Go to Xiaohongshu to see which brand is better", "learn how to draw eyeliner", "take a look at a two-day tour of Shenzhen", "watch idol videos", these are the daily actions of the little red potatoes on Xiaohongshu.

From the initial guide app to the current life sharing community, Xiaohongshu has undergone tremendous changes; Xiaohongshu is now a very thick "book" with rich and colorful notes.

This article will analyze Xiaohongshu from several aspects, including product disassembly, competitive product analysis, user analysis, and user research, and propose some functional optimization solutions. (The author is a beginner in this product. If you have different opinions, please feel free to criticize and correct me!)

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

• Product Disassembly
• Competitive product analysis
• User Analysis
• User research
• Functional optimization
• Summarize

1. Product Disassembly

The author breaks down Xiaohongshu into seven modules based on its business and functions, namely community, search, e-commerce, live broadcast, messaging, personal center and commercialization, as shown in the following figure:

Product Architecture

2. Competitive Product Analysis

1. Product positioning

If you ask me what is the biggest change a girl goes through in college, my first answer would definitely be her appearance; because learning how to put on makeup and dress well in college is something almost all girls will definitely go through (of course I am talking about the situation a few years ago, nowadays there are many middle school students who can put on beautiful makeup and dress very fashionably).

During the past few years in college, I have grown from a rustic freshman to a senior who can wear light makeup and match clothes in a way that is not particularly out of place. All of this is thanks to my beauty enlightenment teacher - Xiaohongshu.

The first time I heard about the APP Xiaohongshu was when I was a freshman in college. I asked a friend of mine how to choose the right eye shadow, and she recommended Xiaohongshu to me. I was successfully "planted" with this APP. From time to time, I would open it to check out the beauty and dressing tutorials in the community, and occasionally buy some recommended products in the Xiaohongshu mall.

Xiaohongshu is indeed an APP that is deeply loved by girls; with its development, the community content is becoming more and more, and the scope of coverage is becoming wider and wider, including beauty, dressing, fitness, travel, food, vlog, etc.

Xiaohongshu’s original slogan was “Good Things from All Over the World”, aiming to provide users with a community of overseas shopping guides.

Half a year after its launch, Xiaohongshu added a shopping function, forming a closed loop of sharing and collecting good things - direct purchase - and then sharing. It can be seen that developing e-commerce business is the main purpose of Xiaohongshu.

However, in the beginning, the e-commerce business did not develop as well as the community. Many users were "planted" on Xiaohongshu and then placed orders on Taobao. With the development of the e-commerce live streaming industry, Xiaohongshu also launched the live streaming sales function last year. It can be seen that Xiaohongshu will focus more on developing e-commerce business in the future.

Xiaohongshu is a product that combines UGC community and e-commerce: it uses pictures and video notes as the form of community content, providing young Internet users with a communication community for sharing a better life and life's good things, as well as an online shopping platform integrated with the community.

2. Competitive product selection

There are no products on the market that are very similar to Xiaohongshu’s model and positioning, but based on Xiaohongshu’s two major businesses, UGC community and e-commerce, I chose Douyin and Kaola as the objects of competitive product analysis.

Douyin is a short video creation product, but it is also a UCG community product. Its user scenarios are similar to Xiaohongshu, but its user base is an order of magnitude higher than Xiaohongshu, which shows that there are things worth learning from it.

Xiaohongshu’s initial e-commerce module was overseas e-commerce. Although domestic brands have been introduced now, overseas products still account for the majority.

Kaola.com is a popular e-commerce platform for overseas products. It adopts a self-operated model and has a higher number of users than other overseas shopping e-commerce platforms.

Although both are e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu and Taobao have different positioning. Taobao has a wide range of products, but they are also mixed with varying quality. Xiaohongshu is committed to providing users with high-quality products, but its product categories are far inferior to Taobao.

Initially, Xiaohongshu was a sharing community for overseas travel and shopping, and its mall was mainly for overseas products. Now, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce product categories are becoming more and more diverse, with not only overseas products but also domestic products, and the model is both official self-operated and with the participation of third-party merchants.

3. Business Distribution

Business distribution of Xiaohongshu and competitors

The businesses of Xiaohongshu, Douyin and Kaola.com all involve community, e-commerce and live streaming, but their focus is different; the core business of Xiaohongshu and Douyin is community, while the core business of Kaola.com is cross-border e-commerce.

1) Community

The graphic notes and video notes in the Xiaohongshu community are presented to users in the form of cards, giving people a more comfortable feeling. The quality of the note content is generally high. The waterfall flow of Xiaohongshu's notes allows users to watch content selectively, and users can also find more content about the topic by clicking on the topic in the notes. The comment area of ​​Xiaohongshu is located below the notes, which allows for good interaction and has a strong social nature.

The content of the Douyin community is UGC videos, which are short videos of 15 seconds and long videos of less than 1 minute. Douyin's interesting and cool video shooting effects are one of its main features, and combined with rhythmic music, it is very popular with users. Douyin can directly switch videos by swiping up and down, which is simple to operate and does not require learning costs. It is very friendly to some older users, but it is also easy to get addicted. There is also a hot search list in the Douyin community, where users can see life hotspots and the latest current affairs, but the entrance is not particularly obvious and the dissemination effect is not high.

