Xiaohongshu product analysis report!

This article will explain the analysis of Xiaohongshu products and thoughts on its business model from six aspects: business form iteration, user needs, profit model, operation methods, product function analysis and future prospects.

Xiaohongshu has been established for 7 years since 2013, and its business model has been evolving and iterating in line with the market environment and industry policies. Although its business scale cannot compete with e-commerce giants such as Alibaba and Pinduoduo, its combination of content social networking and e-commerce community has led to a trend widely followed by urban women.

Even when Xiaohongshu was removed from the shelves last year, copycat versions of "Xiaohongshu" emerged one after another, but once it was put on the shelves, it reached the top of Apple's social download list in just three days - this shows how users rely on Xiaohongshu, and Xiaohongshu has also built its own, difficult-to-replicate business model barriers.

1. Iteration of Xiaohongshu’s business model

From the initial establishment of cross-border e-commerce pilot projects and free trade zones in first- and second-tier cities, Xiaohongshu, as one of the earliest entrants, has attracted a large number of consumers with a strong desire to shop overseas. According to data released by Xiaohongshu in 2013, the platform’s sales reached 200 million yuan within five months of launching e-commerce. In 2014, Xiaohongshu launched its own “Welfare Club” shopping mall, guiding users from sharing notes to purchasing, and began its “community + e-commerce” model.

At this time, versions V1.0, V2.0 and V3.0 of Xiaohongshu all focused on the cross-border e-commerce field. The addition of social traffic further enhanced the "traffic effect" of the product itself . In 2016, Xiaohongshu made full use of the interest community model and used user-generated content (UGC) to showcase real product experiences and share women's fashion and lifestyle knowledge, which gradually evolved into one of Xiaohongshu's core gameplays in the future.

But in the following years, cross-border e-commerce policies were gradually tightened, and large companies such as Alibaba and NetEase also successively entered the cross-border e-commerce field. In terms of procurement and supply chain, Xiaohongshu's disadvantages due to its lack of experience began to emerge, and its market share was gradually eroded. Xiaohongshu then dug deep into its own content advantages and changed its slogan to today's "Mark my life", which defines the platform's biggest advantage: the spread of tag notes - that is, the output of content culture, while using various marketing methods to attract a large amount of traffic. The ensuing question of how to monetize traffic to generate revenue for the platform has also prompted Xiaohongshu to explore, because over-reliance on a single advertising revenue model will affect users' intuitive experience and trust in the platform.

With the advent of the 5G era and the live streaming boom stimulated by the recent epidemic, videos have become the primary source of content output compared to images with heavy filters and texts that are not intuitive enough. Apps such as Douyin and Kuaishou are all exploring new ways to sell products, which also brings greater competitive pressure to Xiaohongshu's already weak e-commerce module. How to make good use of over 100 million traffic resources to provide users with high-quality and satisfactory content and services is the next round of Xiaohongshu's evolution that needs to take place.

Quoted from the article "See how the "national grass-seeding machine" Xiaohongshu harvests content traffic"

2. User needs

1. User classification and psychological analysis

"Shopping is a woman's nature." Xiaohongshu has transformed from a high-quality overseas shopping community. Its core users are women with medium to high spending power and those pursuing a petty bourgeoisie lifestyle, especially urban white-collar workers. According to official announcement, more than 70% are born in the 1990s, and the number continues to grow rapidly, which means that people born in the 1990s like me have now grown into a group that pays attention to hot topics, new popular models and has the ability to pay.

If we consider product information itself as a kind of content and use Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory to get to the bottom of it, we can summarize the psychology of users using Xiaohongshu as follows:

Content recipients : Social and emotional needs, watching interesting content, expressing approval, appreciation, and even following;
Content producers : respect needs, share their daily lives, and desire to be respected and encouraged, and even gain corresponding economic benefits;
Content identification party : the pursuit of self-worth, identification with the cultural values conveyed by the blogger: such as how to be beautiful, how to live a healthy life, etc., that is, they also want to become the kind of people shown in this content, and want to have the kind of life carried by this content.

Xiaohongshu user relationship diagram

Note: An arrow from A to B means that A does something or provides something for B.

