In today's information-shock world, reading has become fragmented and fast-food-like. In this era of universal knowledge anxiety, NetEase has launched a new reading product, NetEase Wugu Reading , which provides one hour of free reading every day. With the dimension of "time as payment", it focuses on in-depth reading of high-quality published books, attempts to break the boundaries of books, and connects the originally closed data islands.

Since its launch in 2017, it has swept major awards in major application markets such as App Store, Wandoujia, Xiaomi, and Huawei. On the occasion of its second anniversary, it also proposed a new layout in paper book e-commerce and education system to bring readers a more complete reading solution.

NetEase Wugu Reading has now gained a foothold in the field of mobile reading, so how did it succeed? What is the current development status of the entire industry?

This article will analyze NetEase Wugou Reading from a different perspective to give you an in-depth understanding of the operating logic of this company and the mobile reading industry.

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

1. Industry Analysis
2. Competitive product analysis
3. User Value Analysis
4. Business value analysis
5. Product iteration and operation analysis
6. Product structure analysis
7. Summarize

1. Industry Analysis

Books are an important tool for transmitting wisdom, and reading is a method to achieve the transmission of wisdom. With the development of science and technology, people's lifestyles have changed, and people's reading habits have also changed. The emergence of e-books has made mobile reading a new reading habit.

Mobile reading here refers to all reading activities performed using mobile terminals such as mobile phones, tablets, e-book readers, etc., including browsing web pages through browsers, reading bookstore clients, news clients, newspaper clients, magazine clients, articles on Weibo and WeChat, and listening to audiobooks.

So why is mobile reading developing better and better? Next, the PEST model is used for analysis.

1.1 Politics

1.1.1 National policies encourage reading

In June 2017, the State Council Legislative Affairs Office reviewed and approved in principle the "Regulations on Promoting National Reading (Draft)" to promote national reading, safeguard citizens' basic reading rights, improve citizens' ideological and moral qualities and scientific and cultural qualities, cultivate and practice the core socialist values, and inherit China's excellent traditional culture.

In March 2018, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued a notice: Launch the 2018 national reading campaign, accelerate the construction of a national reading promotion service system, and solidly promote the faster, deeper, more comprehensive and more scientific development of national reading in the new era.

In March 2019, "advocating national reading" was again added to the "Government Work Report". Since 2014, national reading has been written into the "Government Work Report" for the sixth time.

1.1.2 Textbook unification is a new impetus for online reading of supplementary teaching materials

Starting from the fall semester of 2019, all primary and secondary schools across the country abandoned the original Chinese, history, and political textbooks and uniformly implemented the "Ministry-compiled" textbooks.

1.1.3 Crack down on piracy and regulate the market

In 2020, a special operation "Sword Net 2020" was launched to combat online infringement and piracy. This is the 16th ongoing nationwide special campaign to combat online infringement and piracy. Focus on five key areas: First, carry out special rectification of copyrights of audiovisual works; second, carry out special rectification of copyrights of e-commerce platforms; third, carry out special rectification of copyrights of social platforms; fourth, carry out special rectification of copyrights of online education; and fifth, consolidate the results of copyright governance in key areas.

Overall, with the support of policies, the mobile reading industry is both encouraged and regulated, and the market develops healthily.

1.2 Economy

1.2.1 Residents’ income level has increased, and the market potential in the lower-tier cities is huge

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2019, the national per capita disposable income of residents was 30,733 yuan, a nominal increase of 8.9% over the previous year. The national median per capita disposable income of residents was 26,523 yuan, an increase of 9.0%.

1.2.2 Consumption capacity has increased, education, culture and entertainment expenditures have risen, and payment awareness has continued to grow

In 2019, the national per capita consumer expenditure was 21,559 yuan, a nominal increase of 8.6% over the previous year; the per capita consumer expenditure on education, culture and entertainment was 2,513 yuan, an increase of 12.9%, accounting for 11.7% of the per capita consumer expenditure and ranking fourth in the per capita consumer expenditure of residents.

1.3 Society Culture

1.3.1 The growth rate of reading users is increasing, and national scale penetration is accelerating

According to Analysys data, the reading rate of Chinese citizens is gradually increasing, and digital reading has been accepted by more people.

1.3.2 Cultural consumption has become an important way to improve national happiness

According to information released by the China Tourism Academy & Shanghai Chuangtu Public Culture and Leisure Joint Laboratory, with the improvement of residents' living standards and the rapid development of mass tourism, people's spiritual needs are constantly upgrading, and cultural life has become an important support for satisfying people's yearning for a better life. 51.78% of the respondents believed that "cultural consumption can improve people's quality of life and happiness, which is more important than food, clothing, housing and transportation", and 38.74% of the respondents believed that "cultural consumption is a necessity of life and is as important as food, clothing, housing and transportation."

1.3.3 Digital publishing industry is developing well

Wei Yushan, President of the China Institute of Publishing and Printing, released the main report of the "2017-2018 China Digital Publishing Industry Annual Report". Statistics show that in 2017, my country's digital publishing industry continued to maintain rapid development, with annual revenue exceeding 700 billion yuan. Among them, Internet advertising, mobile publishing, online education and online games are in the top four of the revenue list.

