Fliggy Product Analysis Report

After analyzing the relevant competitive products of Fliggy , this article provides optimization suggestions on how to optimize the UGC content ecosystem of Fliggy products. Let’s take a look~

If you don’t like traveling with a group, would you make a travel guide? If so, where would you go to read the guide? Is it a hornet's nest? Ctrip? Flying Pig? Or Zhihu? Or just search on Baidu?

If you have used these products, you will find that in addition to providing travel product booking services, every travel product on the market must include travel guides. Of course, in addition to this, it will also involve live broadcasts, travel sharing and other content.

It can be found that major e-commerce platforms are not satisfied with simply providing resource booking services to users. Apart from the most essential e-commerce attributes of each product, all of them are expanding in the direction of content without exception.

I believe the main reason for doing this is that the cost of acquiring C-end users is getting higher and higher, and products need to find new breakthroughs to reduce customer acquisition costs. In addition to making users aware that this is a useful product booking tool, they also hope to make users identify with the topics, content, and information generated by their products, and further stimulate users to purchase products through trust in the content.

Therefore, the theme of this article is: to provide optimization suggestions on how to optimize the UGC content ecosystem of Feizhu products. At the same time, the author's selfish desire is to improve his product analysis skills, and try to make an analysis report on his favorite products with a learning attitude. If there are any inappropriate suggestions in this article, you are welcome to give more wise insights and discuss them together.

Before making any optimizations, I would like to make an overall analysis of the competitive environment that Fliggy faces, and in the process understand its product positioning, the strengths and weaknesses of its market-positioned competitors, and Fliggy’s position. After having a deeper understanding of the situation of Fliggy products in the market, we will proceed to the next step of user analysis and user research.

The main purpose of the analysis phase of user analysis and user research is to clarify the core demands of users in the field of Internet content. What kind of content will provide value to users and have a certain appeal to arouse their interest? Explore why the content of Fliggy is not enough to attract most users to browse? And other reasons.

Finally, based on our thoughts on the above issues, we provide some functional optimization and suggestions for Fliggy in the direction of content community.

This article will analyze Feizhu products from the following aspects:

1. Competitive product analysis
2. User analysis and research
3. Functional analysis and optimization solutions

1. Competitive product analysis

1.1 Product Positioning

Fliggy, as a travel service platform under Alibaba, has great ambitions in the tourism market. Its product positioning is to provide users with travel needs with a one-stop online booking service for domestic and overseas resources.

1.2 Competitive product selection

The competitors selected are three platforms that have made some achievements in the tourism market and have product positioning similar to that of Fliggy: Ctrip, Qunar, and Mafengwo.

1.3 Business Distribution

Fliggy e-commerce business VS Ctrip e-commerce business:

E-commerce business is the core segment of Ctrip and Fliggy, but the types of products involved in e-commerce have different focuses depending on the target user groups.

Fliggy’s main target user group is young people who grew up with the Internet.

Its products are novel, technological, and affordable. Among its vacation products, Fliggy's flagship product is the "free travel" option that has been very popular among young people in recent years, which provides a travel method that combines flight and hotel packages as well as local car rentals. The "Let's Go See the Aurora" product created in cooperation with the Swiss Tourism Board before the Double 11 event in 2016 once became the travel dream pursued by many young people.

The reason why Fliggy's products have a so-called sense of technology is due to Fliggy's future plan: future hotels, future airports and future scenic spots. The creation of these three futures is aimed at catering to the consumption characteristics of young people who like convenient services.

In my opinion, Fliggy's future plans for improving tourism services have not been very effective in recent years. However, as an Alibaba-affiliated company, Fliggy's policies such as credit stays, no queues, and no check-out provided to users through Alipay's Sesame Credit are very much in line with the "lazy" consumption style of young people. As to whether Fliggy can really create tourism products with a sense of technology in the future, we will have to wait and see.

Another factor that has made Fliggy popular among young people in recent years is its price: on the one hand, Fliggy uses Alibaba's traffic advantage to gain bargaining power with suppliers; on the other hand, Fliggy's business model is different from other OTA platforms.