It is because content producers produce high-quality information and attract recipients, and recipients express their needs and attitudes towards the content in a series of social actions, that the platform culture is recognized and positively motivated by all users on Xiaohongshu. This is also the most important resource in Xiaohongshu's business model.

In fact, the definition of content is not limited to gender, region and consumption capacity. It mainly depends on whether the interests of the content producer and the recipient match, which is what many APPs now advocate as "one thousand faces for one person". If Xiaohongshu can push topics of interest such as sports and fitness, game commentary, etc. to elite men in first- and second-tier cities, or provide shopping guides and store information on promotions in partnership with the few local shopping malls to people born in the 1980s and 1970s in fourth- and fifth-tier cities, giving local consumers an affordable and convenient experience, it may be able to expand its user base and bring growth on more levels.

2. User usage scenario analysis

According to the user relationship diagram, users' purposes are mainly divided into entertainment and purposeful shopping. This is also the reason behind users using Xiaohongshu in different scenarios.

Entertainment scenarios: browsing notes or shopping malls, discovering popular trends, and recommending good things; liking or commenting on notes, asking questions or answering questions for entertainment; being attracted by messages pushed by the platform and browsing the content...
Consumption scenarios: purposefully searching for products on the search page or category page, purchasing on Xiaohongshu or Taobao third-party platforms; being recommended by friends and being attracted to a product on the platform; participating in marketing activities and getting discounts for consumption; becoming a Xiaohong card member, shopping regularly, exchanging gifts, using privileges, etc.

The above are all familiar usage scenarios. Can new usage scenarios be developed to make Xiaohongshu’s business model more differentiated?

I think we can think about it from two aspects:

One is to tap into new user groups , because new user groups represent new user demands. For example, whether more topics can be developed to attract elite men; whether users can be incorporated into communities by raising the entry threshold to form more loyal and more communicative circles.

Another is to introduce new technologies or new activities and combine them with the original business . For example, whether the live broadcast currently being tested can be combined with the always popular VR, to create more interactions between the anchor and the audience during the live broadcast and improve the retention rate; whether it is possible to add marketing activities or sign-in mini-games to the e-commerce platform, and the themes can be packaged by choosing charity or ranking, because I think people with general purchasing power will choose to spend their time on more meaningful leisure activities, rather than simply "fleecing" like Pinduoduo.

Of course, these are just ideas, and whether they can be realized requires more rigorous scrutiny from a commercial perspective.

3. Profit Model

Only after having core services can we derive ways to make money. Through the above analysis, we can know that the core services provided by Xiaohongshu to users are content notes, enterprise marketing and community e-commerce. Therefore, the main profit model is summarized as follows:

The note community is one of the main battlefields for advertising. If you click on "Discover", you can basically see that there is at least one advertisement in every 10 notes you browse, and this does not include many soft advertising articles that users are unconsciously advised to read. Xiaohongshu does a great job of combining advertising recommendations with users’ interests.
Since I have no actual contact with enterprise accounts , I can only infer from the direct words in online news that Xiaohongshu provides users who want to use the platform with a closed-loop backend service system from marketing, products to transaction chains. In this way, users can view their relevant data dashboards in real time and choose more targeted promotion services, and the platform can profit from this.
Since the reform of its e-commerce system in early 2019, Xiaohongshu has launched stimulating measures such as welfare clubs, new product catalogs, and limited-time purchases, while retaining its global direct procurement business. At the same time, it has cooperated with brands to launch exclusive discount activities to attract consumers and earn a lot of price difference; it also opened an offline experience store in Shanghai shopping malls and paid a lot of money to invite Zhao Youting to experience it to create a gimmick, but the experience store in Shanghai has recently closed. It seems that the profit difference between offline and online is still very large.

4. Operational Means

1. Content Operation

When you open Xiaohongshu, you will arrive at the "Discover" page, which is the main page. These overwhelming high-quality contents are the core business that attracts users. It is precisely a set of effective content operation strategies that has built a strong barrier for Xiaohongshu to attract users.

(1) Content theme

Targeting the core female users with high spending power, Xiaohongshu can always find a large amount of high-quality written content on current hot topics such as fashion, skin care, travel, fitness, etc. Depending on different demand scenarios and user habits, these themes are often fission-like.

