WeChat Reading APP Product Analysis

With the rise of national reading, WeChat has also started to develop a reading software - WeChat Reading . Compared with other reading software that generates social interaction based on reading interests, WeChat Reading relies on the social relationships in the WeChat relationship chain and then extends it to reading, thus attracting a large number of users.

In recent years, more and more players have entered the domestic mobile reading market, and the mobile reading market has flourished.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic in 2020 has led to the rise of the "stay-at-home economy", and the mobile reading market has ushered in a new period of growth. There are not only industry veterans such as China Literature Group, iReader Technology, Shuqi, and Migu Reading, but also emerging players such as Midu Novels and Lianshang Literature that have entered the market with free reading apps. As a loyal user of WeChat Reading, let me talk about WeChat Reading in my eyes.

1. Product Overview

Slogan: Let reading no longer be lonely

Introduction: WeChat Reading is an official reading application based on WeChat relationship chain. While providing the ultimate reading experience, it recommends suitable books to users, and users can view the reading status of WeChat friends, discuss the books they are reading with friends, etc.

• Carefully polished reading experience: EPUB's exquisite book layout allows you to personalize your own reading style;
• Discover high-quality books with friends: help you discover the next good book that suits you. There is a vast sea of ​​books. You may as well ask your WeChat friends to help you filter and quickly find high-quality books.
• Discuss, exchange and collide with friends: Encounter your friends' ideas while reading, exchange your reading experience with friends and collide with more sparks. This time, let reading no longer be lonely;
• Compete with your friends in reading time: This serious reading game allows you to easily understand your own reading time. You will not only gain knowledge from reading, but also gain a sense of accomplishment from competing with your friends.

From the introduction, we can see that WeChat Reading uses its unique advantage - social relationship chain, to provide high-quality book sources and create a reading app with social attributes.

II. Background

1. Growth Potential

Scale of the mobile reading industry: vertical field, a multi-billion dollar industry cake.

In the trillion-level pan-entertainment industry, the mobile reading industry is only a small piece of the pie, but as one of the content sources of the pan-entertainment industry, the mobile reading industry is still a battlefield where Internet giants are competing to lay out their positions. Currently, ByteDance has invested in (cooperated with) many online literature platforms to expand its content territory, and created an online literature ecosystem by strengthening its own content and author system.

According to iMedia Consulting data, with the combination of the epidemic and the Spring Festival, users' demand for online cultural and entertainment has surged. In the first quarter of 2020, the scale of China's online entertainment market exceeded 140 billion yuan, with a growth rate of 27.7%.

The growth in the user scale of the online entertainment market has driven the rapid growth of the reading market. In the post-epidemic era, readers' enthusiasm has returned to normal, and the habit of reading and listening to books still exists, but the leisure and entertainment time has decreased, and there is a greater demand for new books.

2. Capital injection

During the epidemic, the online reading industry has shown new characteristics, with the market size and user scale continuing to grow, and Internet giants have also accelerated their layout in the field of mobile reading. Baidu and ByteDance have been making continuous moves; Kuaishou has received two large investments in one month.

Internet giants have entered the mobile reading market through both owning and investing. There are a total of 9 mobile reading apps with tens of millions of monthly active users, 5 of which are owned by BAT.

3. Industry policies

The policy is mainly based on inclination and encouragement to guide and regulate the mobile reading industry. The government has enacted legislation on national reading, and has steadily promoted the national reading plan, encouraged and supported content creation, standardized and rectified illegal content, and strengthened copyright protection.

3. Users

1. User needs

During the user survey process, we learned that users of mobile reading apps are most concerned about being able to focus on the reading content itself, which requires mobile reading to be as convenient as paper reading, with a concise and clear page design and a simple and fast operation process.

With the improvement of living standards, users have higher requirements for reading quality and want to read high-quality books. A deeper demand is to get recommendations for books of interest to reduce screening time.

During the reading process, there are many moments when people want to communicate with people who share similar interests and make friends through books. However, some users do not want to socialize and have a strong demand for privacy in their reading content.

Users face various temptations every day, so focusing on reading requires an incentive system, either to win rewards on the material level or to win honor on the spiritual level.

