Analysis of B station product operations!

Many years ago, the first impression Bilibili left on us was a two-dimensional community; and now, when asked about our impression of Bilibili, the answers we get may be rich and varied, including a two-dimensional community, a learning website, a live broadcast platform, a gaming platform, or a video creation community.

Such tag expansion allows Bilibili to target not only the 2D crowd, but also the young people who use the Internet more broadly.

In "The Next Wave" released by Bilibili in 2020, it was mentioned: "You have turned your passion into a career that shares happiness with thousands of people"; Bilibili has gradually become a community for young people, and people are increasingly looking forward to Bilibili and young people bringing more excitement to this era.

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

• Product Disassembly
• Market Analysis
• User Analysis
• User research
• Functional analysis and optimization solutions
• Summarize

01 Bilibili product disassembly

Product Architecture

02 Bilibili Market Analysis

1. Product positioning

Bilibili was originally a two-dimensional community, but after several years of growth, Bilibili began to have more labels, including a two-dimensional community, rich learning resources, a live broadcast platform, a gaming platform, an e-sports event viewing platform, or a video creation community. Bilibili’s ambition is not limited to the second dimension, but has begun to widely target young people who love the Internet.

2. Competitive product analysis

Looking at the video-related apps on the market, iQiyi, Tencent Video, and Youku Video, as the three giants of copyrighted videos, compete with Bilibili. The three giants have similar business models and focus on video business.

Tencent Video is selected as the main competitor for analysis here. At the same time, Toutiao's products Douyin and Xigua Video compete with Bilibili in the UGC market of short videos and long videos respectively, and Toutiao products have traffic advantages; therefore, Bilibili's main competitors are: Tencent Video, Douyin, and Xigua Video.

2.1 Business Analysis

Bilibili Business Distribution

The above picture is the business distribution map of Bilibili and its competitors. The core business of the four products is video function, but the content and focus are different; at the same time, other businesses are also different.

Bilibili revenue data

2.1.1 Video

The different product positioning of Tencent Video and Bilibili leads to different content and strategies. The business overlap between Bilibili and Tencent Video is mainly in copyrighted videos, but the focus is different. Bilibili has been labeled as a "two-dimensional community" since its establishment, and its copyrighted videos are mainly in unique two-dimensional fields such as TV series and animation. Its derivative businesses also have unique youthful and two-dimensional attributes, such as games and TV series. Tencent Video relies on Tencent's powerful star film and television resources, and its copyrighted videos are concentrated in variety shows, TV series and other fields.

Video: It will take time to verify whether Toutiao can grab a piece of Bilibili's pie.

Douyin focuses on short videos and medium-length videos respectively. Compared with Bilibili's UGC, Douyin's short videos are more life-oriented and leisure-oriented. Before 2019, the two had great differences due to different video lengths. After 2019, Douyin opened up permissions for 1-minute, 5-minute and even 15-minute long videos, entering the long video field in one fell swoop.

As the fierce development space of short videos has reached its peak, Douyin has also tried to get a piece of the pie in the long video field; but Douyin is still mainly short videos, and whether it can grab a piece of the pie still needs time to verify.

Xigua Video has developed rapidly in recent years relying on Toutiao. It has tried to poach up-masters from Bilibili and use "Lost in Russia" to attract a large amount of traffic during the epidemic and a large amount of funds to encourage user creation and build a PUGC video community.

However, although the overlapping users between Bilibili and Xigua Video are slowly increasing, the number is less than 10%. Most of the users attracted by Xigua Video are users who are eager for leisure and entertainment videos from Toutiao, rather than the young people of Generation Z of Bilibili.

The reasons are as follows:

• The community atmosphere that Bilibili has maintained for a long time is difficult to replicate;
• Bilibili has the most suitable UGC content and interest sections for young people.

So although Xigua Video has excellent data performance in the short term, can it seize users from Bilibili by investing a large amount of money? Can the big ups and users attracted return? These questions require Xigua Video to show its unique highlights to answer.

User overlap

Data source: Tianfeng Securities

2.1.2 Live Broadcast

Combined with games, it has become a barometer of Bilibili's future profitability. Both Toutiao and Bilibili have launched live streaming functions; Douyin live streaming focuses on life videos, Xigua Video focuses on games, life, and music, while most of Bilibili's live streaming is in the entertainment area, e-sports, and mobile games, and has a younger label.

The user focus of Bilibili is different from that of Douyin and Xigua Video. Bilibili's unique attributes make its new users mainly young people under the age of 25, while the new users of Douyin and Xigua Video are slightly older than Bilibili.