For example, if you search for the well-known CT brand, you can see more than 100,000 notes shared, which basically covers all the products of the brand, and the trials of the popular eye shadow and lipstick colors are very comprehensive. The tags for a certain eye shadow product include "magical eye shadow", "eye shadow swatches", "gentle colors for autumn and winter", "cosmetics that are repurchased endlessly" and other topic keywords. Once you enter the topic, there will be more similar recommendations for beautiful things. It is this woven content cloud map that covers many popular and niche products in a category, giving users the most comprehensive and down-to-earth recommendations.

Not only girls, but male users are also gradually attracted by the content of Xiaohongshu. According to the "Upward Life - 2019 Xiaohongshu Community Trend Report" released by Xiaohongshu on December 31, 2019, men are more likely to post fashion content than women, mainly including hairstyles and outfits. For men who come to Xiaohongshu, 17.8% of their content is related to fashion, 50% higher than that of women. The report also shows that traveling, DIY, decorating, and showing off cute pets are the most common activities for men on Xiaohongshu.

As mentioned earlier in the article, content has no gender or region distinction. It’s just that people who are interested in the content gather into circles. As long as you feed them high-quality content, you can firmly grasp these users.

Quoted from "Upward Life - 2019 Xiaohongshu Community Trend Report"

(2) Content organization

It is very important to organize the content in a concise and concise form, and Xiaohongshu has done this very well. The note list page created by high-quality creators gives people the most direct aesthetic enjoyment through exquisite filters and designed photos or short videos. The note details page uses labels to summarize the most important information presented in the picture, which is very clear. At the same time, some carefully formatted text introductions (such as inserting emoticons in order) are also very consistent with the user's psychology and expression habits.

Now the short video playback format of Xiaohongshu is similar to that of Tik Tok, with a single infinite loop + up and down sliding switching. This immersive interaction is very addictive for users. But the small difference is that after Xiaohongshu plays a video for the first time, a 5-s interface for following the author and choosing to replay will pop up, and then jump into unlimited replays - this may be more for the content creators to increase fans and improve the conversion rate of the creators' homepages, rather than just paying attention to a single work.

(3) Content delivery

Xiaohongshu’s recommendation algorithm is quite accurate. As long as you search for a key topic or browse certain notes, it will recommend many similar notes after real-time refresh, making it convenient for users to learn more about the content they are interested in, that is, “Xiaohongshu knows the user better than the user knows himself.” However, Xiaohongshu’s friend-based social networking is not mainstream. If more user behavior information is obtained by enriching modules such as “Friends searching”, “Peers searching”, and “Nearby searching”, I believe this algorithm can be more precise.

(4) Content packaging

Currently, the content of Xiaohongshu is still limited to sharing in the form of videos and pictures. It would be great if more content packaging could be developed, such as launching a list of the most practical good things, a list of the most beautiful eye makeup, niche and beautiful travel destinations, photos of sunsets at the most beautiful travel destinations, etc., to create a lifestyle with a certain subjective color and encourage users to participate in the rankings - because when the value of showing off itself is increased, the more you can experience the pleasure of showing off. Alternatively, AR technology can be used to display earrings, watches and other accessories to enhance the user experience and increase the fun of use.

2. User Operation

Xiaohongshu's users are divided into two categories: people who produce content, including PGC (professional content producers) : that is, the vertical accounts officially created by Xiaohongshu, such as Captain Shu, Dress Shu, Video Shu, Entertainment Shu, etc.; and PUGC (professional user-generated content) , including celebrities invited by the platform, internet celebrities or experts from MCN agencies, and users cultivated by the platform itself - these talents are the main force for the platform to produce high-quality content. Their personal brand effect can bring huge traffic to the platform.

For example, entertainment stars such as Fan Bingbing, Qi Wei, and Lin Yun who share various skin care and makeup products and experiences on Xiaohongshu, their own reputation and image are consistent with the cultural atmosphere of exquisite petty bourgeoisie spread by Xiaohongshu. At the same time, they have their own hot spots, attracting ordinary girls to imitate them.

For example, Wu Jinyan, who became popular because of "Story of Yanxi Palace", received 52,000 likes and 13,000 collections for a video she posted on Xiaohongshu recommending a body perfume during the TV series's popularity. I personally also bought a CT lipstick because of her and I can't put it down. This shows the ability of traffic stars to bring goods.