1.3.4 Huge potential in the sinking market

According to QuestMobile's report on the lower-tier markets, there are over 600 million users in the lower-tier markets. Compared with other pan-entertainment industries, online reading still has a lot of room for improvement, but its growth is also considerable.

1.4 Technology

1.4.1 5G network greatly improves network speed, makes immersive reading more effective, and upgrades reading experience

AR reading, smart picture books for children, smart speakers for the elderly, and 5G-CPE combined with audiobooks explore the possibilities of smart reading in the future.

1.4.2 Development of technologies such as big data and cloud computing

Deeply exploring user behavior habits and preferences makes personalized recommendations more mature, and refined operations and recommendations can promote users' willingness to pay.

All of the above factors have together driven the popularity of the mobile reading market in recent years. So what will be the development trend of this industry in the next few years? Is there enough market space?

1.5 Market Characteristics Analysis

1.5.1 Market Stage

Currently, leading Internet companies such as iReader, Migu, and Alibaba have all laid out their plans in the online reading industry. Online reading platforms such as iReader, QQ Reading, and Shuqi Novels are competing fiercely. After fierce competition, the market structure has become stable, and online reading platforms have also entered a stage of stable development. Most of these software are large and comprehensive reading software, but there is still development potential in the vertical fields related to reading. Further segmenting the market and audience and increasing the efforts to delve into vertical categories are one of the future development directions.

In addition, in order to catch up with the leading players such as Alibaba Literature, China Literature Group, and Migu Reading, the transformation from platform content accumulation to the incubation and adaptation of platform original content requires the collaboration of multiple business lines. Other manufacturers have also increased their efforts in ecological layout. In the mobile reading industry, high-quality content is the core. Only companies with the ability to produce and derive high-quality content will be able to leverage their advantages in the entire industry chain in the future and will be more competitive.

1.5.2 Market size

According to iResearch Consulting data, the scale of the online reading industry is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan in 2020. As users' payment concepts mature further and the quality of IP-derived content continues to increase, the value of the reading market will be further explored and the user market scale will gradually expand. Although the growth rate has slowed down slightly due to the influence of current pan-entertainment products, such as short videos, the future of online reading is still promising.

1.5.3 Business Model

According to iResearch Consulting data, in recent years, with the rapid development of the digital reading industry, the industry's business model has gradually diversified. Among them, paid reading subscription income still accounts for the main source of income. The proportion of copyright business revenue has grown rapidly, and its proportion in the overall revenue structure has increased significantly. This is because of the continued support from the national copyright protection policy. In addition, major companies have gradually improved their own ecosystems, continuously developed and monetized rich content, which has also promoted the growth of copyright operation revenue.

1.5.4 Investment

According to Analysys data, the total amount of capital investment has increased, and there are many investment directions, and the industry is favored by capital.

Therefore, we can see that there is still a lot of room for this market, and it will continue to grow rapidly in the next few years.

1.6 User Profile

According to Analysys data, mobile reading users are mainly young people with mid-range spending power in first- and second-tier cities in the east. Digital reading users are mostly concentrated in the economically more developed eastern regions. Analyzing the reasons behind this, people in economically developed regions have a high overall quality of life and attach great importance to culture, education, and reading. Therefore, they are the most core and main group of people in the online reading industry.

According to iResearch survey data, nearly 70% of online reading users have a bachelor's degree. This is related to the fact that people with a bachelor's degree have strong learning ability and develop reading habits relatively quickly. Among the occupational distribution, corporate white-collar workers have the highest enthusiasm for reading, accounting for nearly 40%. iResearch analyzed the reasons and found that the strong reading preference of corporate white-collar workers is correlated with the popularity of Internet learning culture.

2. Competitive Product Analysis

Faced with this fast-growing track and trend, a large number of participants have emerged, including old manufacturers, emerging companies, and cross-border giants. For example, Alibaba Literature, iReader, iQiyi, China Literature Group and other companies. NetEase Wugu Reading focuses on in-depth reading, especially the serious literature market segment. It is a direct competitor of WeChat Reading, which also focuses on serious literature. So let's understand the difference between the two.

2.1 NetEase Wugu Reading

Product Name: NetEase Snail Reading

SLOGAN: Time brings new knowledge

Product positioning: NetEase Wugu Reading is committed to providing users who love reading with an immersive, simple, high-quality and convenient e-reading experience, and hopes to build a three-dimensional, comprehensive mobile reading community with users to meet the personalized reading needs of users at different reading levels.

Business Model:

• Reading time is paid. NetEase Wugu provides users with one hour of free reading time. After that, you need to pay 1 yuan to unlock the remaining time for the day. Members can have 6 days, 25 days, 168 days, and 298 days of reading time.
• E-commerce, providing high-quality courses and expanding income channels by selling courses.
• Through online and offline activities, we expand the community by distributing knowledge, attracting readers and becoming members.
• Book Publishing
• advertise

Book type: NetEase Wugou focuses on high-quality reading, provides 300 publishers, 20,000+ good books, and is deeply involved in the field of serious literature.

