Xiaohongshu product analysis: useful information to recommend products? Advertising and marketing?

This article will analyze Xiaohongshu from several aspects, including product positioning, competitive product analysis, user analysis, and user research, and put forward some new ideas and optimization suggestions for its functions.

This article will analyze from the following aspects:

1. Product architecture mind map
2. Product positioning and competitive product analysis
3. User Analysis
4. User research
5. Functional analysis
6. Summarize

01 Product Architecture Mind Map

Product Architecture

Xiaohongshu’s core business is still the content community, and its “irreplaceable” content community is a strong foundation for its expansion into e-commerce and other fields.

02 Product positioning and competitive product analysis

2.1 Product Positioning

One day in 2015, I saw a purchasing agent recommending a skin care product to his friends on WeChat Moments. The agent posted a screenshot from his mobile phone that showed the product image and user experience, with labels on the image. Since I had seen such pictures more than once, I asked the name of this APP, and thus I opened Xiaohongshu for the first time.

Xiaohongshu was founded in June 2013. When cross-border e-commerce was still a blue ocean, it entered the market by providing overseas shopping guides, targeting women in first-tier cities who tended to shop in overseas markets, and gained its first batch of users. However, considering that guide-based products are difficult to interact with users and form stickiness, six months later, Xiaohongshu launched an overseas shopping sharing community. In early 2014, Xiaohongshu transformed from the guide-based "Xiaohongshu Overseas Shopping Guide" to the community-based "Xiaohongshu Shopping Notes" . Women who have the habit of shopping abroad began to share their shopping experiences and purchase locations on Xiaohongshu. The high-quality notes have enabled Xiaohongshu to accumulate a large number of middle- and high-income female users, and its stickiness has made a qualitative leap.

Based on the high-quality content community, in August 2014, Xiaohongshu upgraded from a content community to a content e-commerce. A closed business loop was finally formed , and Xiaohongshu became a one-stop platform from content seeding to mall ordering. In recent years, users' consumption level has risen, and the purchase of items is not limited to basic usage needs. The status of expected needs has continued to rise, and the requirements for product quality have continued to increase.

As the fastest-growing lifestyle platform, Xiaohongshu’s positioning is very accurate. Users use fragmented time to browse the lifestyle community like shopping and share the good things they have found. At the same time, Xiaohongshu recommends high-quality notes in line with user preferences to stimulate users' desire to buy products, and then provides product purchase channels to induce them to consume in its own mall, thereby achieving a high conversion rate of community e-commerce.

Good things from abroad - Good things from all over the world - Good life from all over the world - Find the life you want - Mark my life. From the changes in the slogan from 2014 to now, we can see that, on the one hand, the scale of Xiaohongshu's products has expanded from purely overseas products to local products, and on the other hand, the content of the notes has also expanded from sharing overseas shopping products to sharing life. The target group's income level, gender and age range have been expanded.

Therefore, at present, Xiaohongshu's product positioning is to provide a lifestyle sharing and communication platform for younger Internet users who like shopping or love life, so that they can be the first to understand popular trends and new product launches and discover global good things.

2.2 Product Positioning

2.2.1 Competitive product selection

Xiaohongshu started out as an overseas shopping sharing community, and later expanded its cross-border e-commerce business. Although Xiaohongshu is currently developing a national trend section, most of its brands are overseas. According to Analysys Qianfan data, Kaola.com is the only one in the cross-border e-commerce field. Douyin and Xiaohongshu have the same target users, user usage scenarios, similar business operation models and development paths. Douyin was launched three years later than Xiaohongshu, but it already has five times the monthly active users of Xiaohongshu.

Mogujie, which started out as an e-commerce company, has now developed into a content e-commerce company that mainly serves female users. Its user base has a high degree of overlap with Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu's live streaming business has just started, while Mogujie launched its live streaming business in 2016 and it has now become mature and complete. Based on four aspects, Kaola Global Shopping, Douyin Short Video and Mogujie were selected as competitors of Xiaohongshu.

2.2.2 Competitive Business Distribution

Product business distribution map

Judging from the distribution of competing businesses, all businesses involve UGC content communities, e-commerce platforms, live streaming, and commercialization, but with different priorities. Xiaohongshu and Douyin content communities have higher priority, while Kaola and Mogujie have the opposite.