We will analyze this point in the development history of each product later. The product features of Ctrip's e-commerce are high-quality products and high-quality services, which meet the needs of business people or people with mid- to high-end consumption levels.

Since its development, Ctrip has continuously cooperated with internationally renowned brands in the field of mid- to high-end hotels for mutual benefit, invested a lot of manpower costs in the customer service system, and provided additional destination-friendly services such as emergency support, micro-tour leaders, translation, and luggage delivery. These selling points greatly cater to the tastes of its target user groups.

Fliggy membership business VS competitor membership business:

The establishment of a membership service system is a common incentive method used by e-commerce platforms to increase user loyalty. Ctrip, Qunar, Mafengwo and Fliggy have established their own membership systems. This includes the member’s points function and the benefits that only paying members can enjoy.

The biggest difference between Fliggy and the other three products in terms of membership system is that Fliggy members are the only ones among the four products that offer the opportunity to upgrade to the highest level of membership without paying. After cooperating with Marriott, Fliggy has successively launched co-branded membership cards with major well-known hotels: members can enjoy services such as upgrades or discounts at mid-range hotels. Even if the user is a medium (F2) member, he or she has the opportunity to enjoy services such as airport VIP lounges. This is undoubtedly a cost-effective membership option for young people who are keen on enjoying life.

In contrast, Ctrip's membership system is based on a payment + points route, where only paying users can enjoy services such as airport VIP lounges, refund and change insurance, and airport fast security checks. It is not difficult to see that this type of service is tailor-made for mid- to high-end users.

Fliggy Financial Services VS Ctrip Financial Services:

As companies whose core business is e-commerce, Fliggy and Ctrip are well aware that the use of financial tools will, on the one hand, enhance the commercial monetization capabilities of their products, and on the other hand, provide a series of conveniences for tourism service products.

Ctrip, starting from the breakthrough of "tax refund" for overseas consumption, encourages users to use Ctrip's financial service system, and has successively launched financial service tools such as wealth management, co-branded credit cards and foreign exchange.

Fliggy, which is backed by Alibaba, can directly use Sesame Credit to provide customers with credit accommodation, play now, pay later and other services to attract users to use Fliggy's travel booking services.

From a long-term perspective, the advantages that Alibaba brings to Fliggy in the financial field will be difficult to surpass or shake in the short term, and it is indeed a wise move for Fliggy to use this advantage to attract users to use Fliggy.

Feizhu Content Community VS Competitive Content Business:

In addition to the three major sectors of e-commerce, finance, and membership, another focus to increase user usage is the content social field.

Fliggy, Ctrip and Qunar have all started to make their plans, but Mafengwo was the first to gain an advantage in this field.

Mafengwo's early product positioning was to provide a communication channel for users who love traveling to share travel experiences and obtain professional travel guides. Its core business is guide output and content social networking.

Personally, I think Mafengwo is very professional in the field of PGC content: the article layout and picture display give users a very clear visual effect. In order to improve the professionalism of Mafengwo's overall content, in addition to inviting certified experts to contribute articles, it also guides users to become "professional". At the same time, Mafengwo launched the "Fengshou Diary" to encourage users to share their travel experiences, and used the format of "How to Write a Good Travel Note" to transform many users who love sharing from travel note novices into travel experts.

In order to increase the activity of the community, Mafengwo divides the circles into two categories: one is mass tourism sharing (Fengfeng Circle); the other is theme tourism sharing: Mafengwo has created their own circles for enthusiasts who love skiing and self-driving tours. They can initiate a self-driving tour within the "self-driving circle", or choose to join a ski club in the "skiing circle", or they can consult with customizers related to such topics. The activeness of such theme circles laid the groundwork for later commercial monetization channels.

Compared with Mafengwo, in order to attract users to share, Fliggy also created community interactive activities such as my travel Vlog and publishing notes. But overall, the activity level is not high, and the overall feeling given by the PGC content is not professional enough, both in terms of the page and the content itself.