The author believes that female fans can be attracted through collaboration. As mentioned earlier, the collaboration between retired League of Legends player mlxg and celebrities attracted female fans. Fans can be attracted through the collaboration between e-sports and celebrities. At the same time, the entry of celebrity players can open up more interactive modes. Some celebrities who are good at playing games can live broadcast on Bilibili or collaborate with anchors.

2.1.3 Games

Is the business model based on game profits outdated? Future games require new ways of playing.

Bilibili has a unique gaming community, and also undertakes some game agency, game testing, game gift packages, and game recommendation businesses, further consolidating its "young" label and expanding its game-loving user base. However, in recent years, competition in the gaming market has intensified, growth has slowed, and game profitability has faced bottlenecks. Bilibili's previous gaming profitability faces great challenges. Bilibili needs to combine the gaming label with other business models to make a profit.

Unlike other competing products, the gaming business has always been the largest part of revenue; but the growth rate is relatively insufficient and has encountered bottlenecks. The external environment comes from the efforts of major game manufacturers in recent years on the one hand, and competition from more gaming platforms on the other hand; in addition, in 2018-2019, the game is also subject to the risk of restricted game licenses.

Bilibili's revenue once skyrocketed in the past because it created a hit game, but games will enter a fatigue period about three years after their release. If they fail to create a hit game for a while, their profits will continue to decline.

The author believes that the gaming business can try new ways of playing, such as launching challenges for well-known games or game strategy challenges. For example, Arknights has many game uploaders uploading a variety of strategies, which can be used for user voting and ranking. In addition to traditional advertising and the current recommendation page click promotion, game advertising can allow players to easily download and experience the trial mode, and provide some exciting game content for simulated trials, which is easier for players to accept than heavy game instructions and installation packages with several G-spots.

At the same time, Bilibili has a good community atmosphere and can be expanded to the e-sports community.

Bilibili has a large e-sports fan group, which conducts pre-match speculation, and each post-match video has tens of thousands or even millions of views, and thousands of comment areas, with many wonderful comments and replay videos; but fans gather in super topic discussions and the atmosphere is relatively radical. You can establish a detailed replay area, teaching area, and fan discussion area on Bilibili.

Business Model:

Challenges and risks coexist, and learning business can be further expanded.

The business models of the four products all adopt advertising monetization. At the same time, due to the unique advantages of copyrighted videos, Xigua Video, Tencent Video, and Bilibili have all launched membership services for monetization.

Since Bilibili caters to young people's promise not to use patch ads, its advertising business is only in the footer or recommendation page, and its main income does not come from advertising revenue; while Tencent Video's advertising revenue occupies a larger position, and its advertising business is generally patch ads for copyrighted videos; but due to its willingness to pay for membership in recent years, the effectiveness of advertising has declined, and there may be greater risks in future profits.

Bilibili has evolved from a two-dimensional community into a community that includes learning and entertainment needs. Many students preparing for postgraduate entrance exams, students going to higher education, and working people take learning tutorials on Bilibili, and Bilibili has tried to officially launch its learning needs online.

Since 2019, Bilibili has launched My Classroom, starting the attempt of paid knowledge. Currently, My Classroom has reached cooperation agreements with well-known up teachers such as Mr. Luo Xiang. In 2020, Toutiao is also focusing on the promotion of educational products. How can Bilibili stand out among many educational products?

Perhaps Bilibili's unique advantage lies in the fact that there is already a group of Generation Z postgraduate students, working groups, and fitness groups who regard Bilibili as the most important learning community. Bilibili needs to develop its business mainly based on this group of users and create related PGCs; and then gradually promote it after the trial use of this group of users.

2.1.4 Advertising Business

The influence is expanding, but the growth rate still needs to be sacrificed for user growth.

The advertising and e-commerce businesses grew steadily before 2020, but declined in Q1 2020. The epidemic caused cash flow shortages for some companies, hindered the closure of some businesses, and declined user demand. After the epidemic recovered, advertising revenue in Q2 2020 rebounded appropriately and was greater than the revenue level at the end of 2019.

Bilibili continued to grow during the advertising winter in 2019. The financial report explained that this was due to the gradual expansion of Bilibili's brand influence and the improvement of its own performance advertising efficiency, which reflected Bilibili's strong marketing capabilities; but since the future positioning is to expand the user base, the advertising business will still sacrifice growth for the time being.

In the future, when the user scale reaches its peak, advertising profits can grow rapidly in the long run. At the same time, Bilibili can explore new advertising businesses. For example, Bilibili can serve as a download channel for some games and activate users. For example, the author downloaded the game "Undetermined Event Book" on Bilibili and logged in with a Bilibili account. When users do not log in for a long time and are lost, the update recommendations for "Undetermined Event Book" can be increased, and larger gift packages can be recommended to activate lost users.