1) Content community

According to Analysys data, Xiaohongshu is at the top of the list in the comprehensive community forum industry. It has attracted celebrities and KOLs to join. Users hope to stand out from the massive amount of notes and tend to post vertical content on their personal homepages. At the same time, the overall quality of the note stream cover is relatively high. The high-quality content community has played a strong role in attracting traffic to its live broadcast and e-commerce businesses;

Kaola.com’s content community is mainly focused on product recommendations, with one-to-one product links and a neat UI.

Mogujie focuses on the vertical field of clothing and accessories, and has now added a small amount of content in categories such as life tips and food. Mainly short videos, with a small amount of pictures and texts, most of the note covers are not delicate and beautiful;

Douyin's UGC content community is mainly composed of 15s ultra-short videos, and the popularization of 1min-5min long videos is still in progress. The UI design is simple and easy to operate, immersive and addictive, the content is very entertaining, and the personalized recommendation system makes its content reach a wide audience.

2) E-commerce business

Xiaohongshu, Mogujie, and Kaola are all self-operated e-commerce platforms that are mainly B2C , while Douyin is mainly in the form of an e-commerce shopping guide, with external links to Taobao and JD.com. Douyin stores have not yet grown in scale.

Xiaohongshu insisted on self-operation, and later introduced third-party platforms to settle in. Its e-commerce business had obvious problems with insufficient supply chain, which also caused a fake product storm . In addition, the product types were incomplete and far behind the scope of products mentioned in its content community;

Kaola.com has a relatively complete bonded warehouse and direct sales system, and its products are highly authentic. In addition, it focuses on "low-profit e-commerce" and often conducts promotional activities.

Mogujie's product types are mainly clothing, and the model of relying on live streaming to bring goods has become very mature. Now Mogujie Mall is gradually expanding its product types, and the growth rate of men's clothing, food, and home products is very high;

3) Live broadcasting

Xiaohongshu was the latest to start, while Mogujie is the most mature. The live streaming models of Mogujie and Koala are mainly focused on selling goods, while Douyin is now mainly focused on entertainment and e-commerce shopping guides, with the vision of creating a fixed-flow platform for selling goods. Due to the epidemic in early 2020, many physical stores began to sell goods through live broadcasts on Douyin. Based on the huge profits, this business was not interrupted even after the stores resumed work.

Xiaohongshu was "forced" to start live streaming at the end of 2019, adopting a model of 90% content marketing + 10% sales , and setting very high thresholds for live streaming. The anchor must be an expert in a certain field, and the content of the live streaming is strictly controlled, and idle chat without substance is not allowed.

4) Commercialization

Except for Douyin, all platforms have [membership]. Kaola's membership is divided into black card and red card. The main membership privileges include discounts, tax reduction, shipping fee reduction, exclusive customer service, coupons, mall gift packs, share to earn, advance purchase, etc. Mogujie's membership privileges include return and shipping fee compensation, free shipping nationwide, exclusive customer service, door-to-door pickup, etc. Xiaohongshu's membership privileges include free shipping and tax, exclusive customer service, 7-day price guarantee, advance purchase, member-exclusive price, etc. Kaola Global Shopping and Xiaohongshu mainly sell overseas products, so they have more privileges of tariff reduction and exemption than Mogujie. The membership of the three is mainly for users who consume in the mall.

Douyin and Xiaohongshu have respectively launched “dou+” and “potato chips”, which are mainly aimed at users who use the platforms to place advertisements and buy traffic.

2.2.3 Competitive Business Development History

Data sources: Qimai Data, Qichacha, and 36Kr.

2.2.3.1 Product Positioning Development History

The positioning development history of the four products is summarized in the following figure:

Product Positioning History

Mogujie and Kaola entered the market as e-commerce platforms. Later, due to fierce competition in the e-commerce industry, the effect of hard advertising was not as good as before. Content layout became one of the directions for e-commerce platforms to further increase user stickiness and improve user marketing experience, and they gradually began to layout "grass-planting" content communities. Douyin and Xiaohongshu started out as content communities, and their work focus for many years has been on optimizing content communities.

Later, in order to prevent users who were interested in the product on the platform from moving to other e-commerce platforms, Xiaohongshu began to build its own e-commerce platform and form its own closed business loop. However, because it does not seem to have the e-commerce genes, it has been moving forward in a trial-and-error mode. Douyin chooses to earn commissions by directing traffic to Taobao, JD.com, etc.