The community of Kaola.com is mainly composed of videos that recommend products. On the left side of the content waterfall is a video preview, and on the right side are product links. The interface is relatively simple, and users can choose whether to view the content further based on their preferences. However, the interactivity is not strong, and it is only for product recommendations.

In terms of community, Xiaohongshu's advantage is that it has both pictures and videos, and users can selectively view the content in the picture and text notes; while Douyin only has videos, and users cannot select its content segments, but this playback format of Douyin is obviously more attractive than Xiaohongshu.

Most of Xiaohongshu's users are women, and the most content is about beauty and fashion. I think Xiaohongshu can invite some gaming and sports celebrities to join Xiaohongshu, or create KOLs in this field, so as to attract more male users.

I think Douyin’s hot search list is a feature that Xiaohongshu should learn from; the community should not only recommend content that users are interested in, but also provide users with the service of viewing popular content, so that users will think of "checking Xiaohongshu to see what interesting things are happening."

2) E-commerce

Xiaohongshu is a comprehensive B2C e-commerce platform, Kaola is a B2C self-operated overseas e-commerce, and Douyin's e-commerce is mainly based on shopping guides.

Xiaohongshu's e-commerce model is a combination of self-operated and third-party merchants. The main product categories in the mall are beauty products, which is why Xiaohongshu has far more female users than male users. The Welfare Club is the official self-operated overseas product module, but there are not many categories, which shows that its supply chain is not strong enough.

Kaola.com is a leader in cross-border e-commerce. Its direct sales model ensures the authenticity of goods. Kaola.com has a rich product category and a strong supply chain and logistics, which provide guarantees for the platform. Kaola.com also launches discount activities from time to time to attract users.

Douyin is an e-commerce shopping guide platform with a huge number of users. The products on it are diverse, including many agricultural products. The products on Douyin are not as brand-protected as those on Xiaohongshu and Kaola.com, and the quality is also uneven. Many users even complain that the products on Douyin are not what they claim to be.

Xiaohongshu's e-commerce mainly relies on community traffic, but the lack of product categories in its mall seriously lags behind; at the same time, if users feel that the prices of products on Xiaohongshu are relatively high, they will choose to buy them on other e-commerce platforms.

The categories of Xiaohongshu Mall can be expanded according to the community content to serve the community; Xiaohongshu broadens its categories by introducing merchants, but the review of merchants should be strict to avoid the recurrence of counterfeit scandals and reduce the mall's credibility.

3) Live broadcast

The content of Xiaohongshu’s live broadcasts is mainly interactive, followed by live broadcasts selling products in the mall.

Unlike other live streaming models, Xiaohongshu does not promote products through snap-ups or sales, but recommends products to users through the host sharing their experience. This method can better increase users' trust in the quality of products. Xiaohongshu's live streaming has a certain threshold, and not everyone can start live streaming, which can guarantee the quality of live streaming content to a certain extent. (When writing this report, live streaming required an application, but now it is open to users. Previously, Xiaohongshu's live streaming was in a small-scale verification stage. Now that the basic functions have been improved, the threshold has been removed and the live streaming business has begun to grow, which also proves that this function is feasible.)

Douyin's live streaming is mainly for entertainment and selling goods, and now it has introduced game live streaming. The live streaming with goods relies on celebrities, famous people, and KOLs to sell goods, using the platform's traffic and the influence of the anchors as well as product discounts to attract users to buy goods. At the same time, Douyin's live streaming is not restricted by any conditions, and all users can open a live streaming, so the quality of the live streaming content cannot be guaranteed.

The live broadcast channel of Kaola.com has not been online for long, and the number of live broadcasts is relatively small. The content is all live broadcasts with goods. You can like the live broadcasts, but there is no function to reward or send gifts to the anchor.

Compared with TikTok and Kaola, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast entrance is relatively hidden, and users are not easy to find. They have to search in the search bar to enter the live broadcast square. However, Xiaohongshu's live broadcast can be connected, and the anchors can communicate in real time. After the connection, the two live broadcast rooms are presented on the same screen, and fans of both sides can see it, which greatly increases the exposure of the live broadcast room. Xiaohongshu's live broadcast has its own characteristics and may forge its own path in the future.

4) Commercialization

Xiaohongshu's advertisements are mainly on the startup page and the carousel of the mall. There are also advertisements in the waterfall flow of the recommendation page, but they are less frequent. The advertisements on the startup page have brought Xiaohongshu a large revenue; Douyin's advertisements appear in the form of video information flow, and the frequency of appearance is higher than that of Xiaohongshu; in Kaola, there are only advertisements in the carousel on the homepage.

Douyin’s “DOU+” and Xiaohongshu’s “French Fries” both provide functional services for paid content promotion for users in need, which is a way to monetize community businesses.

Xiaohongshu’s Shubi and Douyin’s Doubi are used to send gifts to live broadcast hosts.

As e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu and Kaola have both launched membership cards; membership benefits include discounts, tax exemptions, free shipping, early purchases, exclusive customer service, etc.

The tax-free and free shipping scope for Xiaohongshu members is welfare club products, with no limit on the number of times; Kaola Global Shopping uses tax and shipping coupons for self-operated products, which means the number of tax-free and free shipping is limited; however, the shopping voucher amount of Kaola members is higher than that of Xiaohongshu members. There are member days every month, and they also have rights that Xiaohongshu does not have, such as discounts on multiple purchases and price reductions for members group buying.