As a person who loves traveling, I have no desire to share my experiences on the Fliggy platform. Qunar and Ctrip have both launched similar interactive forms, but as a young person, I really can’t find any reason why I must share on Fliggy instead of other platforms, and the reasons behind this are worth Fliggy’s deep consideration.

1.4 Development History

In the process of Fliggy Travel's business development, there are several important nodes worth discussing:

Clarification of product positioning and market positioning: 2011-2016

In August 2011, Taobao Travel V1.0.0 was officially launched, and it was renamed "Ali Travel" in October 2014. It was not until October 2016, when V8.0.0 was launched, that Ali Travel was renamed "Fliggy Travel".

During these six years, Alibaba has been looking for its position in the online travel industry. It was not until 2016 that the target user group was clearly locked on young people born in the 1980s and 1990s who were involved in the Internet industry. The vibrant yellow logo and the slogan “Go Further Than Dreams” undoubtedly perfectly cater to the vision of this group of young people.

At the same time, after the launch of V8.0.0, cruise, international car rental, international air tickets, European railways, outbound supermarkets and other businesses were launched, making outbound tourism the key market.

Clarification of business model: 2016-2018

Unlike traditional OTA platforms in the travel industry, Fliggy does not seek to earn commissions through reselling like Ctrip does, but instead invites major airlines and world-renowned hotel brands to directly join the Fliggy platform.

In 2016, Fliggy started to cooperate with world-renowned high-end hotel groups such as Marriott, Accor, Wyndham, Shangri-La, and Banyan Tree and enabled them to directly settle in the Fliggy platform.

In 2017, Fliggy became the direct ticket sales platform for major international and domestic airlines, and the airlines moved into Fliggy and opened flagship stores.

In 2018, through the "New Travel Alliance" plan, Fliggy officially clarified Alibaba's ambition to build a Taobao in the travel industry: skipping middlemen and allowing merchants to establish direct connections with users. This innovation is known in the industry as the transformation from OTA to OTP model, and this model shift has given Fliggy a great advantage in terms of travel product prices.

However, while allowing users to establish direct contact with merchants, another disadvantage arises: Fliggy cannot provide unified after-sales service guarantee management like Ctrip.

Unlike Taobao, Fliggy has absolute say in front of merchants and conducts unified supervision over product after-sales. In the tourism industry, suppliers of scarce resources are generally in a strong position. During direct negotiations between customers and suppliers, customers often have many dissatisfactions. Therefore, in terms of after-sales service, users do not have a high level of recognition for Fliggy's after-sales service.

Expansion of the content social field: 2015-2020

As early as 2015, when Fliggy had not yet clarified its market positioning, it began to lay out its presence in the content social networking field. After the launch of V6.0.0, travel guides, celebrity recommendations, travel companions, additional travel notes and other UGC content were introduced. In 2016, V7.2.0 added live broadcast functions, but these live broadcast functions are only available to merchants on the Fliggy platform. Its main purpose is to allow merchants to establish direct contact with users rather than true social interaction. In 2020, in several releases of V9.4.0, we continuously optimized the recommendations on the homepage and improved functions such as "You May Also Like".

In the past five years, Fliggy has been involved in the content field, but it must be said that except for 2015, Fliggy did not make any innovations or add any key functions in the content social field. It has to be said that in the past five years, Fliggy has focused more on establishing direct cooperative relationships with suppliers to build up its price advantage.

But in the long run, Alibaba's Fliggy will definitely use Alibaba's own big data advantages to cater to the tastes of young people in terms of PGC content, while the development of UGC social fields remains to be seen.

Competitive business development history:

Ctrip

Founded in 1999, Ctrip obviously entered the online travel market earlier than the other three. Judging from its development trajectory, Ctrip has long positioned itself towards business travelers, white-collar workers, families and groups that are relatively insensitive to prices. From entering the business travel management market in 2005, to later cooperating with high-end hotels and then to the creation of the "Honghu Yiyou" high-end customized travel brand, all of these are paving the way for serving the mid- to high-end market.