These four products, and even other products in the same field, will eventually develop towards the same goal through different paths, which is a large-scale, comprehensive content e-commerce. Faced with the comprehensive squeeze on its living space by e-commerce giants Taobao, JD.com, Douyin and Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu is facing huge challenges in the three battlefields of community, e-commerce and live streaming.

2.2.3.2 Development History of Content Communities

The development history of the four products in the content community is summarized in the following figure:

Content community development history

The focus of Kaola.com and Mogujie is on e-commerce. Judging from the iteration history of their content communities, their main function is to allow users to "plant grass" for mall products through expert sharing and evaluation reports, thereby achieving the effect of diverting traffic. The content community section has not had much iteration and upgrading since its launch. Content community is the core business of Douyin and Xiaohongshu. In the early days of Xiaohongshu, Douyin has been using picture and text notes. In September 2016, Douyin entered the market in the form of ultra-short videos. Due to the advantages of the video format itself, which is easy to understand and spread, Douyin quickly attracted the attention of a large number of users. Three months later, Xiaohongshu also launched the video note function.

Subsequently, the two carried out similar iterations at different times: such as Douyin's "Snaps" and "Stories" and Xiaohongshu's "Moments", Douyin's "dou+" and Xiaohongshu's "French Fries", and both have done similar work in protecting and developing creators and resisting false and bad creations. In addition, based on its own characteristics, Xiaohongshu launched the "Little Red Heart" rating system, which integrates the evaluations of ordinary users after experience to form a complete product recommendation, purchase, and review system, which has a certain effect on improving the integration and reliability of its content community. But now, the development of Xiaohongshu content community has reached a bottleneck period.

Here are the reasons:

1) Xiaohongshu provides a good marketing platform for brands and products, and has created many popular products. However, as a result, false marketing has emerged in an endless stream, and users' trust in community content has gradually declined. Xiaohongshu has not been able to control this aspect well in recent years, and the platform has gradually been labeled as marketing-oriented and overly advertising-heavy;

2) The development of Douyin and Kuaishou content communities is showing signs of becoming giants . Their target users overlap with Xiaohongshu and they occupy a large amount of users’ usage time, which has severely squeezed Xiaohongshu’s development space ;

3) Xiaohongshu wants to expand its user base to male users, but there has not been a good opportunity. The community has a strong female attribute , and the proportion of female users has remained at around 80% in the past three years.

2.2.3.3 E-commerce business development history

The development history of the four products in e-commerce business is summarized in the following figure:

E-commerce business development history

Douyin started testing the waters in e-commerce in 2018, and it has been mainly based on the e-commerce shopping guide model. Doudian has not yet formed a scale, and may not plan to focus on self-operated e-commerce for the time being. Mogujie and Kaola have positioned themselves as self-operated e-commerce platforms from the beginning. From their iterative history, we can see that both have made great efforts in building supply chain systems, especially NetEase Kaola, whose powerful supply chain resources guarantee 100% authenticity of its overseas shopping (logistics and bonded warehouse related work are marked in red).

Soon after Xiaohongshu was launched as a community for sharing good stuff in 2013, it realized the importance of forming a closed business loop and began to test the waters of its own e-commerce. However, because the Xiaohongshu team lacked the e-commerce genes and did not make efforts in the supply chain, problems emerged one after another, triggering a storm of counterfeit goods. Therefore, Xiaohongshu has never been able to form barriers in its e-commerce business and has failed to achieve its target GMV for its e-commerce business for two consecutive years (2018 and 2019). Coupled with the squeeze on its community business, Xiaohongshu is now in an awkward situation of being caught between a rock and a hard place.

If you want to break through in the general environment, a closed business loop must be formed. To solve e-commerce problems, the first thing is to build an e-commerce team and seek supply chain resources .

2.2.3.4 Development History of Live Broadcasting Business

With the development of Internet technology, the KOL sales model represented by live streaming has brought consumers a more intuitive and vivid shopping experience, with a high conversion rate and good marketing effect, and has gradually become a new growth driver for e-commerce platforms and content platforms. According to data from iiMedia Research, the total scale of China's live streaming e-commerce industry reached 433.8 billion yuan in 2019, and is expected to double by 2020.