Traffic entrance: NetEase Wugu Reading, NetEase Cloud Classroom, Youdao Reading, NetEase Cloud Music, NetEase cultural game "Border Journey", NetEase LOFTER, and NetEase News have opened up NetEase's entire cultural system through various forms of internal cooperation and have gradually grown into NetEase's new cultural brand.

Payment model: The charging methods of general reading applications are different. Compared with selling a book outright, NetEase Wugu Reading adopts the concept of selling reading time, one hour of free reading every day, and sets the payment dimension as "purchase reading time". You can purchase one day, one week, or even one year of reading time. You can unlock the full day's reading of all books for as little as one dollar. You can exchange snail shells for reading, and you can also exchange snail shells for time.

Main features: (unique or different features compared to WeChat Reading)

• Reading leader: The reading leader interprets the content of the book and then edits the book review and book list to guide and recommend readers to read.
• Customer service: There are two types of customer service: AI and manual. The manual feedback is also very immediate, which shows their determination to focus on user experience.
• Book details page: dictionary, Chinese-English translation; search: jump to Baidu page search;
• Co-reading: 29 readers read a book together within 21 days and can view other people's comments in real time, which can effectively promote readers' passion for reading.
• Topic: You can ask questions during the reading process. Multiple people can reply to one question. It can be classified by chapter and popularity, similar to a forum.

Login method: Weibo, WeChat, QQ, email, mobile phone number, Xiaomi account

2.2 WeChat Reading

Product Name: WeChat Reading

SLOGAN: Let reading no longer be lonely

Product Positioning: WeChat Reading is the official reading application based on the WeChat relationship chain. While providing the ultimate reading experience, it also provides users with a knowledge social area based on the WeChat friend relationship chain.

Business Model:

• Pay for listening to books and buying e-books
• Book publishing and distribution
• advertise
• Paper book sales

Book types: In addition to serious literature, it also covers popular literature, novels, comics, audio dramas, paper books, etc. There are also public account content unique to the WeChat system.

Traffic entrance: the traffic advantage of WeChat and the relationship chain of WeChat users.

Payment model: some books are free to read, and some books are paid to read. You can exchange book coins by reading, and you can also use book coins to exchange books. Or you can purchase unlimited cards, monthly cards, annual cards, or quarterly cards.

Main features: (unique or different features compared with NetEase Wugou Reading)

• Share with friends to get unlimited reading cards, read all published books for free, listen to audio content for free, and get discounts on online novels. WeChat makes full use of social circles to attract new members and activate activities, acquire customers at low cost, and implement sharing to the end.
• Privacy function: Since WeChat is a social relationship chain among acquaintances, its privacy functions are relatively detailed, including private reading, substitute bookshelf, follow-up permissions, private message permissions, etc.
• Listen to books, AI male and female voices reading
• WeChat Team: A multi-person reading group similar to the shared reading group on NetEase Wugou Reading, but WeChat Reading uses a point system. Points can be earned for logging in, reading, interacting, and asking questions. The main difference is that WeChat Reading does not restrict reading more than one book, but the duration is important, and there must be at least three people to open it.
• Interesting functions: flip through, daily answer
• Paper Book Mall: One-stop service for finding, reading and purchasing books (but there are currently few paper book categories)
• In the book details page: search, search for Chinese to see the Chinese interpretation, search for English to see the English interpretation; floating window display in the APP

Login method: WeChat login

3. User Value Analysis

There are four main participants in NetEase Woniu Reading: ordinary users, reading leaders, operation teams, and platforms. The business logic diagram of NetEase Woniu Reading is as follows:

If the platform wants to achieve rapid growth, it must meet the needs of ordinary users and readers. Let us explore the needs of these two parties and how the platform can better meet their needs.

3.1 Ordinary Users

Against the backdrop of an affluent economy and more prosperous culture, the public has become deeply aware of the importance of studying and seeking knowledge, and reading books has become an important way to acquire knowledge.

Currently, users meet their reading needs through the following methods.

3.1.1 Traditional physical book market

According to the 15th National Reading Survey Report, paper books are the most common way of reading, but the traditional physical book market has the following shortcomings:

• There is a high rate of repetition in book selection and a blind pursuit of bestsellers, so users may find it difficult to find some niche and high-quality books offline.
• There are shoddy books, the pirated market is rampant, and individual bookstores have many irregularities in their operations.
• The price of books has been rising year by year, which has suppressed readers' demand for books.
• Lack of effective guidance information, want to read good books but hard to find good books
• The reading scenario is limited, and readers can only read paper books. They need to manually extract the content they like, which increases their time cost.
• The usage scenarios are limited. Paper books are mostly read in libraries, bookstores, schools, and homes. It is difficult to read anytime and anywhere.

Summary: The traditional physical book market has shortcomings such as high book duplication rate, pirated books, high book prices, lack of effective guidance, and single reading and usage scenarios.

3.1.2 Traditional e-books

From traditional bookstores to e-books, consumers' ways of buying books have been expanded, the types of books purchased have been continuously expanded, and the quality of books has been continuously improved. Major e-books have launched the sale of paper books and e-books, which has greatly expanded the types of books that users can read. However, there are also the following disadvantages:

3.1.2.1 Fragmented information makes users read superficially

With the emergence of mobile reading, a large amount of information is distributed on the Internet, most of which is concise and fragmented. The effective information obtained by users is incoherent. Most people passively accept knowledge and fewer and fewer actively think to acquire knowledge. The emergence of shallow reading hinders user thinking.

