Analysis of Tik Tok short video products!

This article mainly analyzes the product development and overall framework of the " Tik Tok" app, takes Kuaishou as a comparison object, combines Tik Tok's operating strategy as well as existing content and data resources, analyzes and discusses its core competitiveness and summarizes my own thoughts.

• Experience APP: Tik Tok short video
• Experience device: Redmi Note7
• Operating version: Android 9
• Experience version: 11.2.0
• Writing time: 2020.6.5
• Written by: wittgen

This article consists of twelve parts plus two special topics and one note. One to nine are more microscopic analyses of the product itself, focusing on the user and product levels. Ten to eleven are analyses and reflections on the market and competing products. Twelve is some specific suggestions. After that are two special topics, namely the author’s understanding of the short video industry and some analysis of consumer decision-making in the currently popular e-commerce field of short videos. The final notes are some explanations for this article. Due to the author's limited level and limited sources of information, please forgive the omissions and superficial analysis in the content. Personally, I think the essence of thinking is after Part 10. Friends who are short on time can jump directly there.

1. Product Introduction

Douyin is a short video content publishing, aggregation and distribution platform that focuses on meeting the entertainment, social and shopping needs of young people.

2. Product (brand) slogan

"Record a beautiful life"

Analysis of brand value and differentiation: Kuaishou’s brand slogan is “See every kind of life on Kuaishou”. Douyin’s products emphasize the “beauty” of life, while Kuaishou’s products emphasize “every kind” of life, which corresponds to the different ways they want to shape users’ perceptions of their brands. Douyin focuses on distributing traffic to top players and those who create high-quality videos, emphasizing that the Douyin content created by users is high-quality and spreadable; while Kuaishou has always wanted to create a community and build a user relationship chain, distributing traffic in a decentralized manner so that everyone and every life can be seen. This makes users form a brand impression of Kuaishou that the content is more diverse, but not necessarily high-quality.

3. Product Logo

The small icon displayed on the mobile phone screen is two staggered musical notes. The front note is pink and the back note is white. The background is blue, which symbolizes the shaking of the musical notes. It is well connected with the name Tik Tok, and the icon is memorable.

After entering the initial page of the APP, two musical notes are still displayed, but their colors are swapped and the background is black. On the one hand, this background color setting can naturally transition to the Douyin video page with a black background. On the other hand, it also highlights the Douyin logo, which is very concise and memorable.

4. Product Positioning

The product is positioned as trendy, youthful, musical and social, providing young people with entertainment during fragmented time, while meeting their needs for socializing, following trends and topics, sharing and expressing themselves.

5. User Demand Analysis

1. Population distribution and characteristics:

According to a research report by QuestMobile, overall, 61% of Douyin users are between 19 and 35 years old, and 39% are in other age groups. Men aged 19-25 and 41-45 have a high preference, while women aged 19-30 have a high preference. Their geographical distribution is mainly in new first-tier cities and below, among which new first-tier and third-tier cities and below have a higher TGI. In terms of preferred video types, performance, life, and food videos have higher playback volumes, men have a higher preference for military, games, and cars, while women have a higher preference for beauty, mother and baby, and clothing.

Overall, it is reasonable for Douyin to target young people as its product targets. First, young people make up the majority of users. Second, they have more free time and are willing to participate in video production and watching videos. They are very interested in new and exciting things and interesting ways of playing. They are also very willing to spread and share videos. Third, their consumption power is stronger than other age groups, and their monetization ability is also stronger.

2. User usage scenarios:

Young office workers in new first-tier and second-tier cities feel bored during the fragmented time of commuting (taking the subway or bus). They are unable to watch or have no interest in watching long videos or reading, and find it difficult to perform complex mobile phone operations so they cannot play games. So they open the Douyin app and quickly concentrate their attention within 15 seconds to enjoy a brief relaxation and entertainment. When they arrive at the company or return home, they can immediately close the app and use the next large block of time to do other things they want to do without having to worry about their thoughts being interrupted.

College students in new first-tier and second-tier cities return to their dormitories after a day of study and open TikTok to see if there are any new topics to relax.

Young office workers in third-tier and lower cities get off work earlier and have more free time. However, there are no rich social and entertainment activities in their cities, and they have not developed any special hobbies, so they spend their time watching Douyin.

6. Product Usage Process Analysis (Taking the Home Page as an Example)

The process of using the Douyin product is very simple. After entering the APP and displaying the initial page, the first thing you enter is the recommended column on the homepage. Immediately presented is the video that is currently playing and will be played in a loop. The video basically occupies the entire width of the phone, but the length of the video varies, so some videos take up the entire screen, and some videos only take up part of the screen. However, the black background of the product ensures that the user's viewing experience will not be affected even if the videos are of different lengths.