In certain scenarios, users want to free their eyes and acquire knowledge by listening to books.

2. User Profile

Male users account for 61.43% of WeChat Reading users, far exceeding the 38.57% of female users.

Most users are between 20 and 30 years old, and a higher proportion of them are from developed cities.

The book content classification and recommendations on WeChat Reading are generally based on general publications, such as: Internet + knowledge, industry subject books, success and motivation, financial management, career improvement, and public account tweets collection, etc. It also includes online literary novels, but they are not the main body.

It can be inferred that most of the users of WeChat Reading are well-educated students, newcomers to the workplace, white-collar workers and other young people with more advanced ideas. They use it more for reading and learning, so they have higher requirements for the quality of books.

3. Customer acquisition methods

Compared with the radical new user acquisition methods of free reading apps, WeChat Reading appears to be much more moderate. WeChat Reading recently launched the "Get Paper Books for Free" activity in the process of attracting new users, using the form of price-cutting to attract new users. The activity invites friends to help get books for free, which is quite similar to Pinduoduo's price-cutting activity. Let's take this as an introduction to WeChat Reading's customer acquisition method.

4. Unlimited Card

In September 2018, WeChat Reading launched the Infinite Card service and began to operate around the Infinite Card. In the early days, the gameplay of the Infinite Card was a weekly team lottery event with 5 people each time, and users had to be different from previous periods to successfully form a team.

The more new users there are, the greater the probability of winning a lifetime unlimited card, but now you can get an unlimited card by just sharing it with WeChat friends or watching ads. The rules for obtaining unlimited cards were stricter in the early days, which can also promote effective user growth.

WeChat Reading’s unlimited card actually provides free reading privileges with a time limit. If users want to obtain this privilege for free, they can only participate in activities and share, otherwise the number of days will gradually decrease. Of course, users can recharge their membership to reduce time waste, which will be discussed in detail in the commercialization chapter.

5. Reading Team

From the user's perspective, the reading team is a good way to get something for free, and from the product's perspective, it is a means to attract new users and retain existing customers.

Users can share links to invite friends to form a reading team. A team consists of three people, and a points cycle is 21 days. When the team points reach 60, it can become Level 2 in the next cycle and can get more generous rewards. The team points are set to four stages: 20, 60, 80, and 100. Different rewards (unlimited cards, book coins, and ultimate lottery) can be obtained when reaching the corresponding stages.

The design of this function fully takes into account team awareness and sense of responsibility. If you want to get more rewards, team members can get points by completing corresponding tasks. Reading team activities are spread spontaneously by users and they find teammates, while ensuring user stickiness through social interaction. A team improves the retention of at least three users.

6. Get a paper book for free

The 0-yuan paper book campaign is a new activity recently launched by WeChat Reading. The main paths of the 0-yuan paper book campaign are:

Anyone who wants to exchange paper books for 20 yuan to 1,000 yuan on WeChat Reading can participate. There are many types of books and the coverage is very wide. The initial random support amount is drawn, mostly 5%-10% of the selling price.

Users have three opportunities to help their friends every week, and the amount of support is also clearly stipulated: 0.5 yuan for old users and 5 yuan for new users. If you want to get books for free, you have to invite more new users. The transparent rules are displayed so that users have clearer expectations before participating in the event.

The support stage has set discounts of 10%, 30%, 50%, 70% and free. After the support amount reaches 10%, you can directly purchase at the discounted price, or continue to invite support until it is free. An additional 6 yuan postage is required for free.

During the entire process, users have greater autonomy, can understand the bargaining amount, and can choose the corresponding discount to purchase, so the entire user experience is good.

However, according to the user portrait of WeChat Reading, the main users are college students and white-collar workers in the workplace. These users have certain learning and improvement needs, are accustomed to electronic reading, have a certain ability to pay, and are cautious about sharing and consuming friendships. Therefore, the effect of acquiring new users may not be obvious.

7. User Reviews

Due to space constraints, this section only analyzes user reviews from the App Store. Interested readers can learn about user reviews of WeChat Reading from other channels.

In the AppStore, WeChat Reading has a score of 4.9, which is a relatively high score. It can be seen that users still like this product very much.