3.1.2.2 The threshold for plagiarism and piracy is lower

With the rise of various online novels, the threshold for online writers has been lowered, resulting in a lowering of the overall level of reading. Various content of varying quality has been posted on the Internet, providing quicker ways to plagiarize and pirate.

3.1.2.3 Limited reading experience

• The current paid reading methods on the market are generally charged by chapter, by book, or by VIP payment model. However, reading is a continuous behavior, and multiple payments for chapters will break this continuity.
• There are quite a few reading software that support partial free reading or monthly VIP free reading, but the free reading scope mostly only covers the "free library" or "monthly library", not the entire site, and the number of books or reading scope is severely limited.
• The site's free reading products make profits through advertising, sacrificing user experience.
• When reading platforms push content to a large number of users, on the one hand, users may not be able to find the parts that interest them, and on the other hand, some high-quality content is inaccessible to users.

Summary: Traditional e-books have the disadvantages of poor immersive experience, shallow reading hindering thinking, plagiarism and piracy, payment model affecting user experience, limited reading books and scope, and insufficient personalization of pushed information.

3.2 Reader (Creator)

Creators hope to achieve the goal of sharing knowledge and monetizing by exporting knowledge, attracting readers, and building personal brands.

The commonly used methods are as follows:

1. Traditional publications: newspapers, books, etc. These publications have a single format, a long distribution process, different audiences, and a small coverage area, unless they are very popular books. It has high requirements on the creators’ ability and financial situation, and lags behind social hot topics.
2. Self-media platforms: TikTok, WeChat public accounts, etc. These self-media platforms can only help readers read, but it is difficult to achieve in-depth reading, and the effect of knowledge dissemination is poor. Once the content is profound and obscure, it is difficult for the public to discover it even if it is very philosophical.

Summary: The method commonly used by readers (creators) has disadvantages such as high requirements on the creator's strength and financial situation, a lag compared to social hot topics, and poor effect in knowledge dissemination.

3.3 Platform

From the above analysis, we can find that when it comes to reading, users have problems with existing solutions. As a platform, how can NetEase Wugou Reading better meet their needs and attract them to this platform?

3.3.1 Innovative payment methods

One hour of free reading, a new payment method that pays by time.

• The membership payment model launched by NetEase Wugu Reading, which includes unlimited access to the entire site, has also subverted the existing payment model in the market, providing users with a more convenient and economical option, allowing them to gain great satisfaction and a sense of gain at a minimal cost.
• If you read for an hour, you only need to pay one yuan to unlock the rest for one day, saving multiple payment steps. The online reading service with no limit on the number of books and quantities can seize the traffic entrance to attract more users, and it is also a concession to heavy readers.
• NetEase's view on knowledge payment is to link the concept of time with knowledge, allowing users to achieve self-improvement from the root through reading. This unique idea is also developing its own model on the road of valuable reading and knowledge sharing.

3.3.2 Excellent reading experience

Focus on publishing products:

Different from traditional reading products, NetEase Wugu Reading only selects high-quality published books in terms of content and focuses on simple style in design. It is committed to providing users who love reading with an immersive, simple, high-quality and convenient e-reading experience.

Derivative creation of high-quality books to create a three-dimensional reading community:

NetEase Wugu Reading is based on published books that have been tested by the industry and the market. It invites readers to provide valuable and systematic readings of the books, and continuously builds up a community reading atmosphere.

NetEase Wugu Reading cooperates with leading readers to promote knowledge sharing in the vertical field of reading by recreating the content of leading readers and creating valuable and eye-catching content. Leading readers from different fields build reading circles, forming a new form of reading community.

Content refinement promotes knowledge exchange and the development of the knowledge economy:

All readers of NetEase Wugu Reading have the opportunity to express their views on reading on the platform, interact with others through questions and answers around books, and form a virtuous cycle of knowledge exchange.

The book reading and reading sharing services provided by NetEase Wugu Reading respectively deliver the complete information itself and the content interpreted by the creator that contains the creator's own insights and characteristics to the author, providing readers with a full range of knowledge services. We will also promote the development of the knowledge economy through content reconstruction, and pursue win-win results with leaders and readers in reading.

3.3.3 Diversification of channel types

Compared with the traditional single self-owned channel that requires fixed reading content carriers and fixed reading scenarios:

• NetEase Wugu Reading has launched multiple formats including iOS, iPad, and ink screen, greatly increasing users' opportunities and scope of exposure to mobile reading content.
• Compared with the previous single form of mainly text-based reading content, the functions of shared reading, commenting, and asking questions set up by NetEase Wugu Reading provide a variety of social methods. In addition, functions such as book reviews are derivative and re-creations of the content of fine books, allowing culture to flow in various forms of text carriers, helping readers establish a more complete and personalized reading system.

4. Commercial Value Analysis

The current core business of NetEase Wugu Reading is payment for reading time. An important indicator for judging whether a business can develop healthily is revenue. Here we use GMV, the most commonly used data indicator in e-commerce, to analyze whether the core business of NetEase Wugou Reading is healthy.