Another type of user is the ordinary weed-picking girls (boys) : As a platform with strong social attributes, Xiaohongshu encourages users to post, share, like, forward, collect, comment, etc., and has set up a ten-level user growth system. Each level has corresponding social attribute task requirements. Completing these tasks will allow users to grow to the next level, thereby encouraging users to use Xiaohongshu more. In the process of upgrading and fighting monsters, it is also unknowingly encouraging users with creative abilities to become new PUGCs, produce more high-quality content and disseminate it on the platform, forming a positive cycle of incentives.

Quoted from Xiaohongshu user level

3. E-commerce operations

As we all know, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce journey has been rather bumpy: from its initial establishment as a cross-border e-commerce company to its improved profitability after the launch of the welfare club, it has often been exposed to problems such as "fake goods" and "invalid refunds" due to supply chain problems and insufficiently favorable prices. Users do not fully trust Xiaohongshu's e-commerce platform. They often buy products through content and then choose Taobao, JD.com and other large platforms to buy them. As a result, Xiaohongshu's monetization ability has been somewhat weak.

In response to these problems, Xiaohongshu has been trying to get out of the predicament: last year, Xiaohongshu split and upgraded its e-commerce department into "Enterprise Account" and "Welfare Club" - " Enterprise Account " focuses on brand marketing and transactions, connecting brands, bloggers and ordinary users to obtain advertising revenue; " Welfare Club " focuses on integrating the supply chain process of commodity procurement, warehousing logistics and customer service. At the same time, it can be found that many note contents have opened Taobao shopping links, and Taobao links can be seen with grass-planting reviews marked with Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu has not given up on incubating its own e-commerce brand: Xiaohongdian exists in the form of a WeChat mini-program mall, trying to enter the e-commerce field with low-priced and high-selling internet celebrity snacks.

Xiaohongshu is also trying its hand in the live streaming field, which has grown wildly under the stimulation of the epidemic. Recently, LV just ended its live broadcast on Xiaohongshu, because its target audience is the sophisticated white-collar users like these on Xiaohongshu.

According to the data: Xiaohongshu has chosen a differentiated live broadcast format . The live broadcast is based on its core advantage content notes, and is mainly based on sharing and chatting. The atmosphere of bringing goods is more emotional rather than profit-driven, and it is also biased towards private domains - this has also increased the actual purchase rate of consumers in a certain way. I believe that Xiaohongshu will take more actions in the field of live broadcast in the future.

5. Product Function Analysis

This chapter mainly analyzes the latest version of the product functions and the needs and business value behind them, analyzes ideas for further optimization of platform functions, and proposes App-side interaction highlights and optimization suggestions, so as to get a glimpse of the future development of Xiaohongshu products.

1. Product function analysis of the latest version

This functional block diagram shows the iOS 6.40 version:

From the functional block diagram above, we can see that the core functions of Xiaohongshu are designed around the core business content: the four main functional areas of homepage, release, message and me are all attributes of social content, and the e-commerce entrance is unified on the mall page.

The following table analyzes the three major functional categories (content dissemination, community communication, and online shopping) and the functional points they contain from the perspectives of scenarios, needs, and business value:

As shown in the detailed information in the table above, the basic demand is the smallest version of the core functions of Xiaohongshu in the content and e-commerce fields. As the user base increases, the expected needs of users will be gradually explored, and exciting functions will be researched and designed to solve the pain points of a large number of users at one go, or in line with the trend of the times. If an App has several such functions that are done well, it will be enough to become a trend-setter that everyone is chasing after.

From the above analysis, we can know that the highlight functions of Xiaohongshu are mainly note tags, recommended notes, social data display, and the construction of a membership system. The business value contained in it, from the platform's perspective, is to provide users with services that meet or even define user needs as much as possible. This demand may be the demand for information itself or the demand for the form of information presentation; from the user's perspective, it is to efficiently obtain valuable information.