The user reviews were collected and analyzed based on the low-scoring negative reviews and valid reviews in the past month.

Among the low-rated apps, the most common complaint from users is that the AI ​​male voice in audiobooks is unpleasant. Having not used the audiobook function in previous versions, they went out of their way to experience how unpleasant the AI ​​male voice is in the current version. They have the habit of listening to podcasts and can immerse themselves in them very well, but the immersion in the audiobooks on WeChat Reading is too poor, and they always have the urge to close the App. They hope that WeChat Reading's products can see this demand.

Among other lower ratings, most are due to side effects brought about by the commercialization of WeChat. The previous interface was simple and the operation was smooth, but now there are too many advertisements in WeChat Reading, which affects the experience. This is what many users complain about.

The early UI of WeChat Reading was very simple, and the commercialization path of the bookstore was hidden very deeply. It adhered to the principle of WeChat not to disturb users, so there were few negative comments in this regard.

4. Product Structure

1. Version iteration

Statistical version iteration records show that WeChat Reading is updated once every 10 days on average, ranging from reading experience, social methods, unlimited cards, to stories, to take a look, voice reading, ideas, etc.

From the above figure and analysis, we can clearly see that starting from 5.0.0, WeChat Reading supports the purchase of paper books within the App. From the recent 0-yuan paper books, we can see that a series of operational activities have been launched for paper books.

The author speculates that the focus in the next update will still be on optimizing the user experience, but it will be interspersed with the operation of paper book activities to form a virtuous interaction from e-books to paper books.

2. Product structure

The product is a reading tool. In addition to some essential functions for reading, WeChat Reading also has some auxiliary functions around reading, such as friends reading, welfare sessions, reading recommendations, etc. Its main purpose is to help users have a better reading experience.

5. Product Strategy

This chapter's analysis of product strategy starts from the established fact that WeChat Reading already exists. It analyzes how WeChat Reading chooses product types and conducts differentiated product positioning, and attempts to explore its core competitiveness.

Teacher Chi Jianqiang previously published an article titled "WeChat Reading, ending a war? ” It said: In the field of e-book reading, in China, WeChat Reading has basically ended the war.

WeChat Reading inherits the relationship chain of WeChat and naturally possesses social attributes. The main strategy of WeChat Reading is to give full play to its social attributes. The social function of WeChat Reading, like its reading function, runs through every aspect of the product.

After entering the App, you can see the books your friends are reading, and you can make your own choices based on your friends' choices. New users accept book recommendations from their friends based on their trust in them.

At the same time, after new users join, they can intuitively see other friends who use the App, quickly forming a community with low social costs; users can indirectly understand their friends' reading preferences and behavioral preferences through the content of their friends' bookshelves.

At the same time, you can also strengthen social connections with friends through ranking likes, recalling readings, and reading teams.

Nowadays, WeChat Reading not only includes relationship chains, but even the WeChat content ecosystem has been moved in.

In January 2018, new public account collections were added. In April of the same year, the bookstore supported public account searches and added public account columns. "Take a Look" can not only check friends' thoughts when reading, but also support viewing public account content, meeting users' demand for diversified product content. Although there are some differences in content from the "Take a Look" and "Selected" in WeChat, in terms of user intuitive feeling, it is more like moving WeChat "Take a Look" directly to WeChat Reading.

At the WeChat Open Class in 2019, Zhang Xiaolong once said: "'Haokan' is a circle opened up outside the circle of friends. It is not only for sharing, but also a place for reading." This is basically consistent with the product tone of WeChat Reading: it allows users to have a place for in-depth reading after leaving WeChat, and WeChat Reading has achieved a highly compatible linkage upgrade.

The purpose of moving WeChat's content ecosystem into WeChat Reading is: on the one hand, to meet users' demand for diversified product content. The increase in public account content enriches the content pool of WeChat Reading, and adds some fragmented content in the in-depth reading scenario, giving users more choices; on the other hand, to enhance the social attributes, it also supports likes, comments, and sharing, and has complete social attributes.