GMV=number of users*conversion rate*average order value. An increase in any of the indicators, such as the number of users, conversion rate, and average order value, will have a positive impact on the growth of overall revenue, so next we will focus on analyzing the means by which NetEase Wugou Reading improves these three key indicators.

To further reduce the granularity of the analysis,

• Break down the number of users into large-scale online and offline activities and word of mouth;
• Break down the conversion rate into book reviews and book list recommendations;
• Break down the average order value into book quality, professional readers, and reading experience.

4.1 Increase the number of platform users

In order to achieve sustained growth in revenue, a steady stream of new registered users is the most basic guarantee. So how does NetEase Wugou Reading attract new users?

There are mainly two ways: paid channels and free channels.

4.1.1 Large-scale online and offline activities (paid channels)

Method 1: Online forwarding and book distribution activity.

Method 2: Cross-border cooperation. For example, we cooperated with Weidu to create the fourth most beautiful bookstore week, and jointly launched a seven-day hand-copied poetry check-in challenge with NetEase Cloud Music, Movable Type Culture, Sanlian Bookstore, and Moment in Tianya, etc.

Method 3: Support public welfare. For example, we launched the "Ideal Life Encyclopedia" experience space with Hangzhou-Hong Kong Metro, and jointly initiated the "Read Good Books Quickly but Slowly" subway public reading activity with Beijing-Hong Kong and Hangzhou-Hong Kong Metros. Through donations to six primary and secondary schools in Lianhua County, Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province, we can share reading resources with students in rural areas.

Method 4: Star effect. Team up with the official Weibo of Star Guide, celebrities Xuan Lu and He Shengming to create the Snail Star topic.

4.1.2 Excellent product reputation (free channels)

For reading tool products, word of mouth plays a very critical role in attracting new users, because reading products are a type of product that is greatly affected by the user experience. Once the reading experience is poor, users will quickly leave.

Make full use of fragmented time and break the boundaries of books:

First of all, NetEase Wugu Reading proposed the concept of free reading time. Users are not paying for limited book content, but paying for their own time. It helps users break down fragmented time into small pieces and make full use of fragmented time to digest today's reading time.

Having reading time means that users can freely browse all the books in a certain period of time, breaking the boundaries between books and establishing connections between knowledge.

So when readers find a good book that requires payment elsewhere, NetEase Wugu's free strategy is very competitive.

Exquisite note sharing function:

The note-sharing function of NetEase Wugu Reading is very exquisite. It has 5 templates and can directly generate reading note pictures to share on WeChat Moments. Who doesn’t want to be the cultured and stylish one in the circle of friends?

This kind of word-of-mouth fission communication will help NetEase Wugou Reading reach more new users at a low cost, greatly reducing the cost of attracting new users.

One week after NetEase Wugu Reading was officially launched in public beta, it has entered the top 58 of the free list of the book category of Apple App Store and is among the top 35 on the best-selling list of the book category. From the data displayed on the desk, we can see that more than 5,000 people were reading "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" on the first day. On social platforms such as Weibo and Zhihu, many users have praised NetEase Wugu Reading's new concept of "reading time" and its fresh and simple design style.

4.2 Improve conversion rate

After guiding users to the platform through various means, as long as users generate purchasing behavior, that is, convert into paying users of the platform, the platform will be valuable to the platform. So how does NetEase Wugou Reading improve its conversion rate?

• New users will be given a seven-day membership for their first login. Members have many benefits, such as exclusive library, multi-device login, etc.
• Recommended books, book reviews and book lists by the leader

A "reading leader" is someone who leads you in reading. He or she recommends good books, makes book lists, and publishes book reviews to readers in the product, thereby helping readers better understand a book. At this time, after the reader's free time is used up, in order to read the recommended book, they will choose to unlock the remaining time for one yuan.

Online and offline activities, these activities invite many big names to share books. Users can participate in the activities only if they encounter topics they like or big names by recharging their membership.

4.3 Increase Average Order Value

The average order value is affected by two factors: the single purchase amount and the purchase frequency. Since NetEase Wugou Reading is based on the sales period, the price of the books themselves will be adjusted dynamically, so the purchase amount of the books themselves is not the focus of our analysis.

Therefore, the focus is on how the platform increases users' purchase frequency.

4.3.1 Focus on book quality

If the quality of the books is not high, they may be similar to the free books on other platforms, and users will no longer buy books or memberships.

NetEase Wugu Reading only selects high-quality published books in terms of content, providing 300 publishing houses, 20,000+ good books, and deeply cultivating the field of serious literature. Currently, the book categories of NetEase Wugu Reading include Internet, Business Management, Science, Psychology, Social Sciences, etc. Each category includes books carefully selected by the editors of Wugu, ensuring that every book on the platform is of high quality.

4.3.2 Professional Reader

The reading leader recommends good books, makes book lists, and publishes book reviews in the product to help readers better understand a book. When you don't know what book to read, you can open the app and someone will compile a list of books according to your preferences, as well as in-depth book reviews. This greatly reduces the time users spend looking for books and easily promotes their interest in in-depth reading. This is a great user experience, but if the reader is of poor quality, his book reviews will be of lower quality, or inconsistent with the core of the recommended books, which will give users a feeling that promoting books is selling advertisements.