The video contains elements such as text, animated images, and audio, and there are various editing methods, which will not be described in detail here. There are five buttons in the lower right corner of the interface, corresponding to the video publisher's avatar, likes, comments, sharing, and music playback. The corresponding icons for likes, comments, and sharing are a colorless heart, a topic cloud, and a curved arrow, respectively.

After the video is played twice, the share button will change from a curved arrow to a white Moments logo with a green outline, and will continue to shrink and enlarge to remind users to share videos they think are good, thereby expanding the influence of Tik Tok.

The lower left corner contains notes on the video information, including the name of the video owner, the topic of the video, video comments, etc. These links can be clicked to enter the discussion of the topic of interest or guide users to follow the up-master to increase their sense of participation.

The live broadcast icon is located in the upper left corner of the page, and the search icon is located in the upper right corner of the page, but it is not very obvious (semi-transparent) compared to the entire taskbar below. It is not easy to find these icons without user guidance, and it is even more difficult to find the star list, hot list, live broadcast list, etc. hidden in the search bar. Of course, this placement may be related to Tik Tok’s strategy, which is to emphasize the immersiveness of the video and not want other functions or information to disturb this immersive experience.

At the very bottom are the Home, Same City, Take Video, Message and Me buttons, which are relatively common settings. There are many filters and different ways to play in the video shooting part. Although this has raised the threshold for creation to a certain extent, it has made Douyin more interesting.

7. Product Operation Mode (Incomplete Summary)

1. Content community building:

1. KOL: Sign up Internet celebrities and MCNs to ensure the continuous output of high-quality content, and establish a service team to monetize through advertising and other means
2. Content distribution: mining popular content for ordinary users to maintain user activity

2. Hotspot marketing and topic marketing:

Constantly create hot topics, build a star-making system, and use the positive feedback effect to continuously improve user activity: Through the star-making system, some KOLs are made famous, and the higher socioeconomic status of KOLs and the "seemingly" easy replicability of their path to fame have caused more and more people to want to enter this system to publish content and get their own piece of the pie.

8. Commercial realization methods (more conventional)

(1) Advertising

1. Add high-quality short video ads to the video feed
2. Customize the in-site challenge topics, such as #Join you have 20 million#
3. live streaming

(2) E-commerce

1. Click the shopping cart button in the short video (usually only available in large size) to see product recommendations
2. Internet celebrities post their WeChat and Weibo addresses on their personal homepages, encouraging users to add contact information and then become micro-businesses to monetize membership

(3) Reward

(4) Subscription

IX. Market and Competitors

Short videos have gradually become a trend, with a large amount of capital and players pouring in, and Douyin and Kuaishou are dominating the platform competition. The monetization methods of short videos are becoming more and more mature. From live e-commerce to knowledge payment to advertising, the marketing methods used on other platforms have been used on short video platforms. The content echelons of the two platforms are gradually expanding, and competition within the platforms is intensifying.

1. Competitive product features (taking Kuaishou as an example)

(1) Traffic distribution

Distribute more traffic to ordinary creators, suppress extreme head-direction and ensure the traffic of ordinary authors [this can further enhance user stickiness]. There is no support policy for Internet celebrities (but because I don’t understand the specific situation and the author’s time and energy are limited, I don’t know what the current policy is).

(2) User distribution

It focuses more on third-, fourth- and fifth-tier cities, where people have relatively low educational levels, a lot of disposable time, and are willing to participate in creation. Douyin users are mainly in new first-tier and second-tier cities (however, the information provided by different sources is somewhat inconsistent. Some data show that the distribution of Douyin users is also very even. In short, because this industry changes rapidly, the relevant information about users can only be used as a reference for the time being)

(3) Validity period of the content

That is, how long the content is retained. Kuaishou is shorter, a total of 24-48 hours. The duration of Douyin is generally about 90 days, which is too short to accumulate a large number of followers, and the followers cannot be followed. Unable to grow explosively

(4) Product positioning

We value submission rate (i.e. personal participation) rather than video views, and focus on shaping the community, making inclusive distribution, and cultivating the work carefully. Tik Tok, on the other hand, focuses more on the average video viewing rate per person, emphasizes on creating media, and relatively speaking, attaches more importance to explosive growth.