The function of purchasing paper books has been updated in WeChat Reading version 5.0.0. Paper books serve as a supplement to the overall library in WeChat Reading and can comprehensively cover books. At the same time, the competition in online reading is becoming increasingly fierce, and it is necessary to explore user needs in segmented vertical fields. Therefore, more targeted services are added.

Although WeChat Reading has added a channel for purchasing paper books, from an e-commerce perspective, it actually still has many flaws and is a bit crude. However, WeChat Reading’s intention is not to become a book e-commerce company. The channel for paper books is only a supplement to the application’s positioning.

Because WeChat Reading’s intention of adding a channel for purchasing paper books is probably not to increase paper book sales, but more to make users accustomed to paying in the app. Compared with the high cost of paper books, the value of e-books may be highlighted, which may in turn increase the payment rate of virtual products of the entire software.

In general, WeChat Reading is a social-based reading app that provides high-quality books to meet the needs of users who "don't know what books to read"; at the same time, WeChat Reading focuses on sharing and interaction to meet the needs of users who "have no motivation to read."

The core users of WeChat Reading are young users in first- and second-tier cities. Most of them are in the rising period of study or career, and have the need to constantly improve themselves and the awareness of active learning. Therefore, WeChat Reading deeply explores user needs, so more targeted services are added to meet the needs of "self-improvement through in-depth reading."

VI. Future Development

The focus of WeChat Reading is still on continuous customer acquisition and retention. Therefore, it is necessary to deeply explore user needs, increase user conversion and retention, propose simpler and more direct activity plans, improve user stickiness, optimize community ecological construction, stimulate the desire of mass users to express themselves, and create a good UGC content ecology.

WeChat Reading has relied on Tencent to obtain a large number of book copyrights. You can find almost all the books you want to read in WeChat Reading. Currently, WeChat Reading's content business is diverse, including published books, online articles, audiobooks, comics and public accounts, which meet the needs of most users. In any case, just like music and video apps, whoever gets the copyright is the boss, so WeChat Reading still needs to enrich its arsenal.

Currently, WeChat has stepped up its promotion of online literature such as novels. We have seen WeChat’s actions, but compared with its competitors, it has not yet introduced contracted original authors. I don’t know whether this is part of WeChat Reading’s development plan.

7. Commercialization

In recent years, the growth rate of the mobile reading market has slowed down due to factors such as the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend, the impact of other entertainment methods, and the imperfect business model. How to find a better business model has now become the direction of exploration for participants, and they need to explore and try in payment models, membership structure design, marketing and other aspects.

In October 2019, the WeChat advertising team disclosed relevant data about WeChat Reading: WeChat Reading currently has 210 million registered users and more than 5 million daily active users, of which young users aged 19-35 account for more than 60%, users with a bachelor’s degree or above account for as high as 80%, and users from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other provincial capitals/municipalities account for more than 80%.

The WeChat advertising team believes that the most significant commercial advantage of WeChat Reading is that it "relies on the WeChat social ecosystem and uses the deep linkage of mini-programs to provide a new traffic scenario for brands."

In addition, WeChat Reading's positioning of in-depth reading and its cultural knowledge tone have attracted a large number of young, highly educated, and high-quality users.

At present, WeChat Reading provides customized activity plans for brands, and configures promotional resources including bookstore banners, unlimited venue banners, mini-program banners, as well as in-app shake, home screen cards, notification push, private messages and other methods.

In addition to advertising, another aspect of WeChat Reading’s commercialization is paid membership. Currently, paid memberships are divided into 30 yuan monthly cards, 60 yuan quarterly cards and 228 yuan annual cards, but you can invite friends to get unlimited cards, exchange reading time for book coins, get unlimited cards by answering one question every day, and get free books by flipping through the pages. Various limited-time free activities are still ongoing.

The unlimited card expiration days have been renewed again and again. It is not difficult to see that WeChat Reading’s focus is still on continuous customer acquisition and retention. How to retain users is still one of the core issues that WeChat Reading needs to consider, and the time point for large-scale payment has not yet arrived.

8. Conclusion

WeChat Reading has already taken the first place in my mind among reading apps. In the future, I will continue to pay attention to how WeChat Reading will improve user retention and increase revenue, and how long the unlimited card benefits can be reaped.

Author: Ahab

Source: Ahab