NetEase Wugu Reading has very strict review of the leaders. They are required to submit their personal profile and areas of expertise, and to continuously publish effective and high-quality recommendations. The areas of expertise of the leaders are basically consistent with the book classification. Users can find data of interest in the field through the book list, or follow the leaders in the corresponding field to obtain high-quality book recommendations from the leaders.

4.3.3 Good reading experience

Reading experience is a very important part. If the reading experience is not up to standard, even if users love a book very much, they will not be patient with it for a long time and will eventually abandon the product.

• No ads: NetEase Wugu Reading does not insert any ads during the reading process, and the reading experience is very refreshing.
• Note-taking tools are used in a variety of ways: NetEase Wugu Reading provides users with a variety of reading tools to meet any note-taking needs of users while reading.
• Co-reading mode: A special co-reading mode sets a time for reading to increase users' desire to read. 29 readers read the same book together, and annotations are updated in real time. This can not only solve users' loneliness when reading, but also enable them to exchange views and ideas. Reading a book will bring users far more knowledge than just reading a book.

It can be seen that NetEase Wugou Reading has done a lot of work, constantly attracting new users and improving conversion rates and average order value. At present, the results are still very good, which is why the number of users continues to increase. The commercial value of NetEase Wugou Reading is still quite large.

5. Product iteration and operation analysis

In order to deeply analyze the version iteration rhythm of NetEase Wugou Reading and explore the product iteration logic, the author sorted out all the core version iterations of NetEase Wugou Reading from V1.0.0 to V1.9.10. According to the different directions of functional iteration, NetEase Wugu Reading is divided into several stages for analysis:

5.1 Cold Start Phase

Before August 2017, versions V1.0.0-V1.2.0 were the cold start-up phase of NetEase Wugu Reading product. The main goal of this phase was to improve product functions and polish user experience. The newly added reading aloud, question-and-answer and recommender functions are all special features of NetEase Wugu. Over the past few iterations, NetEase Wugu has explored its own way of reading. The main iteration during this period is to improve the special social functions and enhance the user experience.

operations:

In terms of operations, not much large-scale promotion has been done, and more reliance is placed on word-of-mouth publicity.

• The operation of seed users is mainly to set up reading groups and public accounts. With the help of the community, we launched the Snail Reading Program and invited some big names to lead users in reading in the WeChat group. For example, Ant Financial, Cui Yongyuan, and NetEase’s internal HR read hundreds of books a year.
• On June 7, 2017, there was an activity on Weibo called "Buy time and get a lucky bag of paper books for free", which aims to break the barriers between e-books and paper books and bring better experience to users from a larger perspective.
• Snail is actively developing offline activities in the form of cooperation. 2017.7 Jointly organized the "China's Most Beautiful Bookstore Week" event with the comprehensive cultural brand Gongdu.

5.2 Rapid Development Stage

In October 2017, from v1.3.0 to 1.9.10, NetEase Wugu Reading entered a rapid development stage.

5.2.1 Functional iteration

• Initial exploration of commercial monetization, such as: upgrading paying users to Turbo members, adding paper book purchase function, and adding shared reading payment.
• Increase the construction of operational tools, such as broadening sharing channels, hoping to reduce operating costs and achieve user growth by actively attracting new users.
• Multi-terminal adaptation, adding adaptation for both IOS and IPAD. With the launch of the iPad version, NetEase Wugou Reading's layout on various mobile reading platforms has been basically completed. NetEase Wugou Reading's platform strategy is to make full use of various existing mobile platforms, efficiently cover the vast number of e-reader users, and achieve a win-win situation for hardware platforms, software developers and readers to a greater extent.
• To improve user experience, with the increase in users, a large number of consultation needs have been generated. In order to better serve users, the feedback function will be optimized, online customer service function will be added, and online logout function will be added. These changes will help improve user experience.
• In addition, another core function, the shared reading function, was added, and a series of optimizations were made around it to bring more reading scenarios to users.
• Refined user operations, adding snail realm points, adding personalized reading recommendations, and distinguishing core users from ordinary users through different realm points, so as to provide more accurate information;
• Add video product formats to broaden the boundaries of reading.
• The optimization of functions such as book layout has increased the user's immersive experience.

Operation: During this stage, NetEase Wugu's operation rhythm gradually accelerated, promoting product concepts from multiple angles and continuously attracting new users and promoting activation.

5.2.2 Daily Activities on Weibo

Snail daily topics#Snail daily sign# #Snail night talk# #Snail reading#

Irregular activities #Snail Welfare Club# #Forward and get a free book#

5.2.3 Cultural projects

• The "NetEase Snail Bookstore", jointly established by NetEase and the Binjiang District Government of Hangzhou, was opened to the public for free during the summer vacation of 2018 to promote national reading in a public welfare manner;
• Snail Reading launched the "Shell Plan" to support readers in various fields through three funds: interest, influence, and attraction. It also brought together high-quality cultural consultations from major publishers and vertical college youth reading clubs to fully explore the role of cultural services in the digital reading industry ecosystem.
• The "Positive Infinite Public Space Public Reading Plan" is being piloted to promote unlimited reading of good books in public spaces such as parks and shopping malls, using technology to provide infinite possibilities for spiritual life.
• In June 2018, NetEase's value reading app NetEase Wugu Reading officially launched the "Shell of the Spirit" cultural column, which integrates in-depth interview video programs, audio radio stations, character columns, etc., to present the value concept of "reading makes the spirit freer."