It is worth mentioning that from the "Travel Photography" module launched on Ctrip in 2018, it can be seen that Ctrip intends to expand its social content section to increase the frequency of users using Ctrip.

At present, Mafengwo mentioned in the business analysis in the previous article: its PGC strategy content and UGC content ecology are the most outstanding, while Fliggy, Ctrip, and Qunar have also successively launched social content sections to enhance customer stickiness and increase user traffic. In addition to the price war and service war of tourism products, there may also be a content war.

Where to go

Qunar entered the online travel market in 2005 with its powerful air ticket search function. It entered the public eye by building a travel search engine as its core and providing travelers with the most comprehensive travel information. In the following years, it became the darling of the capital market and won the favor of many investment institutions. Before 2010, Qunar's main source of income was advertising: user click-through rate became its biggest selling point.

After 2010, in order to expand its commercial monetization capabilities, it moved in the direction of OTA and earned commissions through procurement cooperation with suppliers. In 2011, Qunar received a 306 million yuan investment from Baidu and was successfully listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the United States in 2013.

After that, Qunar was "defeated" by Ctrip due to its lack of profitability and numerous disputes with airlines, and was acquired by Ctrip. Afterwards, in addition to continuing to develop its air ticket search business, Ctrip intends to give its mid- and low-end hotel business to Qunar.com, allowing Ctrip to compete with Meituan's hotel business.

Looking at its development history, in a market survey in 2016, the user stickiness of Qunar.com's mobile terminal surpassed that of Ctrip and Fliggy. This at least shows that the products provided by Qunar to users are considered to be valuable products by users, and its product positioning is very successful. Even though it was delisted and acquired by Ctrip, there are still many loyal users who are supporters of Qunar.

However, we can also see from the annual loss data from 2020 to 2012 that the capital market attaches great importance to the product's ability to commercialize. If user stickiness cannot create considerable commercial profits for the product over a long period of time, the capital market will eventually turn its attention elsewhere.

Hornet's Nest

As early as 2006, Mafengwo was established as a communication website for travel enthusiasts. It was not until 2010 that Mafengwo was established as a company and officially started operations. Its early seed users numbered about 150,000. Mafengwo’s product positioning is to provide a UGC communication platform for people who love traveling, and to provide high-quality PGC guide content. During this period, Mafengwo attracted many users who love traveling with its professional content and interesting community atmosphere, laying the foundation for Mafengwo's gradual commercialization in the later period.

In 2012, Mafengwo began to commercialize, with its main source of income coming from advertising fees. At the same time, it also began to gradually expand into the hotel sector.

In 2015, Mafengwo defined the post-90s generation as the future main force in the tourism market, and continued to expand the popular independent travel of the post-90s generation. Mafengwo V8.0 is newly launched, and many elements in line with the youthful atmosphere have been added to the UI interface.

In 2019, in version V9.0.0, Mafengwo further clarified the path of commercial expansion, namely, to create a content + OTA model. In addition to providing professional content output, it also provides one-stop tourism procurement, improves the already launched hotel, air ticket, and free travel business, and launches products such as visas, local tours, tickets, car rentals, and WiFi.

Judging from the above development, after achieving certain results in the field of content social networking, Mafengwo began to commercialize, and its target users tend to be younger people who love independent travel. It can be seen from this that the target user groups of Fliggy and Mafengwo are highly overlapping, and they are already in direct competition.

But at present, since Alibaba and Ctrip have established close cooperative relationships with suppliers, I still have concerns whether Mafengwo can get a good price from upstream suppliers to compete with its rivals.

1.5 Data Performance

In terms of the number of active users , Ctrip is nearly twice as much as Fliggy. The author believes that there are two main reasons:

First, Ctrip entered the online travel industry in 1999 and seized market share with its better service reputation and faster pace of advancement. In contrast, Fliggy entered this market more than 10 years later, and did not have a clear target user group before it was renamed "Fliggy Travel".

Second, Fliggy has focused on the outbound travel market in recent years, while Ctrip has an advantage in the richness of travel products both domestically and overseas.

Overall, Ctrip's travel products have a wider audience than Qifeizhu's travel products.