2.1.5 E-commerce business

The goal needs to be to focus on virtual items, bring goods or further development.

Bilibili's unique business lies in e-commerce membership purchases. Bilibili has a large number of young user groups and groups that love the second dimension. The target users have the need to purchase second dimension peripherals, so it created membership purchases. However, since the epidemic, people's demand for physical items has declined, and the profitability of membership purchases has been challenged. In the future, Bilibili needs to focus on the sale of virtual items.

In the first quarter of 2020, due to the epidemic, people's desire to buy physical items declined, but the revenue of the e-commerce business was far from the level of the second half of 2020; with the popularization of virtual items and the increasing improvement of physical e-commerce, Bilibili can focus more on virtual business in the future, such as live broadcasts, games, and the sale of virtual items rather than physical items.

Many of the products promoted on Bilibili are just mentioned in the video, but lack e-commerce links. The author has seen e-commerce links under the videos of Huazhong Agricultural University, and believes that Bilibili’s big up has established user ties and trust due to its continuous business and Bilibili’s friendly community, and is more suitable for promoting food and daily necessities that require a certain degree of trust. It would be better for Bilibili to put a link under the video after review and start a small-scale promotion mode.

The rapid development of live streaming in recent years has brought huge profits. Toutiao's advantage lies in the promotion of products in daily life, while Bilibili's advantage lies in combining live streaming with games. In comparison, the revenue from live streaming and value-added services has been growing steadily at an extremely fast rate. Most of the revenue growth comes from live streaming, which is a key strategic goal for the future.

In addition to the live broadcasts of anchors, Bilibili has purchased the live broadcast rights for e-sports events. On Bilibili, you can watch live broadcasts of League of Legends, KPL, etc. and give rewards to earn extremely high income; LPL's victory in the world championship in 2018 and 2019 has made more and more people start to pay attention to e-sports, which is a good opportunity for Bilibili to acquire customers and make profits.

Whether it is game live streaming or e-sports competitions, Bilibili's huge investment has made Bilibili the first choice for watching events; Bilibili's unique attributes of live streaming combined with games will gradually become a profit indicator in the near future.

2.2 Development History

Bilibili Development History

2.2.1 Bilibili

Gentle development has established a stable community culture and created a unique young label. Bilibili's development started with community building. Unlike the rapid expansion of other competitors, Bilibili started from the initial two-dimensional community, and then gradually enriched the community to expand its influence, and expanded from online to offline.

Since 2014, Bilibili has gradually started commercialization attempts and expanded its business. It has added membership shopping e-commerce from the community, and then gradually enriched its copyright and agency business to expand its scope.

Since 2016, Bilibili has begun to show greater ambitions. It has moved beyond the two-dimensional world and started to enter the fields of e-sports, produce feature films, enrich music life and other UGC content. Bilibili has gradually expanded its target customers from two-dimensional fans to young people.

In 2018, Bilibili was listed on the Nasdaq in the United States with an issue price of US$11.5 per share, raising a total of US$483 million to further expand its business plans.

Bilibili's slow development has established a stable user base and is constantly exploring new ways of playing and new boundaries for young people. Compared with the business models of other traditional video apps, Bilibili has unique young users, and we cannot define the future influence and consumption power of this group of young people, nor can we define the future creativity of Bilibili's non-traditional community.

As Houlang said: "Those who complain that each generation is inferior to the previous one should look at you"; the future of Bilibili points to the stars and the sea together with the young people.

2.2.2 Tencent Video

Backed by the rapid growth of BAT, it explores new models of entertainment video, but it is difficult to get rid of the label of traditional video products.

Tencent Video was founded in 2011. Backed by BAT, it has developed rapidly. Tencent Video has rich film and television resources and celebrity resources. It has built a comprehensive video community through its unique copyright resources. It started membership services in 2012 and introduced rich film and television resources. By 2015, it had become the industry leader. Tencent Video is not limited to the introduction of copyrighted videos. Since 2017, it has begun to explore the diversity of videos. The Doki community was officially established, and it created a phenomenal variety show like "Creation 101", enriched VR channels and interactive videos, and expanded its business and content.

However, the competition among iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video in copyrighted videos and their positioning are extremely similar. In recent years, market competition has become increasingly fierce. How can Tencent Video start a new business model to break free from the shackles of traditional videos?

The author believes that the current product advertisements under videos have little to do with celebrities and video content. We can try to leverage Tencent Video's advantages in the entertainment industry to create celebrity peripherals and sell the same products; while at the same time developing fan circle businesses such as celebrity variety shows and celebrity rankings to make profits.