Top 10 live streaming platforms commonly used by Chinese live streaming e-commerce users in 2019-2020

The development history of the four products in the live broadcast business is summarized in the following figure:

History of Live Broadcasting Business Development

In 2017, Mogujie launched the WeChat live broadcast mini program, and relied on WeChat's 1 billion monthly active users to gain a huge traffic advantage. In July 2019, it launched the "2019 Mogujie Live Broadcast Double Hundred Plan", recruiting high-quality celebrity anchors, agencies and supply chains across the entire network, and gained a certain market share by seizing the market opportunity.

Douyin launched its live streaming business in 2017. Its high-quality content community and reserve of internet celebrities have played a very good role in directing traffic to its live streaming. It has also launched a traffic support plan to achieve a virtuous circle. Xiaohongshu has taken a completely different route. On the one hand, it adopts a unique live broadcast service combination: interactive live broadcast (90%) + live broadcast with goods (10%), which is mainly used for marketing promotion; on the other hand, it sets a very high threshold for anchors. They must be experts in a certain field selected by the official to ensure the high quality of the live broadcast content. Unlike other platforms, it cannot gradually achieve the goal of opening broadcasts to the whole public.

I think the reason why it adopts this model is that on the one hand it wants to stick to the fashionable and high-end tone and provide a platform for brands that want to increase their exposure; on the other hand it insists on self-operation and is unwilling to divert traffic to other platforms, but the e-commerce supply chain has limited carrying capacity and cannot meet large-scale sales.

At present, many high-end brands are balancing the proportion of resources invested in marketing live broadcasts and product live broadcasts. Top KOLs have seized a huge user scale and duration. The author believes that if Xiaohongshu wants to seize live broadcast resources starting with content marketing, the key points are:

1) Develop your own live broadcast style, so that users feel that "watching live broadcasts on other platforms is a scam, but watching live broadcasts on Xiaohongshu is a way to learn knowledge and exchange experiences with your favorite bloggers." Face-to-face communication is more convincing than text and pictures;

2) Discover and quickly develop your own KOLs. The live broadcast status and private domain traffic of KOLs have a huge impact on the live broadcast effect;

3) Avoid the live broadcast time of top KOLs on other platforms and seize the non-prime time first;

4) Expand overseas user markets.

2.2.4 Data Analysis

Data source: Analysys Qianfan. Statistical time: May 2020. Data presentation time: October 2019.

Product data performance

2.2.4.1 Monthly Active Users

Product monthly activity trend chart

The difference in magnitude must be attributed to the product positioning itself. Kaola and Mogujie are stronger in e-commerce attributes than content communities, and it is difficult for them to compete with giants such as Taobao and JD.com in the e-commerce field. Analysis of the reasons for the difference in monthly active users between Xiaohongshu and Douyin:

1) Douyin was launched in September 2016. Initially, it continuously refined its products based on market feedback, looking for the product positioning and target groups that best suited the market. It was only half a year later that it officially started to promote its products. Its explosion was inseparable from its long-term and dedicated exploration.

2) Toutiao’s strong push, with a large number of celebrities and variety shows promoting it;

3) Douyin’s seed users are highly creative students, and its initial target users are young people who like music short videos, while Xiaohongshu’s seed users and initial target users are women in big cities who like overseas shopping. The UGC content style accumulated over a long period of time determines its appeal to different types of new users;

4) It is related to product form. Xiaohongshu mainly provides knowledge-based content with pictures and texts, while Douyin mainly provides entertainment content with ultra-short videos. The latter has inherent advantages in terms of content form and immersive UI interface.

5) The huge user base has made Tik Tok spread among friends and family, and the age range of users has gradually widened.

The author believes that these five points have contributed to Douyin's extremely high monthly active users and growth rate. The user ceiling is not simply determined by the target group. The optimization of the product's user experience is the fundamental reason for the passive increase and expansion of the user ceiling and target group.

2.2.4.2 Average number of times used per person and average daily usage time per person

The author believes that these two indicators should be considered comprehensively. The ratio of the latter to the former is the average time spent using the product each time it is launched. After calculation: Mogujie>Kaola>Xiaohongshu>Douyin. The lower the ratio, the more likely users are to use the product in fragmented time. Xiaohongshu has a limit on the length of notes, and the time to read a note is about 1s-40s. Douyin videos are mostly 15s long. Kaola.com and Mogujie.com have strong e-commerce attributes, and their user stickiness is not as good as that of life community products, so the average number of launches per person is relatively low. The reason why Mogujie's average daily usage time per person has surpassed Xiaohongshu is probably related to its live broadcast business. The anchor group and their loyal fans account for a certain proportion of the user group, and the duration of a single live broadcast is generally more than 3 hours, which leads to a higher average daily usage time per person. Comparing Douyin and Xiaohongshu, Douyin's two data are about 3 times that of Xiaohongshu. The author believes that the reasons are as follows:

1) Short videos are more addictive than graphic notes;

2) On TikTok, you can switch to the next video by swiping up the page, which is a very simple process. On Xiaohongshu, you need to leave the current note and click on the next one, which is a more complicated process and requires you to think about which note to click on. The more you think, the less risk of becoming addicted.