Data source - Analysys Qianfan

Data source - Analysys Qianfan

In terms of average daily usage time per person , Mafengwo is nearly five times ahead of Fliggy and far exceeds Ctrip and Qunar. The first reason is that Mafengwo's business model is different from that of Fliggy or other OTA platforms. Mafengwo is positioned as a social content platform that focuses on UGC content and then expands, while Fliggy is a pure transaction platform with travel e-commerce as its core. This leads to the second reason, which is that users’ usage scenarios for Fliggy and Mafengwo are different. Generally speaking, it takes more time to write a travelogue than to book a flight.

In terms of next-month retention rate , as of 2019, Fliggy's next-month retention rate was 35.6%, nearly 1.8 times higher than the average next-month retention rates of Ctrip, Qunar and Mafengwo.

The author believes that the main reason is that as an Alibaba-affiliated company, Fliggy Travel allows many users to log in directly to Fliggy Travel through a convenient operation mode (Taobao account). Moreover, because a large number of users trust Alibaba products, these users have become high-quality users of Fliggy Travel, which makes Fliggy have a higher next-month retention rate.

From the perspective of industry monopoly rate , Qunar is not only far ahead of Fliggy and Mafengwo, but also ahead of Ctrip, which has 1/3 times more active users than it. This is rather abnormal and raises doubts. Combined with the official figure of 390 million online travel users in 2019, if Qunar.com accounts for 18.7% of the industry's monopoly, then its number of active users is at least 72 million. Obviously, judging from the current data: Qunar's number of active users is far from that.

1.6 Summary of advantages and disadvantages

Summary: Alibaba's Fliggy Travel has certain advantages in terms of resource background, use of financial instruments, business model reform, and gradually enriched products. In addition to further optimizing the products themselves, supply chain cooperation, after-sales service and business models, all online travel platforms are also constantly looking for new opportunities to attract users to use their products. In recent years, whether it is Ctrip, Fliggy or Qunar, they have been constantly exploring the content field.

Subsequent user analysis and user research will further explore and dig into the demands of Fliggy’s target user groups in the content area.

2. User analysis and user research

This part mainly presents the demands and behaviors generated by the demands of merchants, platforms and buyers on the platform. We can see that in the process of product transactions, the generation of OGC, PGC and UGC content will directly or indirectly affect user behavior. So this is also an important reason why e-commerce has gradually begun to expand into the content field: valuable content will promote user consumption.

2.1 User role map

2.2 User Research Questions

In order to understand how users are influenced by "content" in their consumption decisions, we will conduct user interviews to survey Fliggy's target user group: young people who grew up on the Internet. The users who participated in this survey were three typical Fliggy users (users with travel needs) and one special user (who loves traveling and has creative experience).

2.3 User Research Summary

Content: From the feedback from surveyed users, it can be found that users are not interested in the content area of ​​​​Fliggy. None of the four users have the habit of using Alizhu to look up travel guides, but they will look up travel guides from websites such as Mafengwo or Qyer, and tend to use search methods because the travel guides they find in this way are the ones they are most concerned about.

For a special user who has a need for creation, she recently tried to create on Fliggy, but the first problem she encountered was that it was difficult to find the entrance to creation. The creative platform she currently uses most frequently is Zhihu. The reason she likes to use Zhihu for her creations is that for the same article, she gets the most feedback from Zhihu.

From the results of competitive product analysis and user surveys, it can be seen that users do not like to search among a variety of strategies, but expect a more efficient mode to quickly find the strategies they are interested in. The current unclear presentation of Fliggy’s content sections, inefficient strategy search functions, and insufficient content richness may be the reasons why users do not use Fliggy to read strategies.

On the other hand , for users who have creative needs, if a platform cannot provide timely creative feedback, they will lose confidence in creating on this platform. Currently, the creation entrance of Fliggy is hidden, and the personal travel journal creation entrance is not open. In addition, it is difficult for users to get feedback. These factors may be the reasons why creative users do not use Fliggy very often.