2. Functional optimization thinking

Based on the above functional status analysis, I propose the following optimization ideas from the two business modules of content and mall:

(1) Content module optimization

Purpose of demand:

In order to strengthen Xiaohongshu's influence in the content field, I believe that on the one hand, we need to deepen the dissemination of content among users , which means encouraging users to socialize more on the platform, enrich social gameplay, discover popular trends, immerse themselves in content and increase their stay time; on the other hand, we should try to expand the types of user groups , such as male users, acquaintance users, users in third- and fourth-tier cities, etc., to develop their needs in order to gain stronger vitality for the platform.

Optimization suggestions:

1) Add a reward function for high-quality content: There are many capable creators on Xiaohongshu, but there are also many authors who have put in a lot of effort but struggle to get equal returns from these contents.

For this scenario, the platform needs to set up a content review and scoring mechanism, and for high-quality content, creators should be given a more direct way to prove their creative ability and obtain more financial incentives - the reward function is the most practical expression of readers' appreciation for creators. Moreover, Xiaohongshu's core users are a group with strong purchasing power. They are more capable of paying for content as long as the content is of high quality and in line with their inner wishes.

Therefore, it is recommended to add a "reward" function after high-quality content. After the reward is completed, it will automatically jump to the author's details page and pop up a pop-up reminder of "reward successful", thus providing users with a quick way to learn more about the author.

2) Add interactive functions to video content: If the video is simply played, users may only filter the content conveyed by the video to see if they are interested. Unless they are particularly interested, they generally will not click on the comment area to check. If comment bubbles are added, users can watch the comments while understanding the video content. Perhaps a spark in the comments will attract users, which can better attract users to discuss the content itself and encourage users to speak.

Therefore, it is recommended to add a bubble comment area above the author's avatar and video attribute information on the left (click the lower right button to switch between displaying/hiding), and display it in a carousel as the video plays. At the same time, retaining the interaction of single-click pages will hide information such as creators, titles, comments, etc., making the interface browsing cleaner and simpler:

3) Add popular tags and personalized recommendations to the search bar: The current search results are a mixture of recommendations and hot search keywords. I personally think this feature is a good idea, but it is not clear enough. Because the "Discover" homepage is already a personalized page created by the algorithm, users do not have a place to browse and find out what others are searching for, and the search discovery provides very few hot search keywords of this type.

Therefore, it is recommended to separate the popular tags and personalized recommendation columns. The popular tags directly display the most searched tags (or topics) on the platform every hour, with an emphasis on the top three, so as to inform users of the current popular trends and increase user stickiness. The personalized recommendation column maintains the original tag recommendation method, providing users with more thoughtful search options in a relatively concise manner.

4) My following added classification details: The follow page belongs to the category of private domain traffic, although this is not the focus of some bloggers on Xiaohongshu, because private domain traffic operation is suitable for those products with a high repurchase rate, such as affordable beauty products, stationery, snacks, etc., thereby gathering a group of loyal users for word-of-mouth publicity and compound interest operation.

But I think Xiaohongshu should also provide this function option, and slowly cultivate the habit of users using Xiaohongshu to share experiences and knowledge, rather than just choosing WeChat or Weibo to socialize with acquaintances - because socializing with acquaintances is also a very important part of "my life".

Therefore, it is recommended to further refine the user classification on the My Follow page, and divide them into blogger follow-up, my friends and special attention according to the distance of social emotions between people, to encourage increasing the frequency of using Xiaohongshu among acquaintances, and indirectly enhance the strength of private domain traffic operation. In terms of detailed interaction, the acquaintances and friends page has added a feature that allows you to set a person as a special follower by swiping left for the first time, and cancel the special follower by swiping left for the second time. On the homepage of the follow page, long press on the follow page to pop up the category options, and you can quickly choose which category of people you follow to browse content.

5) Enrich the local life service content of third- and fourth-tier small cities: Comparing the local life service pages of first-tier large cities (Shanghai) and third- and fourth-tier small cities (Huaibei City, Anhui Province), it can be found that the content scenarios of the Shanghai page are rich and comprehensive. Users can filter out a lot of content that is more relevant and easier to access in this function page; while the content of the small city Huaibei page is repeated and even includes recommendations for distant cities. The name does not directly display the city name, but "nearby" - I think the main reason is the difference in urban consumption levels, which results in third- and fourth-tier small cities having very few content carriers that conform to the "petty bourgeoisie culture". Coupled with the different consumption concepts and awareness of the population, the quality and quantity of content output are naturally greatly reduced.