3) Xiaohongshu’s search function is used more frequently than Douyin . Users will search for the information and products they want to know on Xiaohongshu independently, and their purpose of acquiring knowledge is stronger than Douyin. However, Douyin’s videos are mostly pushed passively and are more entertaining in nature.

2.2.4.3 Next Month Retention Rate

Douyin's next-month retention rate is extremely high. On the one hand, this has a lot to do with the fact that the product itself is too addictive. On the other hand, it is related to its huge user base. The penetration rate of Douyin's active users in the entire network exceeds 50%, and one out of every two smartphone users is an active user of Douyin. The huge monthly activity leads to users naturally forming connections within Douyin, and user nodes are connected into a network.

Mogujie's next-month retention is higher than Xiaohongshu's. The author believes there are two reasons for this: 1) It is related to the verticality of the content and the user group. Xiaohongshu's user base is mostly middle- and high-income women in big cities, who exchange their experiences and share their lives on Xiaohongshu, while Mogujie's user base is mostly girls from third- and fourth-tier cities. They use Mogujie because it can provide a lot of suggestions on clothing matching. Vertical content is more likely to retain loyal users. When users have clothing matching needs, they will first think of Mogujie, which specializes in this field.

2) Compared with clothing, the evaluation of beauty and skin care products, food, etc. is more subjective . Users who read the notes can only know the quality of the products through the author's description and cannot make independent judgments based on the pictures. As a result, the fake rate of Xiaohongshu content notes is high. If the user's experience is not as good as expected, they will doubt the rest of the notes in the entire content community.

2.2.4.4 Industry Monopoly Rate

Xiaohongshu and Mogujie belong to the same industry in Analysys: comprehensive e-commerce. Although Xiaohongshu ranks third in terms of monthly active users and fourth in terms of industry monopoly rate, its industry monopoly rate is still very low due to the existence of giants. When Xiaohongshu was classified as a comprehensive community forum, its industry monopoly rate had a slight advantage, ranking first in the past three years. The author believes that there are two reasons: 1) the accumulation of high-quality content has made Xiaohongshu the most popular communication platform in the fashion and lifestyle field;

2) Due to the huge content base , many users regard it as a "Baidu search" in the field of fashion and lifestyle. In addition, it is pervasive in daily life, so "you can search for anything on Xiaohongshu."

2.2.5 Summary of the advantages and disadvantages of Xiaohongshu

Summary of the advantages and disadvantages of Xiaohongshu

03 User Analysis

3.1 User role map

Xiaohongshu — User Persona Map

3.2 User Profile

Xiaohongshu-User Portraits (7)

04 User Research

The author surveyed 6 users of Xiaohongshu, and their basic information is summarized in the following table:

Survey user basic information

Summary of survey results and optimization ideas

05 Functional Analysis

Based on the results of user analysis and research, the author proposes ideas for optimizing Xiaohongshu's functions. The goal is to enhance users' trust in Xiaohongshu and optimize the product experience to increase user activity and retention; discover new user scenarios, add new functions, provide novel content outputs, and tap potential users to achieve user self-growth.

Overall functional iteration conception

Note: The blue font represents the original content of the section, and the red font represents the new content.

5.1 Note Clipboard (New)

5.1.1 Demand Background

1) All users surveyed said that the notes found by searching for the same keyword have overlapping content. If multiple notes are collected, it will be too complicated . To organize the valuable information, people usually collect and take screenshots , which is not conducive to organizing, reviewing and disseminating the information.

2) When selecting and comparing multiple products, due to the excessive amount of content obtained instantly and the lack of a platform to extract key information for comparison , it is difficult to get accurate and objective conclusions based solely on the impression in the mind;

3) Feedback from Qimai Data users shows that some users are dissatisfied with the way their favorites are sorted . They would have a better experience if they could sort by time or by themselves.