5.2.4 Cross-border cooperation

2019-6-19 Unread X NetEase Snail Reading, the theme of the fourth #most beautiful bookstore week# is "New Youth Reading +"

2019-7-23 "I learned to write from music", Digital Translation, Shanghai Translation, and NetEase Cloud Music simultaneously launched the topic.

2019-9-3 In collaboration with NetEase Cloud Music, Movable Type Culture, Sanlian Bookstore, and This Moment in Tianya, we launched a seven-day hand-copied poetry check-in challenge!

2019-12-30 Winter vacation open course for college students jointly launched with Yizhoujinbu

2020-3-11 United Douguo Food held the first cooking competition

2020-5-1 #What books would you read when you have insomnia# NetEase News and NetEase Cloud Music have set up an "Insomnia Guesthouse" for every insomniac.

2020-8-12 Jointly with Jingcai Review and NetEase News Client, we recommend a list of books on the theme of Beijing’s ancient capital culture

5.2.5 NetEase Community

2019-4-2 #蜗牛福利社#《控制感情》author @就叫熊太行也行 NetEase community live broadcast

2020-2-9 "NetEase Snail Community Reading Club" specially invited pediatrician Yu Di, one of the "Top Ten Parenting Accounts in 2019", to share his scientific knowledge​​​​

5.2.6 Charity Activities

NetEase Wugu Reading has started to carry out public welfare reading, and has successively launched the "Ideal Life Encyclopedia" experience space with Hangzhou-Hong Kong Metro, and jointly launched the "Read Good Books Quickly and Slowly" subway public welfare reading activity with Beijing-Hong Kong and Hangzhou-Hong Kong Metro. Through donations to six primary and secondary schools in Lianhua County, Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province, it is able to share reading resources with students in rural areas.

#Yi Shuyi World# was jointly launched by @36Kr, @Star Daily Odaily, in conjunction with Ant Blockchain and @Mantianxing Charity, on the @Alipay "Yi Shu" mini program based on blockchain technology, to raise smart bookcases and children's books for students in underdeveloped areas. @NetEase Snail Reading was invited to be a recommendation for children's book list

2019-1, join hands with the Hangzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League to launch the new "Yueduyi Station" project

5.2.7 Star effect

Join forces with @Star Guide official blog, celebrities Xuan Lu, and He Shengming to create the topic of snail star.

5.2.8 Featured Activities

2017-12-30 The New Year sign-up red envelope activity has greatly increased many self-media that have entered.

Snail Reading and Shanghai Translation, #Super Reading Day#

2019-8-28 The Snail Reading App site held #First Snail Poetry Competition#

2019-9-4 #New Knowledge Development Plan#, joins movable type culture, post-romance, and releases exclusive new book and blackboard newspapers every week in Tianya; joins Douban Doupin to launch a high-quality reading plan for limited time; joins the so-called YouthWill Campus Concierge wall crack recommended cultural and creative products

2020-04-18 Jointly Zhang Wenhong and Pu Rui Culture to launch a topic activity #Nurse’s Story#

2020-4-19 #4! Read together 2×3#

2020-8-25 Reader @ Andys Morning Breeze, the prize-worthy guessing contest held

After continuous optimization and marketing, the following achievements have been achieved:

In early 2018, NetEase Snail Reading announced the data on its first anniversary of its launch: it now has more than 6 million readers, and the reading rate of books on the entire platform is as high as 97.5%, and more than 50,000 comments and thousands of book reviews are generated every day.

In March 2019, NetEase Snail Reading announced the relevant data for the second anniversary of its launch. Currently, the reading rate of NetEase Snail Reading is as high as 99.7%, and the cumulative reading time of users has exceeded 3,000 years.

According to Cool Chuan data, the total download volume on Android is about 49 million. Judging from the trend of download volume charts, the product is still in the growth stage.

Overall, NetEase Snail Reading focuses on polishing its products in the early stage and is not in a hurry to promote them, because even if it attracts many new users through large-scale promotion, these users will gradually be lost because the user experience is unstable.

When the user experience becomes stable and enters a period of rapid growth, it begins to promote on the one hand on a large scale, and on the other hand on a continuous optimization of the user experience and broaden user channels, and continuously acquire new users. This is the overall iteration step of NetEase Snail Reading.

6. Product structure analysis

In the iterative analysis, we analyzed the iteration steps of NetEase Snail Reading Product Function. Next, let’s take a look at what users’ needs meet and how they are distributed throughout the app.

This is mainly analyzed through product structure. The following figure is the product structure brain diagram of NetEase Snail Reading V1.9.10:

For the sake of analysis, the author will get the following table by re-examining the product structure of NetEase Snail Reading according to users, scenarios, needs and functions:

Because the main target users of the mobile terminal are readers, the focus is on meeting the potential needs of readers.