In comparison, Kaola Global Shopping’s membership privileges are more than Xiaohongshu’s. For users who frequently purchase overseas products, Kaola Global Shopping’s membership card is more cost-effective.

Xiaohongshu and Douyin are both life-sharing communities, and users also search for attractions in the communities; Xiaohongshu and Douyin have both captured users' travel needs and provided them with services such as ticket purchases for attractions and hotel reservations for commercial monetization.

As a cross-border e-commerce company, Kaola's commercialization form is relatively single; Xiaohongshu and Douyin have more commercialization models. With the further development of the community, Xiaohongshu's commercialization and monetization methods will increase.

4. Development History

The development history of Xiaohongshu and its competitors

1) Changes in positioning and population development

Xiaohongshu was initially positioned as a UGC community for overseas shopping, and later its positioning changed to "community + overseas e-commerce".

As the number of users increased, Xiaohongshu's self-operated model was unable to provide users with a large number of product categories, so Xiaohongshu Mall introduced third-party merchants, including domestic brands, and realized the transformation from cross-border e-commerce to a comprehensive e-commerce platform; after the diversification of community content, it became a community for sharing lifestyles.

Tik Tok was initially positioned as a music short video community, but later transformed into a short video lifestyle sharing community.

The positioning of Kaola.com has been very clear from the beginning, that is, overseas e-commerce; it had originally planned to move into comprehensive e-commerce, but its development direction has not changed after being acquired by Alibaba; and Kaola.com has begun to open up to international merchants, and its self-operated components will not be 100%.

Xiaohongshu's initial user group was people who wanted to shop overseas, and Douyin's initial user group was young people who liked short music videos. Due to their different positioning and usage scenarios, they do not form a competitive relationship.

However, as their communities developed, their community positioning was both to share life, and their usage scenarios were very similar, so they became competitors of each other; but Douyin attracted more users due to its entertaining videos and easy operation; Xiaohongshu's user base tends to be young women.

Xiaohongshu and Kaola were originally overseas e-commerce companies with the same user base. As the community develops, Xiaohongshu has also expanded into a comprehensive e-commerce platform. Despite this, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business still cannot be compared with the major e-commerce giants, and overseas products still account for the majority of Xiaohongshu's mall, and it is still in strong competition with Kaola.com.

2) Functional iteration

Xiaohongshu gradually developed from a community and launched an e-commerce module in version 2.0, providing users with products from the Xiaohongshu community content, thus realizing a closed loop from "planting grass" to "pulling grass".

Xiaohongshu initially only had text and picture notes, but later added video notes, taking advantage of the fact that videos are more attractive than text and pictures, and further broadening the community content; Xiaohongshu's product notes are the most direct way for the community to divert traffic to e-commerce. After arousing the user's shopping desire, the notes guide the user to the product purchase page through the "Purchasable Products" function in the lower right corner of the page, shortening the user's shopping path.

From the version iterations of Douyin, we can see that Douyin initially focused on improving its shooting function, constantly launching new and fun functions to attract users; at the same time, Douyin is also improving the community and increasing the social experience. From short videos of more than ten seconds to longer videos of one or two minutes, content creators have more and more room to play, and the content of the Douyin community is becoming more and more abundant; Douyin’s newly added group chat and video call functions show that it is exploring the development direction of social networking.

During its development, Kaola.com has always focused on the e-commerce sector. Every added function is to provide users with a better shopping experience. The launch of the grass-planting community is to better attract users to purchase products.

3) Operational activities

Initially, Xiaohongshu did not do any promotion, but relied on the high-quality content of its own community to attract a large number of users; Xiaohongshu's focus on content and brand established a good impression in the minds of users.

Both Xiaohongshu and Douyin retain users through algorithms by delivering precise content to them, and attract more users through celebrity effects. However, in terms of promotion, Douyin has the traffic and financial support of ByteDance, which is much more powerful than Xiaohongshu. This is an important means for Douyin to gain a large number of users. Since Koala was originally a product of NetEase, it used other NetEase products to divert traffic to it, including NetEase Cloud Music, NetEase News Client, etc. At the same time, Koala's various large-scale promotional activities are also a way for it to attract users. Compared with Douyin and Koala, Xiaohongshu does not have such huge financial support and a large amount of traffic, so it will naturally be worse than the former two in terms of promotion.

In addition, Douyin has teamed up with major e-commerce platforms to carry out various e-commerce live broadcast activities, and signed influential figures such as Luo Yonghao to conduct live broadcasts, which diverted a large amount of traffic to Douyin. Unlike Douyin, Xiaohongshu has its own e-commerce platform and will not bring goods to other platforms like Douyin; but Xiaohongshu can also invite influential figures to conduct live broadcasts to drive the development of the mall.

4) Commercialization

The commercialization of Xiaohongshu started from the mall, and then introduced advertising; advertising is the main source of profit for Xiaohongshu. Initially, the advertisements accepted by Xiaohongshu were not placed in the community, but only on the startup page; this is also one of the reasons for the high quality of content in the Xiaohongshu community. This approach of Xiaohongshu makes more users willing to stay.