In response to this phenomenon, it is recommended that Xiaohongshu dig deeper into the needs of user groups in third- and fourth-tier small cities, because although their consumption levels may not be high, their size is huge. On the Nearby page, set the switch button between note mode and map mode. The note mode displays local life note content, and the map mode directly displays the geographical location of nearby stores for each scene classification (you can set it to food, reading, nearby relaxation, stationery store exploration, etc.). The landmark directly indicates the user avatar who shared the latest notes of this landmark, and clicking on the user avatar will display the relevant note content of this place.

The reason for setting up the map mode is that the consumption areas in small cities are relatively single and concentrated. In fact, there may be only one or two shopping malls within a radius of dozens of miles, so it can be expressed more clearly on the map. In this way, users can find the most relevant content directly and quickly on the map no matter what information they want to know.

If a shopping mall has a discount, it can be posted here directly to attract surrounding residents to experience and consume. Due to geographical limitations, people in small cities are more familiar with each other and like to compete with each other. At the same time, avatar-style landmarks are set up to encourage users to post notes related to locations, because their notes can be seen by people nearby. Maybe if I post a note about taking my child out to eat, my colleagues who live in the next community may find it and want to take their family to try it on the weekend.

(2) E-commerce module optimization

Purpose of demand:

In order to change Xiaohongshu's weak trend in the e-commerce field, I think we should think from the perspective of function: on the one hand, it should take advantage of its own content to realize comments on notes and buyers' reviews, thereby strengthening users' trust in the platform's products, which is also conducive to the platform's screening and removal of inferior products; on the other hand, it should provide certain high-quality KOLs and brands with the function of centrally displaying product links, so that users can purchase products from the perspective of products rather than just content recommendations.

Given the current trend of "planting grass on Xiaohongshu and pulling grass out on Taobao", the display of third-party links on the platform should be allowed and controlled, while paying attention to improving the cost-effectiveness of the platform's products. Perhaps by creating and selling some hot-selling products, Xiaohongshu's reputation in the e-commerce field can be restored.

Optimization suggestions:

1) Realize the intercommunication between buyers’ comments and notes

Currently, the reviews on Xiaohongshu e-commerce are independent, and most products have few or inadequate reviews. It is recommended that reviews and notes be interconnected, and selected detailed reviews be displayed on the product details page, with user avatars displayed. Multiple reviews can display more information using limited space.

At the same time, if you use the note system to write reviews, the review pictures and information will be more real and increase the reference value, which is the advantage of the Xiaohongshu note content itself. When generating reviews, review notes are also automatically generated, allowing users to quickly find what they have purchased on their personal details page - of course, this function can be made optional, giving users the option to fully protect their privacy.

2) Added monthly best sellers list and simplified venue entrance

The concise venue page is designed to make the entrances to each activity clearer. It uses a grid format instead of stacked posters to effectively distinguish it from the carousel ads and avoid being top-heavy (of course, this is a personal opinion. The middle picture below only provides one form of display. The specific information needs to be combined with the activity itself to provide the most important information).

The monthly hot-selling list is divided into male and female users. The platform selects the conscientious products of each month based on factors such as hot search tags, sales volume, word of mouth, etc., to provide the public with a more authoritative reference, while increasing the exposure of products and bringing in profits (it should be noted that the list must be as fair and conscientious as possible to have reference value).

3) Add product showcases for some high-quality bloggers

Directly adding a "Products" column to the blogger's personal homepage can direct traffic to platform products or Taobao products. The initial version of the product display window can be designed to be simpler and more efficient, displaying important information such as products, brands, prices, etc. in chronological order. After the internal testing results are good, you can consider adding icing on the cake features such as product screening and sharing.

In the formulation of rules, links to third-party platforms should be restricted, the threshold for link publishing should be raised, and the traffic of one's own mall should be ensured to occupy a dominant position. Bloggers should have a strict screening mechanism before they can delegate power, and brands should only use Xiaohongshu’s mall channel, so as to ensure that the platform’s reputation and users will not be affected too much by commercialization, but instead feel that it has brought convenience to themselves.

3. Interactive experience analysis and optimization suggestions

Good interaction should be something that users don’t notice when using it, but still feel comfortable with. Below are some of the interactive experiences I had on Xiaohongshu, and I offer my own optimization suggestions, hoping to provide some reference experience for myself and my readers.

