need to perform this operation on other photo editing software.

4.4.3 Comparison of portrait beauty functions

From the function table statistics, we can see that Meitu XiuXiu and Xingtu provide 19 and 23 functions respectively. Most of the functions of the two software are similar. Meitu XiuXiu has three functions that require VIP users to use, while Xingtu is more focused on portrait beauty functions, which are superior in number and are provided free of charge to all users.

To sum up, the two softwares have their own focus, and Meitu XiuXiu has more functions.

4.4.4 Comparison of important functions

4.4.4.1 One-click beautification

The interface styles of the two one-click beautification software are consistent with their respective overall styles. The interface of Meitu XiuXiu is mainly pink and white, while that of Xingtu is simple black and white. One-click beautification can be said to be the function that most users care about most on photo editing software. As can be seen from the picture above, the effect of Xingtu smart beauty is more natural than Meitu XiuXiu. While beautifying, it also retains personal characteristics, such as: clearer skin texture, deeper eye sockets and closer to natural skin color. Today’s users’ demands for photo retouching and beautification have evolved from over-retouching to fine-tuning flaws to get closer to their real appearance.

Analysis: In terms of interaction, Xingtu uses facial recognition technology. When the user imports any photo from the phone's gallery, it will be accurately identified as a still life or a portrait, and will automatically enter the corresponding functional module, making it easier for the user to operate and making the user operation process smoother. Xingtu puts the small function of adjusting local facial features into the sub-function of one-click beauty. It does not set up a slider to adjust the overall beauty effect. Instead, it sets up multiple sliders for targeted adjustment of facial beauty effects, such as adjusting skin evenness, skin smoothing, and removal of nasolabial folds, for nearly ten small parts. This can meet users' more specific beauty requirements. Meitu XiuXiu puts the one-click beauty function and various small functions such as skin smoothing, freckle removal and acne removal in the first-level menu. The interaction logic is rather confusing. If users need to adjust some local beauty effects after using the one-click beauty function, they need to return to the first-level page to operate. The names of the lipstick colors and eyeliners in the beauty section are too abstract, such as RD06, Eyeliner 01, etc.

Suggestions: Meitu XiuXiu - make the interaction logic more reasonable, such as adding various functions that can adjust local beauty as sub-functions in the one-click beauty function to reduce unnecessary operations for users; the effect of the one-click beauty function should be more natural and retain personal characteristics, such as clearer skin texture and more three-dimensional facial contours; the names of some beauty functions are too professional and should be changed to more figurative words, such as RD06 to red cherry and eyeliner 01 to innocent, to facilitate user understanding. Awakening Picture - One-click beauty setting can control the slider bar of the overall beauty level, because users who value the convenience and speed of the app more prefer to directly adjust the overall beauty effect.

4.4.4.2 Intelligent Optimization

Intelligent optimization of pictures is also an important part of photo editing software. From the above picture, we can see that the optimized effects of Meitu XiuXiu and Xingtu have their own characteristics.

Analysis: Meitu's intelligent optimization function is a major feature in picture beautification. It has a sliding bar that can control the degree of picture beautification. Users can decide the effect of picture presentation based on their personal aesthetics. And there are more targeted special effects in different scenes, such as food, still life, pets, etc. The smart optimization of pictures in the wake-up image is a sub-function of the big function adjustment, which is less obvious. The smart optimization button changes according to the user's usage status. If the smart optimization function is turned on, this button will become a firework shape with the English word ON. If it is turned off, it will become OFF.

Suggestion: Wake Up Picture - One-click intelligent optimization of pictures is one of the most frequently used functions in photo editing apps. It should be placed in a more prominent position, such as the first-level menu bar, to improve user efficiency. Add a slider to control the degree of image beautification, allowing users to adjust the image effect according to their own aesthetic taste.

4.4.4.3 Smart Cutout

Smart Cutout-Portrait:

Single portrait scene

Multiple small portrait scenes

The smart cutout function can reflect the quality of the image processing technology of a photo editing software, and it is also a function commonly used by contemporary young people for fun photo editing. As can be seen from the above picture, both software can identify the portrait part of the picture more accurately, and Xingtu's accuracy is higher than Meitu Xiuxiu. As shown in the red frame, Xingtu accurately separates the portrait from the background, but Meitu Xiuxiu has an error near the elbow.