2.2.3 TikTok

A short video giant that has grown in the short term, but faces challenges in overseas business.

Founded in 2016, Douyin determined its position as a short video platform during its exploration period in just a few years, and thus developed rapidly. Since 2018, in order to prevent the platform from being labeled as vulgar, it has sought rectification and cooperated with official platforms to launch positive content, launched the "Sunflower Project", and cooperated with official platforms such as the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League to spread positive content. However, it was sanctioned by the United States in 2020, and its overseas business was hindered to a certain extent.

2.2.4 Xigua Video

Relying on the explosive growth of ByteDance, it attempts to build its own PUGC community.

Xigua Video has a huge traffic advantage relying on ByteDance products and is positioned as a medium and long video platform. Xigua Video was born in 2016. Although it has a short history, ByteDance has invested a lot of money in attracting traffic and encouraging user creation, and has achieved certain results.

In 2018, the large-scale live knowledge quiz program "Million Heroes" was launched, with a cumulative participation of nearly 300 million people; and in 2019, a 10,000 yuan plan to encourage creation was launched. During the 2020 epidemic, "Lost in Russia" also attracted a large number of people.

Although it lacks the unique product attributes of Bilibili, Xigua Video covers a wider user base and has more traffic advantages.

2.3 Data Analysis

2.3.1 User Data Analysis

Data source: Bilibili’s 2020 marketing plan

Bilibili has been focusing on the youth sector, and most of its users are young people.

More than 80% of Bilibili's users were born between 1990 and 2009. Compared with Bilibili, this figure for other apps such as Douyin and Xigua Video is only around 50% or even lower. In recent years, the average age of new users is 21 years old. Bilibili has always had a strong appeal to young people.

The marketing plan released by Bilibili in 2020 pointed out that one in four young people is on Bilibili, and Bilibili has risen with the rise of Generation Z.

Compared with middle-aged people, these people have stronger enthusiasm and vitality for learning, the proportion of undergraduates is 10 percentage points higher than the whole network, and they have a wider range of choices in interests and hobbies; Bilibili cleverly caters to the choices of these young people. In the two lists of "TOP20APPs preferred by Generation Z" and "Pan-entertainment APPs preferred by Generation Z", Bilibili, the leading cultural community for young people in China, ranked TOP1.

Judging from the gender distribution, there are more male users than female users, so it is suitable for promotion.

In recent years, the content on beauty and dressing for women has gradually become richer, and the proportion of male users on Bilibili is higher than that of female users.

On the one hand, although there are already a large number of high-quality UGC content in the beauty and fitness areas, most women have more extensive choices for female-oriented videos such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo when learning about beauty and dressing. If Bilibili wants to attract more female users in the future, it can promote female-oriented games and videos in moderation, but it should also pay attention to the product experience of male users.

On the other hand, Bilibili lacks celebrity-related content. Although many celebrities have joined Bilibili, some functions can be added to the celebrity up accounts, such as purchasing related peripherals, supporting rankings, etc.

In August 2020, the live broadcast and game entertainment competitions of retired League of Legends players mlxg, Jay Chou and Wang Junkai attracted a large number of female analysts to the game super topic. For a time, a large number of fans flooded into the RNG super topic community.

The author believes that attracting women can start with celebrities, and allowing celebrities to interact with games or big up-loaders. This can not only show the celebrities' wide range of interests, but also help promote Bilibili among women.

From the perspective of urban distribution, there are more users in developed cities, and we can try to expand users in third- and fourth-tier cities.

Compared with Tik Tok, Xigua Video and the average user distribution of the mobile Internet industry, Bilibili leads by several percentage points in the number of users in first-tier cities and new first-tier cities; Bilibili has rich interest UGC and learning content, suitable for users with a certain economic capacity; while Tik Tok and other software have stronger entertainment attributes and are more comprehensive.

Based on Bilibili’s current attempts to expand its user base, it can try to expand its user base in non-first- and second-tier cities.

After the release of "Hou Lang", there were also dissenting voices saying that some hobbies are niche and high-consumption, which ordinary people cannot afford. Ordinary people have a harder life and need to see more content about their own lives.

The author saw the following comment in a video about vocational studies shared by one of the top 100 up-loaders, Bosang Eats the World: Many videos are shared by 985/211 students, but I just guide students and want to see the way out for ordinary people like us.

The well-known up-loader Jiao Zhongqing tried to shoot a video about people drifting to Beijing and received a lot of praise. This shows that young people in the community also want to see more down-to-earth life content of ordinary people. The author believes that up-loaders can be appropriately encouraged to share ordinary people's experiences and promote them to attract more ordinary users from non-first- and second-tier cities.