Douyin was commercialized very early. After gaining a large number of users in 2017, Douyin began to try to integrate video advertising into the community. Later, Douyin launched the live broadcast function and shifted from entertainment live broadcast to e-commerce shopping guide. In addition to shopping guide, Douyin stores and other platforms are also connected. Douyin's e-commerce path is still being further expanded.

Kaola.com is a self-operated e-commerce platform, and the mall’s profit is a commercial model. Kaola.com has always attached great importance to suppliers and supply chains, cooperating with major overseas e-commerce brands, expanding product categories, establishing bonded warehouses, and cooperating with major logistics companies.

5. Data comparison

The above data comes from Analysys Qianfan, and the data period is December 2019

1) Active users

The number of active users is ranked as follows: Kaola (5 million), Xiaohongshu (50 million) and Douyin (100 million).

The number of active users of Xiaohongshu is 10 times that of Kaola.com, which should be attributed to Xiaohongshu's content community. As an overseas e-commerce platform, Kaola.com also has a community, but the breadth of its content cannot be compared with that of Xiaohongshu.

The number of active users of Douyin is 5 times that of Xiaohongshu, and its user base is far greater than that of Xiaohongshu.

Since most of Xiaohongshu's community content is about beauty, fashion, fitness, food, travel, Vlog, etc., Xiaohongshu's user base is relatively young, and most of them are female, distributed in first- and second-tier cities.

Douyin's community content is short videos, covering a wide range of content. In addition, based on the simplicity of Douyin page operation, Douyin not only has young users, but also many middle-aged and elderly users.

Compared with the pictures, texts and video notes on Xiaohongshu, the short videos on Douyin that can be scrolled down continuously are more likely to immerse users; and relying on Douyin's recommendation algorithm, it can accurately recommend content of interest to users, and even save the time of screening content.

The production cost of Douyin's short videos is also very low. Users only need to rely on Douyin's shooting function to produce very cool videos. Users can not only browse content, but also create their own content, which attracts more users. Moreover, Douyin had Toutiao provide it with a large number of user resources in the early stage of its launch, and its promotion efforts were much greater than Xiaohongshu, so it gained more users.

2) Average number of daily startups per person

The average daily activation frequency of Douyin is 6-7 times per person. As a short video entertainment product, most of Douyin's videos are only a dozen seconds long and the content is updated quickly. Users can take out their mobile phones and watch them in their spare time to kill time. It can be used in many scenarios, including waiting, commuting, etc.

The average daily activation frequency of Xiaohongshu is 2.4, which means that Xiaohongshu users open it 2-3 times a day. Xiaohongshu community mainly contains shopping guides, beauty tutorials, etc., but its entertainment value is not as high as Douyin.

However, this is a relatively normal frequency, indicating that users may open Xiaohongshu during their breaks. In addition, Xiaohongshu users have a purpose when using the Xiaohongshu community. Users will click on Xiaohongshu to browse when they think of something they need to know.

The average daily launch times of Kaola.com is slightly lower than that of Xiaohongshu, but it is also about twice a day, which shows that users also visit the mall in their daily lives.

3) Average daily usage time per person

The average daily usage time of Douyin is three times that of Xiaohongshu, which means that users spend more time on Douyin; this also means that the content on Douyin is more attractive than that on Xiaohongshu.

In addition to immersive short videos, Douyin also has a lot of live broadcasts. Many users spend time in Douyin's live broadcast rooms, while Xiaohongshu's live broadcasts have not been around for very long.

The average daily usage time of Kaola.com is lower than that of Xiaohongshu, which means that compared with browsing products directly, users prefer to check other people’s product purchasing experience on Xiaohongshu first.

4) Average number of days of monthly use per person

Although the average monthly usage days per person on Douyin is almost twice that of Xiaohongshu, compared with Kaola, the average monthly usage days per person on Xiaohongshu is much higher.

Douyin has the highest user stickiness, followed by Xiaohongshu, and finally Kaola.com. Users may only open Kaola.com when they have shopping needs.

5) Next month retention rate

The next-month retention rate of Douyin is 58.4%, that of Xiaohongshu is 32.4%, and that of Kaola is slightly lower than that of Xiaohongshu.

As analyzed at the beginning, the interface design of Douyin makes it easy for users to become addicted, UCG content is easy to produce, and there are a lot of MCN-produced content in Douyin, which makes it easier to retain users.

There are not many ordinary users who actually produce content on Xiaohongshu. Most of them browse other people's notes and have a low sense of participation, which may lead to user loss. There are many product sharings on Xiaohongshu, and there is more and more marketing content. When new users first start using Xiaohongshu, they may be disgusted with such content, thinking that it is all advertising, and thus stop using Xiaohongshu. Therefore, Xiaohongshu should try its best to push high-quality content to new users to retain users, and try to avoid content that is purchase-oriented.

I think the reason why Kaola's retention rate is low may be that users want to buy products on Kaola, but they don't find what they like or the price is too high, so they give up using it.

6. Conclusion

Summary of the advantages and disadvantages of Xiaohongshu

The above table briefly summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of Xiaohongshu: Xiaohongshu's "community + e-commerce" model is one of its major features. From the initial strategy community to now, it has gained a lot of loyal female users, which is Xiaohongshu's advantage.