(1) Picture notes

Drag the left side of the note to the right to return to the previous page, and drag the right side of the note to the left to jump to the author's details page. The entire interactive action is very smooth, especially the latter action of jumping to the details page by sliding instead of clicking and reducing the click, which is quite creative and also attracts traffic to the creators.

Double-click the picture to like it, and a red heart effect will pop up. To cancel the like, you can only click the love heart below. I think if you want to have fun, you can add a heart-breaking effect when you double-click the picture.

For notes with multiple pictures, the function of picture browsing and positioning has been added, which allows users to quickly locate the first picture and improve the efficiency of information screening. At the same time, in order to facilitate browsing of more comment areas, it is recommended to add a drop-down slider on the right.

The label pop-up animation changes from dots to bubble-style dialog boxes. The dots will add shadow animations to enhance the prompts. Clicking on the image will switch to show/hide the label. I think this interactive detail of Xiaohongshu is very interesting and comfortable. As shown in the figure below, clicking on the tag will lead to the H5 page of film reviews. I think we can add a function to pop up tag-related functions by long pressing the tag, so as to enrich the gameplay of tags, instead of the current limited display and traffic diversion functions.

For example, the following figure shows tag attribute information (setting tag hot lists, adding tag social data, allowing users to participate more in discussions of tag topics), participating in tag discussions (click to pop up the publishing interface of this topic), collecting tags, and tag error correction (correcting situations where tags do not match images and texts) and other functions.

(2) Video notes

It is recommended to enlarge the pause/play button . I think the pause button is a bit small and is in the corner, so it may require a second click.

Swiping up and down will switch similar videos recommended by the algorithm. Swipe left to exit the viewing process. If you exit by mistake, click again to start playing from the beginning. It is recommended to add a recording function, re-enter the game and start from the last playback point, and remind you within 5 seconds whether to play from the beginning, which will be more user-friendly.

Long press to pop up functions such as "dislike" or "block". This function is relatively secretive and may be a little protection provided by the product manager from the perspective of the creator.

(3) Note management

On the "Me" page, you can slide to switch to view the notes, favorites and liked pages, which is very convenient. It is recommended to add a "+" button after all notes on the note page to increase the function of note classification, which is suitable for personal management of notes. At the same time, long press the tag to implement the editing functions of the note tag, including "modify" and "delete".

After posting a note, it will automatically jump to the "Follow" page instead of the "Me" page. The designer’s intention may be to create more opportunities to guide users to browse and increase the time users stay on the homepage (content page).

On the note list page, notes are displayed in a staggered waterfall flow. Long pressing a note will pop up labels for functions such as "not interested" and so on. I think if we want to improve the accuracy of the algorithm, we need more interaction from users. It would be better to directly use a "label tearing off" effect by swiping left on the left column or cutting right on the right column to prompt the algorithm that the user does not like the content, which is more conducive to creating "one thousand faces for one thousand people". The image below shows the effect of tearing off the right column label. The same is true for the left column label.

When you get tired of scrolling, just click on the "Follow", "Discover", or "Nearby" tab to automatically return to the top and refresh. I think this interactive detail is very well done, because reading concentration is short-lived, and a quick refresh can update the user's browsing point and enhance user stickiness.

(4) Instant dynamic release

There are two entrances, one is the "Share Moment" button of "Me", and the other is the icon in the upper left corner of the homepage . It is recommended to add prompt effects to the icon, such as rotation or expansion and reduction, to remind users that this function is here.

(5) Mall page

Xiaohongshu’s e-commerce scale is not as large as Taobao’s, but the mall’s homepage still looks a bit messy. I analyzed that the possible reason is that the banner poster on the homepage carousel is relatively small, while the marketing poster in the middle is very large in comparison. The stacking of several entrances affects the aesthetics. I suggest that the display module of the marketing activities can be further optimized. Please refer to the prototype diagram of the mall module in the previous section for my optimization plan.

Comparison between Xiaohongshu and Taobao Mall homepage

Click the More button in the upper left corner, and more dialog boxes will pop up at the top, including an "X" exit key. I think it is better to just slide up instead of clicking the exit key , because people always want to save trouble, and sliding is more convenient than raising your hand and clicking.