2.3.2 Industry Competition Performance - Horizontal Comparison

Data source: Analysys Qianfan

The above chart gives the data analysis of Bilibili and its competitors. The data source is iResearch Qianfan and the data time is January 2020.

It can be seen that:

Industry scale: small but deeply rooted in the young user group

In terms of the number of active users, Tencent Video and Douyin have more than 50 million active users, while Xigua Video and Bilibili have only more than 10 million. Tencent Video, as a comprehensive video platform with massive video resources, targets a wider user group, while the entertainment and leisure UGC content of Douyin and Xigua Video targets a wider age group.

Bilibili is positioned at young people and the two-dimensional community, so the number of Bilibili users cannot match that of other platforms; Bilibili stands out in the vertical video field, with a monopoly rate of 56.5%; while the other three platforms do not exceed 30%. Bilibili's differentiated competition gives its products unique attributes.

Product Usage: Average Bilibili Performance

In terms of average daily usage per person: Tencent Video has the lowest usage rate of 5.4, while Xigua Video has the highest usage rate of 7.0. In terms of average daily usage time per person: Xigua Video has the longest usage time of 120.3 minutes, while Bilibili has the lowest usage time of 66.8 minutes.

The average daily usage may be related to the length of the video and the user's attributes. For Tencent Video, most of them are copyrighted videos with longer duration, which requires users to spend a large amount of time to use them. The average daily launch is less and the average daily usage is long. For Douyin, short videos only require free time and can be used at fragmented times such as on the subway and during meal times. Therefore, the number of launches is high and the average daily usage time is short. Most of Toutiao's products are entertainment-oriented and these people have a lot of leisure time, so the users attracted by Xigua Video have a lot of time to play.

The possible reasons for Bilibili's short average daily usage time are as follows:

• Video length and video content: Bilibili's videos are relatively short, and the content range is smaller than other competitors, and can only meet some of the users' entertainment needs.
• Use of other functions: Compared with other platforms, Bilibili has a game center and e-commerce function design; most of Bilibili's operating income comes from games, and the number of times and duration of users using the game center to search for games and using e-commerce to shop are relatively small.
• Algorithm push and product design: Compared with other platforms, Bilibili’s recommendation algorithm and design may be less likely to make users dependent; and products like TikTok can play videos without clicking on them, and one video after another may make it easier for users to keep watching.
• Unique user attributes: Most young people on Bilibili are busy with work and study, and have less time for entertainment than middle-aged people.

In terms of average monthly usage per capita:

Douyin is far ahead at 17.6 days, followed by Xigua Video at 11.6 days, Bilibili at 9.3 days, and the lowest is Tencent Video at 8.4 days. The reason for this may be related to the product usage scenarios. Douyin is more suitable for daily fragmented time use, while the other three platforms require longer leisure time, especially Tencent Video.

User stickiness: short-term retention rate is low and long-term retention rate is high.

Bilibili’s next-month retention rate is only about 40%, while the other three are all above 60%; in recent years, Bilibili’s next-month retention rate has been slowly declining, from around 60% in 2017.

This may be attributed to the fact that Bilibili's strategic goal is mainly growth. During the development stage of Bilibili, a large number of non-target users downloaded the APP for trial use, while the user range of the three competing products has stabilized.

On the other hand, Bilibili's long-term retention rate in December has been extremely high in recent years, reaching more than 80%, and the retention rate of users at the start of the service is around 60%. This shows that once Bilibili finds its target users, it is easy to establish a bond and a sense of belonging.

2.3.3 Industry Competition Performance—Vertical Comparison

Data source: Tianfeng Securities

User development trend: Traditional videos have gradually reached their ceiling, but have not yet reached their user volume ceiling, so there is still considerable room for growth.

In terms of the growth rate of traditional video apps in the past few years, most of the major platforms such as iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video have shown signs of weakness; that is to say, the MAU of traditional video platforms has grown slowly and is gradually approaching the ceiling; while Bilibili benefits from its rich business and cannot be generalized.

Judging from historical data, Bilibili's user growth rate has been declining since 2017. It is speculated that the reason is the influx of products such as Toutiao and insufficient publicity of Bilibili. However, from the financial reports and interviews starting from 2019, it can be concluded that Bilibili will focus its future strategic goal on user growth, which coincides with the surge in user expansion during the epidemic.

According to data obtained by QuestMobile and Tianfeng Securities Research Institute, Douyin's penetration rate among those born in the 2000s and 1990s has reached 50%, while Bilibili is around 20%.