But it is also a disadvantage of Xiaohongshu. It gives people a stereotyped impression that it is a community specially built for female users, which is very unfavorable for Xiaohongshu to expand its user base. Xiaohongshu should further enrich the topic areas while ensuring the quality of community content. Xiaohongshu can invite some sports stars and game experts to join, or cooperate with MCN to create celebrities and produce more content that male users are interested in.

Xiaohongshu's community is a good place for brand promotion and is conducive to the commercialization of Xiaohongshu; but if there is too much marketing content, users' impression of the Xiaohongshu community will be greatly reduced; Xiaohongshu can cooperate with MCN to produce more high-quality UGC content to dilute the concentration of marketing content.

Compared with other comprehensive e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu has very few product categories and is not competitive. Xiaohongshu should expand the categories of its mall to meet the needs of users. However, when introducing third-party merchants, it is necessary to control the quality of their products and avoid counterfeit goods appearing in the mall, which would affect the reputation of Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu's live streaming development started relatively late, and many resources are controlled by other platforms. Xiaohongshu can invite celebrities to "take charge" or create its own KOL to attract users.

3. User Analysis

1. User Persona Map

Xiaohongshu User Role Map

2. User Profile

4. User Research

In order to better understand users' use of Xiaohongshu, discover users' needs, and make more reasonable optimization suggestions; in August 2020, based on user portraits, the author found 7 content consumers through Weibo, Xiaohongshu, and friends around him and conducted in-depth interviews in the form of voice interviews, which lasted about 30-60 minutes.

Among them, 6 are intensive users, and their years of using Xiaohongshu ranges from 1 to 5 years. The users interviewed were between 19 and 24 years old, mostly students.

1. List of research questions

Basic situation:

• Gender, age, occupation, education, salary, current city
• How did you know about the APP Xiaohongshu?
• How long have you been using Xiaohongshu?
• How often do you use Xiaohongshu?
• When do you usually open Xiaohongshu?

Community:

• Do you read the recommended content on Xiaohongshu’s discovery page?
• What kind of content do you browse on the Discovery page of Xiaohongshu?
• In addition to recommendations on the discovery page, have you ever clicked on other categories on the column?
• Do you follow a lot of people? Do you often follow new people?
• Do you read the content on the follow page? Comparing Xiaohongshu's current follow page with its previous follow page, what do you think?
• Did you know you can follow topics and albums? Are there any topics or albums you’re following?
• Do you also watch the content you are interested in on other apps?
• Do you look for notes on your own or other people’s homepages?
• In addition to reading the content on Xiaohongshu’s “Discover Page” and “Follow Page”, do you search for content purposefully?
• What kind of content do you search for?
• When you search for those guides, how many do you usually refer to? What is the reference value of the searched content?
• What do you do after you search?
• Will you search for these contents on other apps besides Xiaohongshu?
• What factors attracted you to read a particular note?
• Do you read more pictures and texts or videos on Xiaohongshu?
• Do you like or comment on other people’s notes?
• Do you pay attention to each other with your friends? Will you share the content of Xiaohongshu with your friends?
• Have you ever posted on Xiaohongshu?
• Have you ever looked for something you once watched but forgot to save or like?

Mall:

• Have you ever seen any content about product recommendations on Xiaohongshu?
• If you want to buy something recommended on Xiaohongshu, where would you choose to buy it?
• Have you ever visited Xiaohongshu’s mall?
• Have you ever purchased anything in the mall?
• Have you ever heard of Little Red Card membership?
• Have you heard of the Little Red Heart Awards list?

live streaming:

• Have you ever watched live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu?
• What kind of content do the live broadcasts you usually watch are about?
• How did you enter the live broadcast room?
• Have you ever purchased anything through a live broadcast?
• Have you ever interacted with the host in the live broadcast room? Have you ever given a gift?
• What do you think of Xiaohongshu’s live broadcast?
• Have you watched live broadcasts on other live streaming platforms?

2. Summarize the survey results

Survey results list

There are too many tables in the survey results and the screenshots are not very clear. You can click here to view the content.

3. Summary of survey results

1) Community

Most users use Xiaohongshu as a search platform tool. If they don’t understand something or want to know something, they will look for it in Xiaohongshu, which includes various tutorials, guides, product recommendations, etc.

Users believe that other apps cannot replace Xiaohongshu in this regard, which is the advantage of Xiaohongshu; but at the same time, users said that there is too much content marketing and soft advertising in Xiaohongshu, and some notes have a high degree of repetition, and the content quality of the community is declining; at the same time, users also use Weibo, Zhihu, etc. to search for tutorials and strategies. Some users believe that Weibo has a wider range of content than Xiaohongshu, but the content is more miscellaneous than Xiaohongshu.

The most common searches by users on Xiaohongshu are items they want to buy (most of which are beauty and skin care products), food tutorials, fitness tutorials, travel guides, other experiences, etc. Among them, the most common searches are items they want to buy and travel guides.

When it comes to items recommended on Xiaohongshu, users are "both believing and doubting"; users will be attracted by things recommended by many people, but at the same time they will also have doubts about whether the recommended products are "advertisements". Often at this time, users tend to jump out of the Xiaohongshu platform and go to other large shopping platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, etc. to see how the products are evaluated.