Users almost ignore the two existing social sharing functions of Fliggy, My Notes and Travel Vlog, and none of the four users use this function.

Based on the current functions of Alizhu products, the possible reasons for the inactivity of the social area are:

• First, users lack the intrinsic motivation to interact.
• Second, the sharing entrance is difficult to find.
• Third, it is difficult for users to get feedback on the Alitrip platform after sharing, because the published messages are difficult for other users to see, and it is also difficult for users to observe the dynamics they have posted.

Content optimization direction: In view of the problems with the current content section of Fliggy, the author will focus on optimizing the following three aspects: designing a clear guide/travel content display, improving the efficiency of the content search function, and establishing an incentive mechanism for content creation. At the same time, adjust the publishing entrance of my notes and travel vlog, and present the published notes in the follow-up interface of the guide, so that users can quickly see the content they have published. Optimize the personal interface to present my dynamics, answers, number of likes, favorite guides, people I follow, private message functions, etc., so that users can pay attention to the feedback they receive and dynamic tracks in real time, create reasons for posting, and update feedback in time to improve user participation.

In terms of itinerary: Judging from users’ feedback on itinerary, users basically have no habit of using itinerary tools on the App. Most users will use memos and Word documents to record rough itineraries and are not inclined to use cumbersome tools to plan their itineraries in detail.

The main reason is that the tools on the market are relatively complicated in design, and users tend to become lazy in the face of a large number of functions. The logic of most users' itinerary planning is to decide what to do first, and then decide which day to put the day's activities. However, Fliggy's products require users to confirm the date while adding activities. Some of them do not conform to the user's usage logic and need to be optimized in this regard.

Itinerary optimization direction: Change the itinerary scheduling logic, put all the activities in the itinerary on the overall page, then specify the itinerary content to the date by dragging and dropping the itinerary, and adjust the itinerary creation entrance to facilitate users to find it quickly. Improve the user experience of itinerary tools by adjusting the itinerary function logic and page display.

3. Functional analysis and optimization plan

3.1 Content Ecosystem Optimization

Through competitor analysis and user research, the author learned that users have a need to read guide content, but the guide content on Fliggy cannot meet user expectations. Users prefer to obtain guide content information from other products, such as Mafengwo, Zhihu, etc.

We learned from user feedback that users do not like to search through a variety of strategies, but expect a more efficient mode to quickly find the strategies they are interested in.

Based on the comparison with competing content communities and user feedback, the author speculates that the reasons why the opening rate of Feizhu’s content section is not high are:

1. The content presentation is complex and users feel that the retrieval efficiency is low
2. The content displayed is not enough to attract users to read
3. Not enough content

Therefore, the optimization plan will mainly focus on improving these three major issues and optimize the interface of the Feizhu guide section. Its ultimate goal is to increase the opening rate of Feizhu content.

3.1.1 Improving content retrieval efficiency

(1) Optimize the content presentation format of the main page to reduce user thinking

In the current guide content interface of Fliggy, there are three content sections: Fun at the moment → Must-try local experiences → Fun for everyone.

As users scroll down, the presentation of the three types of content information flows keeps changing. Users need to spend time to understand the content composition of each section, which makes it inconvenient for users to understand the information and they may lose interest in reading. The optimized interface will uniformly present information in the form of cards. The content in the cards only includes two types: strategy column + travel notes, and no other forms.

Page Details

Specific rules and recommendation algorithms for the content section:

• Case 1: When the user does not follow a specific guide column and logs in for the first time, popular guides + popular travel notes are recommended first. Popular strategies must include outbound travel, domestic travel, surrounding travel and specific theme tours. Popularity of the guide = weight of likes * number of likes + weight of collections * number of collections + weight of comments * number of comments + weight of conversion rate * conversion rate of products in the content. Travel notes popularity = number of likes.
• Case 2: When the user does not follow a specific column but has behavioral data, the collaborative filtering algorithm can be used. The content after the popular recommendation strategy is recommended by the algorithm. For example: first recommend the TOP1-TOP5 popular columns, and after the five popular columns are finished, start recommending the "Japan Shopping" guide that users may like.
• Case 3: When a user follows a specific column, the column strategies that the user follows will be recommended first. After all the columns that the user follows are recommended, popular strategies will be recommended.