The author believes that the user base of Bilibili is expected to grow further, and the penetration rate of Bilibili among those born in the 2000s, 2010s, and 1990s is expected to approach the level of Douyin.

There are several reasons:

• In the future, combined with the promotion of 5G development on the development of the Internet, more young people will be exposed to the Internet earlier and more smoothly;
• The growth of Generation Z has made Bilibili's user acceptance wider;
• Bilibili has a more flexible gameplay than its competitors. Bilibili targets young people. Compared with Douyin, Tencent has more middle-aged people to cater to. Bilibili has more possibilities for gameplay.
• The per capita education and economic levels are rising; as the per capita living standards rise, people have higher standards for entertainment, and Bilibili's wide range of interests and educational content cater to this standard.

Data source: Tianfeng Securities and Bilibili financial report

Personal consumption: Steady growth, good short-term prospects, and coexisting long-term challenges and risks.

The ratio of Bilibili's paying users to members has been growing steadily, reaching a peak during the epidemic in the first quarter of 2020, and then declining slightly. The membership ratio has stabilized at around 50% from around 40% in 2017.

The per capita income of young people and the increased willingness to pay for virtual products on the Internet make Bilibili more attractive to consumers. In the short term, as users grow older, they have stronger purchasing power and society becomes more receptive to virtual products, Bilibili has good market prospects in the short term.

However, with doubts about the long-term social environment and technological development, Bilibili faces more problems than some products that cater to all age groups: Can it attract a new group of young people? Can you retain current users as they age? Will there be more attractive products competing in the market? And as society develops, what attitude should we take to develop products for young people?

3. Conclusion

The above table summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of Bilibili: Analysis of Bilibili’s current advantages and disadvantages; so the subsequent optimization direction I will think about from the following aspects: user expansion, user retention and conversion, business expansion, and basic function optimization.

03 Bilibili User Analysis

3.1 User role map

3.2 User Profile

04 Bilibili User Research

In order to make more reasonable suggestions for function optimization, we conducted an in-depth survey of 7 Bilibili users, 5 of whom were active users who used the app daily and 2 were moderate users who used the app weekly.

4.1 Research questions and results summary

4.2 Summary of Survey Results

This survey involved a total of 7 users, 5 of whom were daily active users and 2 were moderate users who used the app weekly.

The time of starting to use Bilibili ranges from 2014 to 2017. Most people started using Bilibili after hearing recommendations from friends or watching videos. Almost no one joined Bilibili because of advertising. Most people use the dynamics to read the updates of the up-masters they follow and check the recommendations on the homepage.

The following are user needs discovered after investigating specific usage scenarios:

4.2.1 Community

1) All users will use Bilibili's community functions, will like and comment, and will pay attention to excellent comments; users who like to watch new videos find that most of the comments in the comment section are recent comments, while some users who watch animation and old videos think that excellent comments are comments that have been around for a certain period of time; 5 people think that they want to see the most recent high-quality comments, and believe that people may have different ideas when watching the same video at different times.

2) Everyone has encountered the class representative in the comment section of Bilibili, and some have also encountered the dividing line; the class representative will appear in videos with richer content, and will also appear in videos with more memes. There may be many class representatives in one video; and the dividing line will appear in videos involving spoilers.

3) Only two of them would collect and organize similar videos. Some people think that they are lazy and prefer to collect other people's videos directly; 4 people think that they need recommendations for collections of similar videos and may need to look at other people's recommendations; 5 people think that they may have trouble finding similar high-quality videos.

4) When everyone encounters a good video, they will want to share it with others, and some people have tried to play it in the cinema and on the cloud, and hope that similar functions can be promoted.

4.2.2 Live Broadcast and Game Center

1) Among the 7 users, 6 have used live streaming. Some like companionship-type live streaming, such as virtual live streaming girls and learning companions, while others like game live streaming and think that the community atmosphere of Bilibili is relatively good.

2) Four people paid attention to games, but they had little knowledge of and use of the Game Center. Most of them searched for games directly or were recommended games by the homepage. The recommendations of the Game Center were a bit messy and usually did not attract much attention.

4.2.3 Learning

1) 5 of them have studied on Bilibili, covering a wide range of topics, including computer programming, languages, postgraduate entrance exams, professional courses, etc. Some mentioned that the content of Bilibili's up masters is very rich and detailed.

2) Two of them said that they needed to concentrate when studying for the postgraduate entrance examination and would choose to turn off the barrage, and three thought that the active atmosphere of Bilibili might cause disturbance. However, when some people were learning skills that did not require concentration, they thought that Bilibili's barrage would serve as a reminder and would not disturb their studies too much. Some people did not care too much about the messy community atmosphere.