In the UI interface, after playing Kuaishou, the next button is the comment area, which encourages creators and viewers, and viewers and viewers to communicate and establish a certain chain of relationships through a relatively smooth guidance mechanism. [But even so, it still shapes KOLs within a small group, and some people are more suitable for creation and promotion. At the same time, this situation is not conducive to the generation and spread of topics.

Of course, Kuaishou has also been revised and added an immersive interface, but I don’t know if the distribution method has changed. It has a strong social atmosphere, the content comment rate is 3 times that of Douyin, and the interaction rate is 2.5 times that of Douyin. There is more expression of intimacy and expectation in the interaction, and the status between fans and KOLs is relatively equal. On the other hand, Tik Tok directly uploads the next video, striving for more views rather than deeper user engagement. The status between fans and KOLs is relatively unequal, and the overall operation method is similar to that of Weibo.

(5) Main page design

Kuaishou provides users with a UI interface with certain choices, i.e. two rows and two columns. The error rate of matching user needs is reduced, but it lacks an immersive experience. However, in conjunction with another large-screen mode (which is very similar to the Douyin page), this defect can be compensated to a certain extent. The characteristics of Douyin have been analyzed before, that is, a completely immersive experience, which does not emphasize user participation in discussions.

In general, the user groups of Kuaishou and Douyin are gradually converging, and the duplication of content is also beginning to increase. The strong community connections formed by Kuaishou will enable it to invisibly seize the traffic of communities that focus on relationship chains such as WeChat and QQ, while the popularity and centralized nature of Douyin will enable it to seize the traffic of Baidu and Weibo.

2. Analysis of decentralized short video communities and centralized short video communities

There are many differences. The former can form small groups in different regions or different interest circles, and through communication and sharing between people, establish increasingly close connections on the Internet, that is, form increasingly stable relationship chains. However, there is a significant problem: if a region lacks KOLs who can produce high-quality and interesting videos, the attractiveness of the community itself will decline compared to other channels that provide richer information.

In addition, the community itself is also very easily influenced by external trends. Take the very classic WeChat and Weibo interactive chain as an example. People often learn about the most popular topics from Weibo hot searches and participate in the first discussion on Weibo, and then share them in the private traffic of the circle of friends for discussion and secondary fermentation. It can often only act as a recipient and it is difficult to spontaneously create some topics that can become popular on the entire network with the help of traffic distribution mechanisms. This will greatly limit the platform's brand building and continued brand image maintenance.

However, a unique feature of the decentralized community Kuaishou is that the links between users it creates are weaker than those of WeChat (there is no real-name and physical contact, and people only get to know each other through videos), but stronger than those of Weibo and Douyin. This feature gives it good commercialization potential.

In addition, the strategies of decentralization and centralization can also be changed or integrated in actual operations. For example, Kuaishou now uses two content presentation methods, one is the original two-column format, and the other is an immersive format that is very similar to Douyin. This gives different users different choices, and at the same time, it can also introduce a centralized model for creating hot spots. Since users have been trained in the habit of commenting by the community model, even if the immersive page does not highlight the comment function, the user interactivity is very strong, which will significantly increase user stickiness, and this will indeed have a relatively large impact on communities that only emphasize centralization.

10. Future Development Direction

1. More sophisticated operations, such as HeyBox Live, can create a relaxed and relaxing atmosphere and a variety show effect
2. Expand your own user base: The difficulty lies in the conflict between the medium of short videos and in-depth ideological content. If you want to expand to a more elite group, you may need to create another different brand, such as providing exquisite pictures and texts and cultivating a photography community like Instagram, and then combining your own algorithm technology for precise push.
3. Find a track that can fully utilize your core competitiveness
4. Build your own e-commerce closed loop and continue to improve the construction of Douyin's e-commerce system

11. ByteDance’s overall strategy

In China, on the one hand, in order to expand its market influence as much as possible and make investors and shareholders fully aware of the company's growth potential and recognize its good market performance; on the other hand, when the existing fields are experiencing weak growth (Toutiao) or fierce competition (short videos) is about to reach the ceiling, it intends to find new outlets (there is no particularly strong user stickiness in this field, and competitive barriers have not yet been established). Therefore, it uses a lot of resources to test the waters in different fields, such as the gaming field (mainly agents), education field, search field, office field, cloud computing field, etc.

Actively expand overseas and globalize to compete for foreign content traffic resources.

Gaming: Establish user awareness through game content and advertising operations on own channels (Toutiao and Douyin); exclusively represent small games and casual games to gather and further educate users, and accumulate user portraits of active game players; harvest through agency and self-developed games

Education: It is trying in various segments, but has not yet accumulated its own resources such as teachers and platform construction.