As for travel guides, users are more dependent on Xiaohongshu. They believe that the travel guide content on Xiaohongshu can meet their needs well and they will discuss with friends. Users said that they prefer to read picture and text notes when searching for guides. They believe that videos do not allow them to selectively watch the content they want, and the information in the videos is not easy to record.

Some users complained that the video pause operation on Xiaohongshu was inconvenient, and they could not simply click on the screen to pause. Users also reported that they had some questions when referring to the blogger's notes, but sometimes there was too much content in the comment section and they could not find the answers they wanted, or their questions might not be answered when there were too many comments in the notes.

In addition to searching, users also use Xiaohongshu as an entertainment tool and browse recommended content on it. According to user feedback, Xiaohongshu's recommendations can grasp users' preferences very well and provide accurate recommendations. Some users do not browse the Xiaohongshu community, but instead use Weibo, Douyin, Bilibili, etc.

Users believe that Xiaohongshu cannot keep up with Weibo in terms of timeliness. The community only contains vertical content and is not as entertaining as Tik Tok and Bilibili. Users prefer to use other apps to kill time. At the same time, some users also reported that there are relatively few hard advertisements in the Xiaohongshu community, which makes users feel more satisfied.

Compared with TikTok, users prefer the double-column card flow format of Xiaohongshu's recommendation page, which is not easy to get addicted to and can be stopped at any time; however, users think that the revised follow page is not as user-friendly as before, as one piece of content takes up the entire screen, and users cannot immediately find what they are interested in among multiple notes, which is a waste of time for users; and the automatic playback of videos on the follow page makes users feel disgusted. Users indicate that the number of times they open the follow page has decreased after the revision, and the time they spend on Xiaohongshu has also decreased.

2) Live broadcast

Three out of the seven surveyed users have watched live broadcasts on other platforms, but have rarely watched them on Xiaohongshu; some users said that they have only watched those influential anchors, such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, and watched their live broadcasts because the products in their live broadcast rooms have large discounts, and they hope to grab high-quality and low-priced products.

Xiaohongshu's live streaming influence is still relatively small. It lacks top anchors on its own platform and is unable to attract users. According to user feedback, Xiaohongshu's live streaming entrance is too hidden, and some users haven't even found where it is.

3) Mall

Only 2 out of 7 surveyed users have purchased goods in the mall. Other users said that after the counterfeit scandal on Xiaohongshu, they no longer trust the products on Xiaohongshu and are worried about buying counterfeits. Most users do not have the habit of shopping on Xiaohongshu. Users usually plant the seeds of interest on Xiaohongshu, but go to other platforms to pull them out.

Users are more inclined to search for what they want to buy on Xiaohongshu, and then go to other e-commerce platforms to make purchases based on the recommendations on Xiaohongshu, such as Taobao, JD.com, Kaola, Vipshop, etc. Users believe that other e-commerce platforms are more reliable, have a larger number of users, have more product reviews, and can obtain more real product feedback information.

4) Others

Users said that it was difficult to find their own and other people's notes; the crash problem caused users to exit the current browsing content, and after reopening it, they were unable to find the content they were previously viewing.

5. Functional optimization

Through user research, we found some current problems with Xiaohongshu. Based on these problems, the author proposed some optimization directions.

1) Problems

live streaming:

• The live streaming entrance is not obvious;
• The live broadcast content is mixed;

Community:

• The videos on the follow page play automatically, affecting the user experience; the single-column large pictures make it difficult to quickly find the content of interest; the content in the follow page only appears according to recommendations, not in chronological order;
• There are too many comments in the notes and you can’t find the answers you want, or your questions may not be answered when there are too many comments.
• Users often search for travel guides, but cannot quickly find recommended places near them;

Mall:

• Users do not have high trust in the mall products;
• Users are not used to shopping on Xiaohongshu;

other:

• It is difficult to find notes on your own or other people's homepages;
• The flash back problem causes users to exit the current browsing content and have to search again to find it;

2) Optimization direction

According to the above problems, the optimization of Xiaohongshu will be carried out from five aspects: live broadcast, community, mall, user incentives and other details. The specific optimization mind map is as follows:

1. Live Broadcast

1) Entrance

There are currently three live streaming entrances on Xiaohongshu. One is the follow page that prompts the people you follow are live streaming. The second is the column on the discovery page. The third is to enter the live streaming plaza by searching for live streaming. However, according to user surveys, some users are not aware of the live streaming entrance on Xiaohongshu, and some users have not even discovered the live streaming. The live streaming entrance is too hidden and there is no way to attract users to participate in the live streaming.

Optimization suggestion: Move the live broadcast out of the column on the discovery page and put it parallel to the discovery page; this way users can be more aware of the existence of the live broadcast and be attracted to join the live broadcast.

2) Content Classification

Currently, the Live Streaming Plaza does not classify live broadcasts, and all live broadcasts are on one page. With the development of live streaming, there will be more and more live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu. Classifying live broadcasts will help users quickly find the live broadcasts they are interested in and enter the live broadcast.