In order to comprehensively evaluate the effect of the cutout function in portrait scenes, in addition to the single portrait scene, we tested another commonly used scene - multiple small portraits. As shown in the figure, Meitu XiuXiu can accurately identify the number of target portraits and accurately cut out each target portrait at the same time. However, the app gives the user a reminder that "recognition failed, please smear the screen to select the cutout area", trying to encourage users to perform interactive cutouts - quick cutouts. After using it, the author found that the effect of quick cutouts was not very satisfactory.

Smart Cutout-Non-Portrait:

Non-portrait scenes (cats)

Non-portrait scene (dog)

The above picture uses a picture of a cat as an example. Meitu XiuXiu displays the message "No portrait recognized, please edit the cutout area freely" at the top of the screen, and is unable to intelligently recognize the specific location of the cat. In order to test the universality of this problem, the author used more non-portrait pictures for testing, and found the same problem (such as the dog in the picture).

Analysis: It can be seen that Meitu XiuXiu's smart cutout function is designed for portrait cutouts, and does not take into account users' needs for cutouts of non-portrait images (such as making emoticons for pets). However, awakening images can provide users with a prominent area, namely the cats and dogs in the image, without any human portraits. This may be due to the technological differences behind the two apps. Meitu XiuXiu probably uses image segmentation (semantic segmentation or instance segmentation) technology, while the cutout function of Xingtu may be built based on saliency detection, which automatically identifies the most noteworthy areas in the image and is more robust when there are no portraits.

Recommendation: Meitu XiuXiu - Take advantage of its early launch, rich data and technology to keep up with the industry's most advanced cutout algorithms; reduce performance loss in the process of integrating the algorithm into the mobile terminal; separate the algorithm models for cutout people and objects (or add new cutout object functions) to retain powerful portrait cutout capabilities. Wake-up image - Changing the reset function in the interactive design cutout to cancel means changing the cancel all operations to cancel the previous operation, so that users can quickly return to the correct process. Some users may make mistakes accidentally when using the brush in the cutout function because their little fingers are too thick to fit on the phone screen. If the setting is to cancel all operations, users will have to perform many repeated operations. For the use of image processing technology in multiple small target scenes, try to increase the training data of this type of algorithm, or make the algorithm models for extracting people and objects independent and perform their respective functions.

4.4.5 Template material

One-click template application is a convenient and interesting function set up in the photo editing app, and its target user group is young people who pursue avant-garde personality. Meitu XiuXiu calls this function Meitu Recipe. There are 12 style classifications in total, including recipes for videos and pictures. To use the template function, you only need to click the Use Recipe button to apply the recipe. Each recipe material is also equipped with a small animation, showing the effects before and after beautification, so that users can see at a glance and choose as needed.
The Xingtu module has seventeen style application modules. This function exists in the middle of the tab at the bottom of the homepage and in the edit picture function. In general, the functions of Xingtu itself (such as shooting and searching, etc.) are not fully developed, but the module function is placed in such a prominent position, which shows that the Xingtu team attaches great importance to the module function. Therefore, the author speculates that although Xingtu is currently positioned as a photo editing app, its future development direction will be a community content sharing platform.

Analysis: When comparing the templates of the two softwares in terms of quantity and quality, Xingtu surpasses Meitu XiuXiu. For example, Xingtu has launched modules for cute pets, babies, Korean and Japanese variety shows based on the characteristics of young people in today's society who love to keep pets, show off their babies and watch variety shows.

Suggestion: Meitu XiuXiu - module materials need to be more avant-garde and trendy. Most of the users who use modules are young people who pursue individuality and fun. Matching module materials should be launched in time according to current hot spots. Xingtu - Add the function of "ordinary users DIY modules" to this function and support publishing DIY templates in public module materials. Because the more modules DIY by users, the higher the migration cost, this can improve user retention rate; in addition, add module likes and comments functions to encourage active interaction between users, retain user relationships, and increase user stickiness. Both software have the same shortcoming. Since there are too many modules, it takes time to find and download the templates each time they are used, which increases the user's time cost. The author suggests adding "recently used modules" to facilitate the user's next use.

4.5 Product Functional Architecture

4.5.1 Meitu XiuXiu

4.5.2 Wake-up Picture

Judging from the product function architecture diagram, Meitu XiuXiu's architecture is more complex, each template has too many sub-functions, the page classification is relatively confusing, and the user experience is poor. The overall structure of Xingtu is clear and concise, each function is clear at a glance, the priorities are more distinct, and the user experience is better.