(6) Message page

Swiping left on the message dialog box will delete it. It is recommended to add a function of swiping right on the message to pin it to the top , allowing users to choose to pin the dialog box of the people they care about.

VI. Future Outlook

1. Deepen the advantages in content areas

The note content of Xiaohongshu is the most attractive module for users, but many people also know that sometimes "soft articles" are rampant. Some creators go against their original intentions and write untrue or partially false or even illegal content in order to obtain advertising benefits. When users try to delete the content, they find that the quality is poor. This situation has caused the loss of some users. Another argument is that the cultural values expressed by some internet celebrities on Xiaohongshu tend to be vain and materialistic, always creating a kind of ostentatious and refined life, which is not conducive to the identification and development of the student group.

There are various answers to the highly voted question "Why did you uninstall Xiaohongshu?" on Zhihu, which pointed out some distortions in the dissemination of community culture.

However, Xiaohongshu is still the world's largest community e-commerce platform. According to Analysys data, Xiaohongshu has long been ranked in the top 5 in the social category of the iOS download list. In mid-to-late February of this year, when the epidemic was at its worst, the number of downloads even climbed to the first place, which shows the reputation and appeal of Xiaohongshu.

After being taken off the shelves for rectification last year, Xiaohongshu will certainly continue to deepen its influence in the content field, improve its content review mechanism, and raise the threshold for content dissemination. Only with correct guidance and supervision, neither laissez-faire nor overcorrection, can we establish a good community cultural atmosphere and gain a place in the competition.

2. Don’t give up on exploring e-commerce

E-commerce, as Xiaohongshu’s original business, remains an important part of its genes. Although Xiaohongshu is difficult to compete with giants like Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo, it is also a good strategy to use its content advantages to reach cooperation with them. At the same time, according to the online information, Xiaohongshu has been incubating the "Xiaohongshang" project since the beginning of 2019, and used the WeChat mini-program platform to provide services to three-party stores from Internet celebrity snacks.

According to the official account of Xiaohongshu Xiaohong Store, the "Enterprise Expert" and "Good Product Sharing Official" plan was launched at the end of 2019, and experts who like to share and choose good products will choose hot products, hot products, and good products to promote friends in the circle of friends. Xiaohongshu provides support for products, content, logistics and customer service.

This is also a sublimation based on the advantages of planting and pulling weeds in Xiaohongshu itself, but it is not aimed at the original public domain traffic, but private domain traffic such as Moments and WeChat groups. This type of promotion may not be large in size, but the word-of-mouth effect of acquaintances does have the advantages of planting grass in fact, and should be considered from a comprehensive perspective of pros and cons.

3. Trial of live broadcast mode

According to online data, on the live broadcast demand collection questionnaire for Xiaohongshu Enterprise Account, Xiaohongshu official provides 7 live content modules, namely cloud class, cloud fitness, cloud light shop shopping, product display, knowledge sharing, e-commerce sales and others. This also indirectly means that Xiaohongshu live broadcast is not limited to live broadcasting, but is more about sharing related to the content dissemination of the platform itself.

However, compared with other live broadcast platforms, Xiaohongshu has many internet celebrities but lacks top anchors like Li Jiaqi and Weiya. Xiaohongshu's supply chain has always been criticized and cannot give them the low-price advantage they require - the actual monetization ability of anchors on Xiaohongshu needs to be considered.

These may be because the development of Xiaohongshu Live is not the first, and the live broadcast mode is only for the test stage, and it is not like Douyin and Kuaishou that have begun to promote live broadcasts on the main interface. Personally, I believe that Xiaohongshu can deepen the layering and recommendation of live broadcast content, and recommend live broadcasts that she is interested in to users. For example, students should recommend more live broadcasts such as English, affordable outfits, cloud learning check-in, etc. to ensure that the output of live broadcast culture will not affect the user experience.

Final Thoughts

I am a Xiaobai, who is interested in products born after 1995. I love Xiaohongshu’s contents very much. As a daily girl who eats local food, I hope Xiaohongshu will get better and better. Write this article to summarize your rough understanding of Xiaohongshu. I can only see that if there are any inappropriate areas, please leave a message for advice.