(2) Improve information recognition - capture key content to facilitate users to identify important information

Added “Strategy Column” content distribution format.

In order to enable users to read content efficiently and make the content look attractive, the main method adopted is to create a new content system: the strategy column.

Users can choose to search for guides by keywords, or they can view guides by clicking on the guide column in the system push. Each column represents a category of guide content. Users can quickly determine whether they are interested in the strategy content in the column just by looking at the column title. When a user is interested in a strategy column, he or she can click to enter the column content and choose to follow the column.

The benefits of setting up a strategy column are as follows:

• The company's internal operations can reprocess the current strategy content, give the column an ​​attractive name, and use clickbait titles to attract users to read the content.
• Collecting content of multiple categories with similar topics into one column helps users save time in screening high-quality content.
• Users can use the newly added "Followed Columns" function to provide data support for later analysis of users, thereby more efficiently analyzing user preferences for content.

Label the guide: Under each guide picture, include important tags of the guide: budget, number of days, travel season and theme, so that users can quickly judge the content of the guide that they are most concerned about.

New post-search filtering function: After users search for guides by destination, they can use the filtering function to prioritize the guide content they are interested in.

Display the number of guide collections: highlight high-quality guides.

After optimization:

Page details:

3.1.2 Encouraging the Generation of UGC Content

(1) Personal center page optimization - guide users to pay attention to their own publishing results and use feedback to promote the generation of UGC content

When users can observe in real time the rewards they receive for their published content, they will be more motivated to publish content. The optimized page will display information such as the user’s achievements, various content the user has posted, and the user’s behavior records.

Overall effect:

(2) Added personal guide creation - Opened the UGC content generation portal to allow more individual users to participate

In order to enrich the production of UGC content, on the one hand, Fliggy needs to explore an effective reward mechanism, and on the other hand, Fliggy needs to open the entrance to personal guide creation to more users, not just merchants.

There are two reasons why the entry for creating personal guides should be opened to individual users:

1. If we want to enrich the UGC content of the platform, relying solely on the contributions of merchants and a few people is limited.
2. Given the uneven distribution of marketing methods, it is very likely that merchants will turn strategy guides into marketing soft articles during the creation process. The production of this kind of guide content will reduce users' trust in the platform content.

Therefore, the author believes that Fliggy needs to add a personal guide creation function.

Overall effect:

(3) Optimize the message system - allow users to receive feedback in a timely manner and increase the frequency of product use

In order to allow users to observe feedback after publishing content more quickly and further increase the product's opening rate, the author will optimize the message interface.

• Added a new private message dialog box
• Added notifications of guides being included and updates to columns you follow
• Optimize interactive page display

3.2 Stroke system optimization

In addition to optimizing some of the content on Fliggy, the author discovered during the process of understanding the product that there is also room for optimization in its itinerary system. Through competitive product analysis, we observed that most of the travel booking products on the market involve itinerary planning tools. The main reason is that users do have a need to plan their itinerary before traveling. In addition, the itinerary interface can extend its functions, allowing users to open the itinerary interface in more scenarios, thereby increasing the usage rate of Fliggy products.

Therefore, the optimization of the itinerary system will be carried out from the following aspects:

1. Increase users' attention to the itinerary page and optimize the content display on the itinerary homepage.
2. Improve the efficiency of using itinerary editing tools and optimize the integrity and logical rationality of itinerary planning.
3. Increase the usage scenarios of the itinerary page and add a new "itinerary memo" function.

3.2.1 Optimize the content display of the itinerary homepage

The starting point for optimizing the content display on the itinerary homepage is also to improve the Fliggy content system, but the content displayed on the itinerary page is different from that on the strategy page. The content displayed on the itinerary page mainly matches the itinerary routes that the user may involve, while the strategy content display focuses on giving users suggestions on how to eat, drink, and have fun. The route push content in the original page content area is changed to attractions, food, etc. The food and attractions pushed are the food and attractions in the corresponding areas of the itinerary.