4.2.4 Esports

1) 5 out of 7 participants follow e-sports, most of whom are lol fans, only 1 does not participate in the discussion, and 4 will participate in the discussion on other platforms; 4 of them think that the e-sports discussion atmosphere on their platform is relatively bad, while Bilibili has a better atmosphere in comparison.

2) In addition to live game broadcasts, 4 of them will follow events and like to share them with friends. They will all watch exciting and high-quality games again, sometimes more than once.

3) In addition to the competition period, they also pay attention to transfer news, game version updates, team daily life, etc. during the off-season.

4) Regarding the topics in the game section of Bilibili, 3 people mentioned that there are too many clickbait titles and they hope that there will be more regulations. They are more inclined to follow their favorite up-loaders, and 1 person did not know about this topic.

4.2.5 Others

1) Two people mentioned that they had chosen to block keywords in the push notifications, and hoped that keywords could be managed, and one person mentioned strengthening supervision and marketing accounts.

2) 5 have experienced premium membership services, one of whom received a three-day membership as a gift. Most of them thought they would use the membership for one or several dramas; and 2 of them recharged during the event. They were more willing to try the event packages with small profits but quick turnover.

3) As for the reasons for choosing movies and TV series, 4 respondents mentioned rankings and ratings, and 5 mentioned recommendations from friends.

4.3 Analysis of survey results

Based on the summary of the survey results, basic optimization directions can be analyzed from the perspectives of community, learning, e-sports, and other optimizations.

4.3.1 Community

• Added the latest comment area to see the most recent and hottest comments.
• A new Watch Together feature has been added, where you can watch homemade videos with your friends and send comments.
• Favorites optimization to facilitate the promotion of favorites and similar videos.

4.3.2 Esports

• An e-sports area has been opened, and a new discussion area has been added for review and discussion;
• Added discussion module and activity module in the e-sports area.

4.3.3 Learning

• Turn on the learning mode. After entering the learning mode, you can block the barrage, set up a note area and a task check-in area to prevent interference from entertainment functions.
• Open a learning section to classify learning content in a refined manner; and set up some functions for use.

4.3.4 Others

• On the movie and TV series pages, add ratings and some comments under the posters to attract users to watch.
• Added custom posters.

05 Functional analysis and optimization plan

Based on the analysis results of the user survey, the following will conduct functional analysis from four aspects: community, e-sports, learning, and others, and provide corresponding optimization plans.

Functional Optimization Mind Map

5.1 Community

Problems:

• There is no setting for the most recent and hottest comments. When watching some old videos, it is almost difficult to see the recent high-quality comments.
• The lack of a watch-to-watch feature makes it difficult to share high-quality videos with friends.
• Due to the lack of video integration collection, users sometimes feel confused about finding similar high-quality videos.

Optimization ideas:

• Added latest surge option.
• Add the "Watch Together" feature to invite friends to watch videos together in the cloud.
• Favorites can be promoted to facilitate finding high-quality similar videos

5.1.1 Latest surge

Currently, the comment section can only select the latest comments and popular comments. In animations and old videos, the popular comments are those that have been around for a certain period of time, and new high-quality comments are difficult to see.

Watching the same video at different times and with different people will result in different moods and thoughts, so we launch the latest rising comment list. On the one hand, it is convenient for new comments to grab popularity, and on the other hand, we can see the recent moods of some users and facilitate resonance.

Optimized page:

5.1.2 Watch together

Currently, Bilibili has launched the screening room function for watching anime and movies, but has not yet launched the watch together function for other videos. The watch together function can also be launched for short videos to meet the need of watching together for entertainment.

Optimized page:

Create an entry:

Direct invitation to watch page from Bilibili video:

• Can send real-time barrage and emoticons;
• You can invite other friends.

Inviter: You can press the control button in the lower right corner to switch pages and select the video to play on the homepage, or you can choose to dismiss the Watch Together interface.

Invitee: Watch the video played by the inviter and press the control button in the lower right corner to switch pages or exit.

5.1.3 Favorites Optimization

The survey shows that many users have difficulty finding high-quality videos of the same type, and most users do not like to organize their favorites.

You can consider launching a video collection sharing and promotion function. Currently, there is no way to promote other people’s collections on Bilibili, and sharing can only be done in personal updates, so it is difficult to find other people’s collections.

Make the following adjustments:

• In order to promote, popular collections containing the video are launched under some popular videos
• Favorites introduces label function for easy search and collection
• The favorites folder has launched a comment function to facilitate user interaction and recommendations.

Optimized page:

5.2 Learning

Among the 7 users surveyed, 5 have experience studying on Bilibili; the learning content is rich and diverse, but lacks unified integration.