Optimization suggestions:

• Categorize the live broadcast content: The first four categories of "Follow", "All", "Popular", and "Best Sellers" remain unchanged, and the following categories such as "Beauty and Skin Care", "Food", "Learning", "Fitness", and "Goods Sharing" are arranged according to the algorithm to put the content that users are most interested in at the front; the columns can be slid backwards and do not take up too much space.
• Live broadcast room content preview: Preview the content of the live broadcast room for the first two live broadcasts, so that users can see the content of the live broadcast room, thereby attracting users to join the live broadcast.
• "Follow" in the column is distinguished from other columns: put the information of the person you are following at the front, and users can quickly know which person they are following is live broadcasting; preview the content of the live broadcast room of the two live broadcasts on the top to display the number of viewers in the live broadcast room; preview the first three products in the shopping bag with shopping carts, and display the quantity of products to stimulate users' interest in purchasing.

2. Community

1) Content distribution——Follow page

Pay attention to presenting content in a single column. One content occupies a page and browsing information is less efficient.

Although the following page is the dynamics of the people that users are following, not all content is interested in. Such a presentation cannot allow users to quickly find the content they want to see, and users must read every piece of content.

The survey found that some users were unwilling to watch every piece of content, and they were disgusted with the automatic playback of the video, which significantly reduced the frequency of opening the following page, and some even reduced the frequency of using Xiaohongshu; users were more willing to choose the content they browse instead of presenting all the content.

Optimization suggestions:

• Provide different presentation forms for users to choose: a filter box appears when the pull-down refresh is released. Users can choose the dual-column browsing mode or the original single-column browsing mode to preview the front video notes without sound, and display the remaining video time; this selection mode not only meets the needs of some users, but also does not affect users who are already accustomed to the single-column mode, thereby increasing the usage time of some users.
• Added sorting method and filtering: Users can choose the default sorting and the system recommends the content; they can also choose to sort according to time to see the latest content; users can also choose to only watch video content.

2) Notes

Many users will search for guides and tutorials on Xiaohongshu, where you can interact with the author and ask some questions through comments and private messages; however, when there are too many comments, users' questions may not be replied; and Xiaohongshu's daily private chat limit is 5 people, which also limits users to ask questions to the author.

Optimization suggestions:

New question and answer module: The author mainly answers, and other users can also help answer. This way users can quickly solve their questions and do not need to find answers in the comment section.

[Note details page]: Display the total number of Q&A, and preview up to two latest Q&As.

【Q&A Area】:

Classify the questions according to the keywords and display the number of questions.

Similar issues are folded in "All". You can expand and collapse this page, but you do not fold in keyword classification.

Shows the number of users who are following this question, and this form of interaction can facilitate communication and guide the author to answer questions.

For questions that the author has not answered yet, "The author has not answered yet", if there is an answer other than the author, it will be displayed "Helpful".

You can ask questions at the bottom of the Q&A area. After the question is asked, the author of this note will receive the message of the question.

Click "My Q&A" in the upper right corner to jump directly to the "My Q&A-Note Q&A" page in the message page.

【Q&A Details】:

This page displays the user information of the question, the time of the question, and the time of the author's answer.

Users can click "Follow the Problem", and they can see it in time after the author responds, and there is no need to retrieve the page; users can also report the issue.

Other users can help the author answer questions on this page. Non-author answers are called "help answers", that is, other users help the author answer questions, and they can like or report the questions they answer.

City Guide: The survey found that users have a lot of behaviors to find out travel guides on Xiaohongshu, but users usually find good guides before departure and travel with purpose.

However, for some users who don’t like to make guides, they like to find nearby delicious and fun places after they arrive at a certain location. These users tend to use apps such as Meituan to view the recommendations around them, rather than using Xiaohongshu.

Optimization suggestions:

Added map recommendations: Combine the locations in the city guide in Xiaohongshu with the map to display the recommendations of Xiaohongshu on the map; users can see the recommendations of attractions, restaurants, etc. around them on the map, or search for a certain location to see which places recommended on Xiaohongshu nearby; this allows users to see the recommendations nearby more intuitively, and this function can attract more users.

【Map Page】:

After opening, display nearby recommendations based on the user's location, including the location name and the number of related notes, so that users can know how many people recommend this place.

Classify recommendations, and users can view all recommendations or categories to find nearby recommendations efficiently.

Users can also see recommendations near other locations by searching, or zoom in and out of the map to display more or more precise location recommendations.

Click Display and Multiple Locations to see more detailed information in nearby locations, including pictures, names, categories, areas and distance from the current location or search location.

Click on a displayed location to pop up its information. By clicking on the information, you can enter the location details page.

【Location Filter Page】:

Swipe up to "Recommendations on the map" to sort and filter. The sorting can be sorted according to distance and popularity, and in the categories are "restaurants", "entertainment", "entertainment", "scenic spots" and "hotels" respectively; set subcategories below these categories, such as Western food, hot pot, Japanese cuisine, etc. below the restaurant; choose distance ranges such as 500m, 1 km, etc., click on a recommendation to enter the location details page.

3) Mall

According to user surveys, users do not have the habit of shopping on Xiaohongshu, and users do not trust the items in Xiaohongshu Mall.

Optimization suggestions:

Added a question and answer section: Users can ask questions to users who have purchased a certain product. The system randomly selects the purchased user to send questions, and the user answers anonymously; this way users can get more real feedback, helping users identify the authenticity and quality of mall products, thereby improving users' trust in malls and products.