5.1.2 Objectives

1) Provide an information integration platform that is superior to favorites, optimize product experience, and improve user retention and activity;

2) Provide a basis for note content creation.

Note Clipboard—Iterative Ideation

Specific prototype plan

1) Clipboard entry

Note Clipboard - Prototype (1)

2) Clipboard adding process

Note Clipboard - Prototype (2-4)

3) Clipboard editing mode

Note Clipboard - Prototype (5-6)

5.2 Xiaohongshu Map (new)

5.2.1 Demand Background

1) After surveying many users, we found that they mainly used three apps, Zhihu, Mafengwo Travel, and Xiaohongshu, to make travel guides. The functions of all of them are to record multiple independent attractions, and then use map apps to organize the attractions into routes. If Xiaohongshu can provide the possibility of connecting independent attractions, its functionality is stronger than the other two, and it can seize the time that users spend on other apps in the scenario;

2) For users’ shopping needs in unfamiliar places, it is not easy to find the most cost-effective and convenient shopping spots , whether they plan in advance or on impulse, and non-branded products are not easy to search through maps;

3) Xiaohongshu notes are highly subjective, have no fixed rules or templates, and are overly embellished . It is difficult for users to find objective, true, and appropriate key information in the ocean of notes when making travel guides or looking for product purchase points.

4) Many users surveyed have the habit of checking in when traveling, but WeChat friends are becoming strangers and are no longer a pure social tool for acquaintances. The threshold for posting to Moments has become higher, and there is a lack of a simple travel record tool.

5.2.2 Objectives

1) Add new services to meet more user needs and allow users to spend more time on the product;

2) Create outputs that are easy to share and achieve self-growth.

Xiaohongshu Map—Iterative Conception

5.2.3 Specific prototype solution

1) Integrate the [Internet celebrity photo spots] module and [Travel Guide] module in the location card into the [Internet celebrity check-in point map] module, and add the Xiaohongshu map entrance to the location details page;

Xiaohongshu Map - Prototype Map (1-2)

2) Internet celebrity check-in point map : sorted by rating and recommendation by default, 20 locations are displayed on the map. Each time you double-click the screen, 5 more attractions or shopping spots are displayed. Clicking an icon will enter the detailed page of the corresponding location. On the details page, you can check in and post a picture/text/voice comment, and the system will prompt [This comment has been added to the travel memories];

Note Clipboard - Prototype (3-4)

3) You can select [Show Attractions] or [Show Routes] to further filter. For [Show Attractions] mode, every time you double-click the screen on the map interface, 5 attractions will be added. For [Show Routes] mode, every time you double-click the screen on the map interface, a new route will be displayed;

Note Clipboard - Prototype (5-7)

4) Users can place pins on the map (add location markers). When a location is marked for the first time, the system will prompt the user to [add a reason for the recommendation or related notes, which means they have a chance to become a location marker] .

Note Clipboard - Prototype (8-9)

5) Shopping Point Map : The map page only displays the [Note Gathering Place] icon by default. Users can choose to display [Food, Drink and Entertainment] or [Shopping] and further filter. You can also search the product name directly. At this time, the map page will display the specific [Product Purchase Point Card] and [Note Collection Location] icons, and the [Product Purchase Point Card] information comes from the user.

Note Clipboard - Prototype (10-12)

6) After the user checks in, a travel memory will be automatically generated on the personal homepage, and the user can edit it again: • Add notes/notes/moments (note moments can be selected from published content) • Long press and drag the order of cards (modules) (same as clipboard)

Add travel itinerary time (specific date) and merge cards. The system will organize them into (DAY1, DAY2) by default.

Travel memories can be saved as growth charts (arranged in chronological order) or check-in maps (map-based layout containing itinerary routes, some pictures, and text) ;

Note Clipboard - Prototype (13-15)

7) When posting a note, users can add location/shopping spot recommendations

Note Clipboard - Prototype (16-19)

5.3 Little Red Heart Award (Optimization)

5.3.1 Demand Background

1) None of the 6 users surveyed knew about the Little Red Heart Awards list. The author believes the reasons are: first, the list entrance and product reviews are not easy to find; second, there is less information about the products on the list, and compared with rankings, popularity and brands, the surveyed users are more concerned about reviews, skin quality, age and price; third, Little Red Book has weak social attributes, and there is not much communication between users, and their understanding of Little Red Book is still at the initial function; fourth, users who can participate in the evaluation must be producers selected by the platform, which is not easily accessible to ordinary browsing users.