The main page of Meitu XiuXiu has 7 major functions: picture beautification, camera, portrait beauty, puzzle, video editing, video beauty, and community; while the main page of Xingtu is designed around the core function of photo editing. Xingtu can basically meet the needs of daily photo editing, and for people who like taking selfies, it provides more practical small functions in the portrait beauty section.

It can be seen that the positioning of the two software is slightly different. Meitu XiuXiu focuses more on using photo editing and sharing to drive community development, while Xingtu is more focused on making tool apps.

5. Profit model analysis

5.1 Meitu Xiuxiu

The main types are information flow advertising, VIP membership and the combination of advertising and e-commerce monetization.

Information flow advertising : The advertisements placed on Meitu XiuXiu are mainly targeted at female users, such as female cosmetics, skin care products, etc. The advertising content is closer to the target users and the scenarios are richer, such as the application opening screen and the upper half of the home page. However, too many advertisements will cause users to be disgusted. For example, when selecting pictures in the mobile phone album, advertisements will be displayed at the bottom.

VIP Membership : VIP members can use a large number of exclusive functions during a specific period, such as facial plumping, exclusive materials, and tooth correction functions. You can also enjoy a cleaner user experience, such as removing ads from pages;

Combining advertising with e-commerce monetization : Meitu Xiuxiu takes advantage of its own user characteristics and adds a Meitu aesthetic module to the software. Users can apply for free trials of big-name cosmetics through a lottery. If they do not win, they can pay to activate the Meitu lucky bag service, which means 4 random lucky bags of big-name cosmetics will be given away for 20 yuan per month.

In addition, there are some less obvious ways to increase revenue, such as launching small consumer loans to make profits from interest, saving electronic ID photos, and customizing creative products with photos.

5.2 Wake-up Picture

Since Xingtu was launched relatively late, the product is just starting out and its functions are not yet perfect. It is still in the stage of expanding the market and attracting new users. It has not yet started to make a profit, but it does not rule out the introduction of profit-making methods such as advertising and member value-added services in the future.

VI. Conclusion

6.1 SWOT Analysis

6.2 Optimization Suggestions

6.2.1 Meitu XiuXiu

6.2.1.1 Further improvement of image processing technology and improvement of application functions

• The cutout content is richer, the recognized scenes are more robust, and the appropriate image algorithm is selected according to the function;
• The image cutout is more accurate and keeps up with the industry's advanced image algorithms.

6.2.1.2 Improving the appeal to young users

• Introduce some novel and interesting interactive elements, such as stickers;
• Keep up to date with young people’s hot topics, such as popular variety shows on Weibo or new ways to play on TikTok.

6.2.1.3 Improve user experience, continue to maintain a good user base, follow up feedback in a timely manner, and update quickly

• The layout is more concise and reasonable, and the proportion of home page ads is reduced. Too high an ad proportion will reduce the user experience.
• Merging the image beautification and portrait beauty templates, the duplicate functions will increase the user's burden of excessive information screening.

6.2.1.4 Enriching profit channels

• Increase the practicality and attractiveness of paid VIP exclusive functions to enhance users' willingness to pay;
• Introduce recommendation algorithms to personalize advertising recommendations and improve the success rate of advertising delivery.

6.2.2 Wake-up image

6.2.2.1 Improve the basic editing functions of the software for pictures

• Compared with Meitu XiuXiu, Xingtu lacks some commonly used functions, such as taking photos, mosaics, puzzles, etc.
• Adding video production functions and optimizing user usage scenarios can form healthy competition with Jianying.

6.2.2.2 Improving the interaction enthusiasm between operators and users

• The user rating on Apple App store is low. Pay attention to user feedback and fix bugs in time.
• Maintain the user groups on popular social software and respond to feedback from the user groups in a timely manner.

6.2.2.3 Enriching the social functions of the software

• Add community sharing functions, lower the threshold for content production, open template sharing functions to all users, guide and encourage users to create content, and provide better resources for users who continuously publish high-quality original content;
• Providing search functions can better provide users with customized services, such as filters of specific styles.

6.2.2.4 Increase user stickiness and build product reputation

• Invite more celebrities and use their traffic effect to attract fans and users;
• KOLs move into the community and use the massive user base of social platforms to increase the exposure of the app;
• Add a watermark function to make potential users aware of the product and increase downloads.

Author: Positive Energy Penguin Alliance

Source: Positive Energy Penguin Alliance