Content area: broaden user channels and poach people from competitors. For example, the Dou Growth Incubation Camp is an official new author support program that covers almost all vertical columns of Bilibili. [However, it is important to note how to change the original brand awareness of those who have already formed brand awareness of TikTok but have not installed TikTok] to retain customers by using higher-quality content as the core competitiveness. Just like investing in Taiyang Chuanhe in the long video field, the business scope has been expanded to include Internet cultural activities and radio and television program production.

Core Competencies:

1. Good content ecological platform
2. Unique and precise algorithm recommendation system, with extremely high efficiency in matching content and demand [What to do when people have different needs (existing push habits have been formed)? For example, if they want to broaden their horizons, there should be a channel or method for self-correction so that they can see the outside world. For example, small questionnaires can be conducted from time to time. If users are satisfied with the status quo, the original algorithm can still be used. If they want to see better content and want to improve themselves, but are troubled by not being able to find high-quality content on Douyin or Toutiao, we can launch collections of special topics or other channels. 】. Enterprises can use it to gain ground, and it can make a difference in both education and e-commerce live streaming.
3. Huge accumulated traffic (for diversion): With the current daily active users of 400 million, Douyin has a strong commercial monetization capability. With a difference of more than 100 million in daily active users, Douyin’s revenue is 5 times that of Weibo, and its advertising loading rate and eCPM are much higher.
4. Massive amounts of user data enable them to have a clearer understanding of aspects such as market size and user attributes (data-driven, technical thinking), and can use it as the user information basis for designing products in new areas to optimize user experience.
5. A vibrant team and team culture, tolerance for trial and error, a flat management system (i.e. always being entrepreneurial and always considering every aspect of the business clearly) are all extremely conducive to the company's innovation and rapid change, thereby triggering a new round of industry change.
6. Strong revenue-generating capability: Dou+ is used as both an advertiser and a brand to invest in advertising and promotion, and it is also beneficial for the promotion of small brands.

12. Some suggestions

(1) The products seem to be hidden too deeply in the UI design, which is not very friendly to some novice users.

(2) The cold start is not very user-friendly for new users. When they first click on Douyin, they are only prompted to swipe up and down, but no other specific functions are prompted, such as the video toolbox hidden on the left side of the screen. Its particularly light color and inconspicuous settings make it impossible for people to pay attention to it. Although it is not very difficult for young people to use Tik Tok, there are still problems with cold start for older people. The search bar and other items are displayed on a small page.

(3) A key question that we need to consider now is how to face the competition with Kuaishou? Will it continue to stick to the current simplicity and centralized distribution method, or will it imitate Kuaishou and develop community attributes to make the product larger and more comprehensive? Should we add a navigation bar like Kuaishou with more columns for users to customize? Although the recommendation system can meet the needs of users well, if the user's cognition changes or wants to watch different types of videos, the user should be allowed to select the corresponding video tags to increase the recommendation weight of similar content.

The cornerstone of all analysis is:

1. Will the characteristics of different regional groups change their preferences for products?
2. The likelihood and cost of user groups moving between platforms
3. The degree of difference in users' brand awareness of Douyin and Kuaishou: for example, whether people in first- and second-tier cities think that Kuaishou is used by people in third- and fourth-tier cities, and that it does not conform to their aesthetic tastes, etc. What is the attitude of people in third-tier and fourth-tier cities and below towards Kuaishou and Douyin? Do they feel that the content provided meets their needs?

All of this requires relatively in-depth and real-time user interviews and surveys, as well as more sophisticated user operations and product improvements based on these surveys and user insights, rather than just insights through macro data. Otherwise, Douyin’s own advantages in centralized distribution are likely to be gradually eliminated by Kuaishou.

Topic 1: Analysis of entertainment products

The unique sense of participation and community effect of video materials:

First of all, from the perspective of creators and viewers in general: there are already many APPs that have occupied a certain position in the entertainment track. In the past, QQ Space, Moments, Weibo and blogs mainly used pictures and texts to realize individual self-expression. For creators, pictures and texts have the characteristics of low production costs, but the expression method of pictures and texts is relatively simple, and often requires relatively deep knowledge accumulation and relatively rich daily experience accumulation, so that their creations can be valued (of course, this is also related to the interactive method of the platform);