The reasons for designing the product in this way may be that, first, they do not want to add controls or entrances for new businesses on the homepage, which would affect the design of the homepage; second, from the perspective of product positioning, the note list needs to be highlighted on the product page of the list; third, it is to ensure the authenticity of the list and eliminate the possibility of false scoring; fourth, since the proportion of people of different age groups and genders among Xiaohongshu users is different, the description of the product's age structure may be inaccurate. But on the whole, there is still room for improvement in the Little Red Heart Rewards.

2) Some users want to briefly describe their experience of using the product but are too lazy to organize pictures and write a lot of text, or they feel that the content does not fit the vertical category of their personal homepage, so they choose not to publish it. Therefore, I think the threshold for publishing usage experience can be lowered.

5.3.2 Objectives

1) Improve users’ acceptance and participation in the Little Red Heart Awards list, and increase retention and activity; 2) Further lower the threshold and encourage users to post more real content on the platform.

Note Clipboard—Iterative Ideation

Note: The blue font represents the original content of the section, and the red font represents the new content.

5.3.3 Specific prototype solution

Regarding the calculation method of user ratio (taking age structure as an example): Assume that the number of people under 18 years old among Xiaohongshu users is X1-1, and the number of users in other age groups is X1-2, X1-3, X1-4, and X1-5; the number of users under 18 years old who participated in the evaluation is X2-1, and the number of users in other age groups is X2-2, X2-3, X2-4, and X2-5; then the proportion of users under 18 who participated in the evaluation to all users who participated in the evaluation is f1, and so on, it is f2, f3, f4, and f5;

The data finally presented in the chart is the ratio of f1 to the sum of f1, f2, f3, f4, and f5.

User ratio calculation method:

Little Red Heart Award—Prototype (1) (before optimization)

Little Red Heart Award—Prototype (2-3) (after optimization)

5.4 Xiaohongshu Card (New)

5.4.1 Demand Background

Among the 6 users surveyed, 3 said they have the habit of taking screenshots when using Xiaohongshu, and that it is impossible to capture all the information in one screenshot.

5.4.2 Objectives

1) Enhance user experience;

2) Create unique outputs for Xiaohongshu to attract new users

Xiaohongshu Cards — Iterative Conception

5.4.3 Specific prototype solution

Xiaohongshu Card - Prototype (1-2)

Xiaohongshu Card - Prototype (3)

5.5 Product Trial (New)

5.5.1 Demand Background

Xiaohongshu is a brand marketing platform with many diverse products. The notes are obviously advertising in nature. There are many recommended products but the trust in the notes is low, making it difficult to select and buy products that are truly suitable for oneself.

5.5.2 Objectives

1) Improve product retention and user trust; 2) Attract new users.

5.5.3 Specific prototype solution

1) Cooperate with brands to give a certain number of product samples to users who submit applications, and require them to write a note within a certain period of time after using the product. The published note will have a trial tag and will be simultaneously displayed in the [Product Trial Area];

2) The more times a user applies and signs in, the higher the chance of winning, which increases the user's attention to this section;

3) The notes written by the winning users are seen by the users as real, non-marketing notes after use, which increases user trust.

Product Applicability—Prototype Drawing (1-2)

06 Conclusion

Advertising and irreplaceable are the keywords most frequently heard in user surveys. They seem to be contradictory, but upon closer inspection, the most difficult and most needed thing for Xiaohongshu now is to find its own balance point. Optimizing and enriching the content community is the first step. Under the trend of all apps gradually building content communities and under the strong pressure from community giants such as Kuaishou and Douyin, Xiaohongshu's users are attracted by all sides and cannot stay. At this time, advertising and feminine labels are the catalysts. Only by optimizing the content community and adding more functions can Xiaohongshu retain these old users and create more user scenarios.

Improving user trust is the second step. In order to become the best marketing platform in the eyes of brands and the best source of dry goods in the eyes of consumers, it is necessary to reduce the proportion of soft articles, such as changing the marketing method to experiential shopping, and encouraging more real users to create.

Just as TikTok worked hard to polish itself in the early days of its launch, if Xiaohongshu wants to make breakthroughs in e-commerce and live streaming, it must first work hard to polish its own content community.

Author: Cancan

Source: Cancan