When parents use NetEase Snail to read, there are three scenarios:

6.1 Don't know what book to read

• When users do not have clear reading goals, NetEase Snail plays the role of Amway Book. In order to guide users to read, they set up the reader function and set it to a first-level navigation, inviting capable people to interpret and organize the book, reducing the confusion of users in finding books, and understanding the book as soon as possible.
• Set the classification to the first-level navigation at the bottom, allowing readers to browse the book categories as soon as possible, and set up the list function at the top of the page. Through reading lists, leaders, new book lists, and several sections, users can find the corresponding book, whether driven by herd mentality, obedience authority or curiosity.
• In the search function at the top of the category page, book titles, book reviews, book lists, and topics are included in the search content, so that users can understand books from multiple angles.

6.2 Pursuing immersive reading experience while reading

• After finding the book you like, users began to pursue an immersive reading experience. In order to meet user needs, NetEase Snail Reading sets the question on the book details page in the upper right corner to meet the user's discussion needs.
• Press and hold the functions of calling out the marking, annotation, etc. to meet the needs of users to read, mark, excerpt, and annotate while reading. This is in line with the user's daily reading habits. The function of finding someone to read other people's annotations and comments in books. These functions avoid users just scanning a page at will, prompting users to think deeply, read a book thoroughly, and find the resonance of reading.
• In order to reduce the user's reading dysfunction and set up dictionary and search functions, a floating window can be directly popped up to query, avoiding the problem of users jumping out of the APP because of solving the obstacles and interrupting the immersive reading experience.

6.3 Organize books and experiences after reading

• After completing the reading, users have the need to organize their reading experience and books. NetEase Snail has set up a desk function at the bottom level navigation. First of all, the desk function only has three books to display, and the rest of the books are included in the next level. This sorting method avoids users from storing too many books but not knowing what to read, which improves the utilization rate of time.
• The sorting function has the function of wrapping a book cover, which can divide books into reading plans, reviewing the old and learning the new (second brush), wanting to read, and already read, so that users can have clearer reading goals and save users time in searching for books next time.
• In the desk function, you can also publish a book review for a certain book to summarize after reading, which is conducive to readers' absorption of knowledge. It is worth mentioning that NetEase Snail Reading and Writing Book Review Function has a PC version, and you can log in by scanning the book review interface on the mobile terminal, which greatly facilitates users who need to write a large number of book reviews.

VII. Conclusion

Through the overall analysis of the online reading market and NetEase Snail Reading, we can draw the following conclusions:

1. Common factors of policies, economy, society, culture, technology and other factors have promoted the great development of the mobile reading industry in recent years, and will continue to maintain a good development trend in the next few years.
2. In this industry, NetEase Snail Reading focuses on vertical fields, focusing on immersive reading and high-quality reading.
3. In the mobile reading market, there are four main participants: ordinary users, leader reading personnel, operation team, and platform. If the platform wants to achieve rapid growth, it must meet the needs of ordinary users and leader reading personnel in order to continuously generate user value.
4. If NetEase Snail Reading wants to maintain positive revenue growth, first of all, NetEase Snail Reading must strictly control the quality of people, improve the reading experience of products, and provide users with every link of books, interpretations, and Amway. NetEase Snail Reading continuously improves user experience, allowing readers to spontaneously help themselves spread, which on the one hand reduces the cost of attracting new products and increases the conversion rate on the other hand.
5. Overall, NetEase Snail Reading's development since its establishment is divided into two stages. Although it has a good reputation after it was launched, it has not been widely promoted. It focuses on polishing the products, improving user experience, expanding user usage scenarios, and after the functions of the entire product are relatively improved, large-scale operation and promotion will begin.
6. The target users of NetEase Snail Reading Mobile are readers, so all functional designs are focused on meeting readers' needs. There are three main scenarios for readers to use the APP: finding books, reading books, and organizing books. By sorting out NetEase Snail's reading functions, we can actually find that most of the readers' needs can be well met. Good user experience is the vitality of a product.

8. Personal thoughts

8.1 Continue to make efforts to introduce high-quality copyrights

Compared with companies such as China Literature Group, which has the advantage in copyright, NetEase Snail Reading has a slightly insufficient copyright, and niche and high-quality books still need to be continuously introduced. With the continuous development of products, the number of users continues to increase, and the requirements for book types naturally increase. If users cannot meet the needs of reading specific books well, it will inevitably lead to user loss.

8.2 Enhanced traffic from audio and video platforms

Through short video platforms, innovative content promotion, increase brand awareness and expand audiences.

Digging deep into audio and video application scenarios, empowering the platform to attract new information and expand application boundaries, can be divided into several dimensions such as book introduction, high-quality book reviews and knowledge collection, to meet the user needs of different content preferences, high-quality content attracts payment, and attracts attention and payment from high-quality consumers.

Short video content is used to attract traffic on the reading platform. With the help of the large traffic advantages of the short video platform itself, some users who are interested in reading content will be diverted.
The above is an analysis report made by me for the purpose of being familiar with the industry, and I hope it will be helpful to everyone.

Author: Niu Ying

Source: Niu Ying