For viewers, reading is more laborious (requires thinking), the reading time is short, and it only satisfies visual needs, and other senses are not triggered. Of course, now they are gradually introducing other media forms such as short videos and long videos; video websites such as iQiyi, Youku and Tencent Video mainly focus on long videos, and TV programs are also a kind of long videos. For creators, the characteristics of long videos are high production costs and high barriers, which require a certain amount of experience accumulation and long-term investment to trigger more reading;

For listeners, its rich visual images and sound system will bring people a long-term immersive experience of the same theme. Its rich changes, dense information and scene-based presentation make up for the lack of imagination, making the information presented to people rich and interesting, and can stimulate people's more intense emotional reactions (perhaps biological instinct, the scene-based atmosphere can make people more infected and suggested); but there are many platforms that only do sound, such as Himalaya Radio, which may be a more labor-saving way of reading for users, and is more focused on meeting the needs of scenarios where eyes cannot be used (such as driving and commuting).

Short video apps such as Tik Tok and Kuaishou are the main ones. The characteristic of short videos is that they combine some characteristics of pictures and texts with long videos. On the one hand, the production cost is relatively low for creators, and they can shoot anytime and anywhere as long as they have a mobile phone; on the other hand, the viewing time is relatively short for viewers, and it can fully meet the visual and auditory needs, giving people a short-term immersive experience. Secondly, the new traffic distribution model created by short video apps such as Tik Tok makes short videos more likely to attract users' attention than other media.

On graphic and text platforms, individuals either passively accept information they like or dislike, such as reading friends’ updates or recommendations on long video pages on QQ, or actively search for information they like, such as searching for popular videos on official video websites. However, Douyin’s precise push notifications based on user needs and its precise way of distributing platform traffic to meet user preferences are very special. On the one hand, it gives every individual the opportunity to be seen, which encourages more people to create content, which in turn leads to imitation and follow-up by others, ultimately forming a prosperous ecosystem (although this is not the focus of Kuaishou). On the other hand, it enables those who create high-quality videos to receive millions of likes and a large number of shares, and this huge volume will inspire creators to create further. Different groups, different scenarios (length of time, personal concentration), different needs, etc. will lead to different personal choices of different media.

Topic 2: Shopping from the consumer's perspective

Know yourself and know your enemy (the basis of analysis): Customers first perceive their needs in specific situations (personal physiological reactions, and can also be influenced by external information such as advertisements, activities, and people around them [people around them, commercial sources, public sources (mass media, consumer rating agencies (such and such rankings)), experience sources]), and then combine their previous experience to screen out a shopping brand list and determine where to go (often there are only a few (such as buying toothpaste) or none at all (looking at the store by themselves or never remembering the brand before)), and recognize (select, retain, organize and interpret) the complex information presented on the shelves, platforms, and apps, so as to make decisions based on the greater product utility (the degree of satisfaction of needs, functionality and emotionality) and product cost (mainly price, followed by the psychological and time and energy spent);

The process will be affected by various other factors, such as the attitudes of peers (word-of-mouth communication), the strength of the motivation to comply with the expectations of others, the risks of the transaction (whether the expected return can be obtained), priority judgments, and various thinking modes (heuristics (total score, single attribute minimum score cycle, universal minimum score)) and thinking paths (central path (careful thinking and careful comparison, suitable for high-priced and high-value goods, the energy put into thinking should be equal to the gain) and peripheral path (basically no thinking, suitable for low-priced goods, such as roadside snacks)), the number of options, time pressure for selection (affecting the quality of decision-making, such as buying goods when the bus is about to leave), and the degree of brand awareness [of course, it is more common that consumers do not think at all and follow the previous judgment framework, and the purchase just happens mechanically (the role of brand building is reflected at this time)].

Next is to choose the appropriate payment method for the purchase time. When analyzing live streaming e-commerce, a similar framework should be used to analyze consumer decisions, exploring why consumers choose to shop in APP live streaming, why they choose Douyin stores among the shopping options of Taobao, offline stores, and personal micro stores, what position Douyin stores occupy in personal shopping goals, and then whether the entire shopping process is trustworthy, whether the risks are high, etc. Thinking about some links may be missing, and thinking about some links may occur automatically. It is precisely because of the smooth execution of each link that a certain product will be sold on a certain platform.

About this article

The analysis of any product needs to be carried out in comparison with competing products, because only by creating differentiation from competing products can the product obtain more traffic, so Kuaishou is used as the object of comparison here; in addition, if only the design strategy of the product itself is analyzed in the short term without combining the company's operating strategy and existing content and data resources, then it will inevitably be a blind spot. Therefore, this report incorporates the analysis content of some other reports and the author's thoughts.