For example, if a user books a flight to Paris or adds Paris to their itinerary, they will be pushed content such as fast-track tickets for Disneyland Paris or reviews of local delicacies in Paris.

Please continue to read below for specific content calculation rules:

Page details:

Specific rules and recommendation algorithms for the content section:

This part mainly displays fragmented products, which include two categories: products that can be booked on Alitrip; products that cannot be booked on Alitrip but have review information in the system, such as food.

• Case 1 : When the user has created a trip but the departure date has not yet arrived or the trip is in progress. Recommend products related to the places mentioned in the itinerary. For example, if a user adds Paris, Berlin and other regions to their itinerary creation, the recommended information will be products related to food, drink and entertainment in these two places.
• Case 2 : When the user has not created an itinerary, or the created itinerary has expired, popular attractions/food reviews are recommended. Popular algorithm = sales weight * sales volume + rating weight * rating number + review weight * review number + product conversion rate weight * product conversion rate.
• Case 3 : When a user has purchased a product on Fliggy but the expiration date has not yet arrived, we recommend food, drink and entertainment products in the location where the product is located, and do not display the products that the user has already purchased. (For example, if a user buys a flight to Yunnan, then local food, drink and entertainment products in Yunnan will be displayed)

Note: If situation 3 is true, the display method of situation 3 shall be used first. For example: When situation 1 and situation 3 appear at the same time, the display method of situation 3 is used first.

3.2.2 Optimize the completeness and logical rationality of itinerary arrangement

Completeness: The original page for adding locations after creating a new itinerary did not prompt users to add the departure and return locations. In fact, a complete itinerary needs to include these two locations, because the itinerary involves transportation and it is also possible to arrange a rest trip during the trip.

After optimization:

1. Prompt the user to add a departure and return location.
2. Simplify the overall page to make it easier for users to understand.
3. Users will be prompted to add the key information points such as departure date and number of days of the trip, but they can also fill in the options if they don’t have any ideas at first.

Logical rationality: Added the “drag and drop itinerary content” function. At present, in the process of improving the itinerary, the steps that need to be passed are: add the itinerary content (attractions, transportation, hotels, etc.) - the time when the selected content occurs - complete the addition.

Readers believe that users often cannot determine the exact time of activity in some scenarios. There are even some travel activities that are temporarily generated. If the event schedule is not very certain, it is unreasonable if the user has to select a date to successfully add it.

The optimized product will allow users to add content successfully when the date is uncertain, and can use the drag function to add travel content, adding flexibility in itinerary planning.

After optimization, the map content is displayed in obvious areas to facilitate users to see whether the planned route itinerary is reasonable or in line with expectations.

Page details:

3.2.3 Added "Itinerary Memorandum" function

New itinerary memorandum: The intention is to add another user usage scenario, and users can make simple notes based on what they want to do on a certain itinerary.

Page details:

Summarize

The above functional analysis and optimization solutions are mainly optimized with optimization suggestions based on the community section of Fliggy products and the itinerary tools as the supplement. We hope to improve the efficiency of users' content retrieval by reducing user thinking, extracting key information, and helping users classify. At the same time, we can use the form of allowing users to perceive feedback, learn feedback, and open content release portals to motivate the generation of UGC content.

It is hoped that by using the above optimization form, we will increase the daily usage time of the product and enhance the user's stickiness to the product.

Of course, this optimization is still a long way from our ultimate goal of "making users rely on the content of Fliggy products and improving product conversion rates through trust and dependence on the content." However, the view that the author agrees more is also a common view in the market: if you want to reduce the cost of acquiring C-end customers, developing "content" is the only way to go.

Thank you for taking the time to read! The author is a newcomer who has just entered the product field to improve product analysis capabilities. I know that there are still many shortcomings.

If there is any inappropriate suggestion in the article, everyone is welcome to give more wise insights and exchange and discuss together.

Author: White Cat Monica

Source: White Cat Monica