Some users learn more lighthearted content, but some users learn more serious content and use assistive tools to help them focus.

Problems:

• The video categories are messy.
• An entertaining community atmosphere can easily disturb learning

Optimization ideas:

• Optimize the knowledge area and refine the classification
• Set up learning modules and launch auxiliary functions

5.2.1 Knowledge classification optimization

At present, the content about learning on Bilibili is relatively messy. There is only one knowledge partition at present. However, on the one hand, the content is relatively complicated, and on the other hand, it is difficult to find the video you want immediately on the sliding page; secondly, there are many tutorial videos, or tutorial videos are confused with ghost animals, entertainment, and experience videos.

The following adjustments can be made:

• Set up a classification page to facilitate searching for similar videos and tutorials;
• Refine and organize the videos of each category. Separate tutorial videos from other videos, and some of them can be set up for knowledge payment.

Before and after knowledge area optimization:

Before and after topic optimization:

5.2.2 Added new learning module

Most of the survey users have the experience of learning at Bilibili. Bilibili has no ads, double speed and high-quality video resources have attracted a large number of students to study in Bilibili.

A learning area can be set up to avoid disturbances from entertainment videos, and small parts and auxiliary functions can be added to help users learn; in the future, after popularizing learning modules and learning resources, further knowledge monetization functions such as knowledge payment, life planning and career testing can be further considered.

Function:

• Knowledge Zone: Click to jump to the Knowledge Zone channel learning plan - plan bar and timer bar;
• Study Groups: Group Ranking;
• Learning data: record data;
• Concession Store: Transfer my course/classroom center in the personal center.

Home page:

Study plan and timing:

Plan list: You can list video links and plan content;

Timer function: Automatically control the timer. When clicking to start time, the floating window starts timing. At this time, you can freely switch the page and click to enter the video. When the video is paused or terminated, an automatic pop-up window is displayed.

Study Group:

Join the group:

You can enter the group code or name to enter, or click on the group recommendation information to display: personal information, daily study time and ranking.

Learning data:

In order to motivate users and introduce new users, users can view and share their learning data to check in to their Moments or dynamic pages.

5.3 E-sports

With the League of Legends S8 Global Finals champion being won by IG, the development of e-sports in the past two years has been pushed to its peak in China; and Bilibili has won the live broadcast rights of the global finals and has a good community atmosphere, which is a great opportunity for the development of Bilibili Live.

Currently, Bilibili's e-sports are mixed in games and live broadcasts, and a special e-sports community has not been opened yet; a large number of e-sports players are scattered on Weibo, Zhihu and other places to review.

Bilibili’s unique advantages lies in many high-quality e-sports up owners and a good community atmosphere. You can consider opening an e-sports module on the homepage to create a good e-sports atmosphere and attract more e-sports fans.

Function:

• Event Express: Event News and Related Videos, Event Live Game Playback: Wonderful Game Editing and Replay;
• Post-match discussion: discussion hot list, review video;
• Events: betting, rankings.

Optimized interface:

5.4 Others

Problems:

• The dramas and movies lack rating details;
• The sharing poster of the anime cannot customize the content, pictures, and format.

Optimization ideas:

• Add ratings under the anime and movies;
• The generated posters of the anime and movie can customize the background colors, pictures, and text.

5.4.1 Add ratings to the drama and movies

During the survey, most people listed ratings and recommendations from others as important criteria for watching movies/animes. They added tags to the pages of some anime and movies to display high scores and some evaluations, and increased the recommendation efforts.

Optimized page:

5.4.2 Custom poster

Currently, Bilibili's poster sharing cannot be customized. Although some users have the desire to share, they cannot express their ideas with Bilibili's fixed poster; in order to expand users, you can consider enabling the function of customizing the settings of pictures and text.

Optimized page:

06 Conclusion

After years of slow growth, Bilibili has its own unique "Gen Z" audience and youthfulness compared to traditional video apps; in terms of business, it has formed an excellent ecosystem that is difficult to imitate in e-sports, animation, and communities.

At present, Bilibili should use reasonable activities and high-quality UGC to expand and retain, convert users and ensure community quality; Bilibili should seize new opportunities in e-sports, live broadcasts and learning in the face of weak game revenue, and we look forward to Bilibili's answer.

We have difficulty predicting how young people can broaden the boundaries of the world, just as we cannot predict the new world of small TV.

In the future, we look forward to the transformation of its business model and innovation of its gameplay because with such expectations, Bilibili's future has infinite possibilities like young people.

Author: Li Xiaoer

Source: Li Xiaoer