[Product Page]: Add the "Ask Everyone" section below the comments to display the number of questions, preview the latest two questions and the number of answers.

【Q&A Page】:

The picture and name of the product are displayed at the top of the page, and the questions are classified according to the keywords, and the number of answers is previewed. You can ask questions at the bottom of the page.

Click on a question to enter the question and answer details. The page shows the avatar information and anonymity of the user's question, and the time of the question. At the same time, the user who answered the question is also anonymously treated, showing the mark that the user has purchased this product. Other users can like and report the answer, but cannot answer the question.

Click "My Q&A" in the upper right corner to jump directly to the "My Q&A-Mall Q&A" page in the message page.

4. User motivation

During the analysis of competitors, it was found that the average daily launch times of Xiaohongshu was low. The survey found that some users only opened Xiaohongshu when they needed it; and many users did not shop in Xiaohongshu's mall, or they did not shop less, and fewer people watched live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu.

I think in response to these issues, we should adopt incentive methods to increase the frequency of users opening Xiaohongshu and guide users to shop in the mall.

Optimization suggestions: Added sign-in rewards, live viewing rewards and shopping rewards - Daily sign-in, cumulative viewing time of live viewing, and purchase of goods can reward users with red beans. Red beans can be used to purchase cash in malls, redemption of shopping coupons, rewards, etc.; cash deposits and shopping coupons will attract users to shop in malls, thereby obtaining red beans, forming a cycle; at the same time, check-in can increase the number of times users open Xiaohongshu and increase activity.

1) Rules to obtain red beans

Daily check-in:

• Check-in in one cycle in a week, get 5 on the first day and 10 on the second day, and then 15, 20, 25, and 30 respectively. Only continuous sign-in can be accumulated; if continuous sign-in is not used in the middle, start from 5 again.
• If you sign in for a continuous period of time, you can get a re-sign card on the seventh day, which can be used for re-sign within the next 3 weeks, and it will expire if it expires; you can receive 5 red beans after re-signing.

Cumulative live broadcast duration:

• The first time I watch the live broadcast, I will reward 10 red beans;
• Take one week as a cycle, and the cumulative time of watching live broadcasts reaches 30 minutes per week, and the cumulative time period will be rewarded with 20 red beans for every 30 minutes of muscle gain. If the cumulative time is reached 60 minutes, 40 red beans will be rewarded with 90 minutes.

Shopping and review rewards:

After the shopping order is completed or the product is evaluated, you can get corresponding red bean rewards. The returned red beans come from the merchant. The merchant can set how many red beans can be obtained after each item is purchased, as well as the threshold for evaluation rewards, such as word count and picture requirements.

2) Rules for using red beans

Use scenarios:

• Shopping cash deposit: Users can use red beans to cash when purchasing products. 100 red beans = 1 yuan, and the upper limit of cash deposit is set by the merchant, such as 2% and 5% of the total price of the product.
• Shopping coupon redemption: Users can exchange a certain number of red beans for corresponding potato coupons on the sign-in page and personal center.
• Note reward: Users can use red beans to reward notes, with the maximum reward amount being 100 red beans.
• Live barrage: The live broadcast room can send barrage, and 10 red beans can be sent once, which can make it easier for the anchors in the live broadcast room to see your interactive messages.

Validity period:

The obtained red beans are valid for 365 days, and will be cleared if they are not used when they expire. The use of red beans is used first according to the order of obtaining the red beans.

【Sign-in page】

【Live broadcast-barrage】

5. Other optimizations

1) Added the "Clear Unread" function key and "My Q&A" function key to the message

My Q&A is divided into "Note Q&A" and "Mall Q&A", which receive Q&A information from the community and mall respectively.

2) The browsing record entrance is in the upper right corner of the personal center, divided into three parts: Notes, live broadcasts, and products. The browsing record can be cleared and whether the live broadcast is displayed is over.

3) Note search: Add a new function of searching notes to the Personal Center and others’ homepages, allowing users to find the content they want more quickly and accurately.

VI. Conclusion

From the initial PDF document of overseas guides to the current comprehensive e-commerce community platform, Xiaohongshu's "book" is getting thicker and thicker.

Xiaohongshu has gone through the journey, from beauty to a better life, and its business has been continuously expanding; from strategies to communities, and then adding e-commerce platforms, video notes, city strategies, live streaming and sales, etc.; Xiaohongshu is constantly exploring a broader path and realizing commercial monetization.

So far, it is no exaggeration to say that the Xiaohongshu community is irreplaceable, and the content ecology is unique, which is an unreplicable note.

In the future, Xiaohongshu should continue to maintain this strict control in the process of continuous development of the community and not allow community content to be flooded.

Xiaohongshu's live broadcast has not started for a while, and there are not many live broadcast users. How to attract users to the live broadcast room and create its own unique live broadcast will be a major problem facing Xiaohongshu; in addition, Xiaohongshu's users still have a certain degree of distrust of the quality of its mall products. In addition, the existence of other giant e-commerce platforms, it is difficult for Xiaohongshu's e-commerce to flourish.

In the future, Xiaohongshu should broaden the community's gameplay, maintain the community's order, create a reputation for the mall to meet more users' needs and gain more trust from users - thus continuing to write Xiaohongshu's "book" thicker and more exciting.

Author: Monster_

Source: Monster_