How does Xiaohongshu go from user portraits to community operations?

1. Product positioning

At the beginning of its launch in 2013, Xiaohongshu was just a simple UGC shopping notes sharing community. At that time, China's cross-border tourism market was in a stage of rapid growth, and shopping choices during travel were a major pain point. Xiaohongshu just hit this pain point, coupled with extremely efficient social network promotion methods (high-quality destination shopping guide sharing), attracting a large number of users to register. On this basis, a self-operated overseas shopping e-commerce platform has been established to provide users with shopping services for exquisite overseas items.

So in general, Xiaohongshu’s product positioning is an overseas shopping notes sharing community and a self-operated bonded warehouse direct mail e-commerce.

2. Target users

Check the user portraits of the keyword "Little Red Book" in the Baidu Index. The results are as follows:

Whether it is an overseas shopping note community , or a bonded warehouse/overseas direct mail e-commerce company in the shopping sector, Xiaohongshu’s products are designed around user groups who “have a need to purchase luxury goods or high-quality goods.” Split this user group, they should show the following characteristics:

Women are the main target users. Women love shopping more and are more inclined to buy luxury goods and high-quality goods that are cheaper abroad than at home.

The age group is concentrated between the ages of 20 and 35. People in this age group are in a stable career period and have strong purchasing power. Younger users have just started working and their income level is not enough to support high-end product consumption; older users (born in the 1960s and 1970s) have been affected by the times and have failed to develop high-end product purchasing habits.

Occupational distribution includes white-collar workers in big cities, civil servants, and international students. White-collar workers and civil servants in big cities have a good income base and pursue quality of life; overseas students are the main force in producing shopping notes. They know more about overseas products and are more willing to share them.

User portrait:

Alice, a pretty girl studying in the United States

Basic attributes: 22 years old, studying for a master's degree in the United Kingdom, busy with studies, but also participating Lots of social activities. I love traveling even more than shopping. I can't put it down for all kinds of famous brands. If there are discounts, I won't miss them.

Shopping habits: Since I travel abroad frequently, I purchase luxury goods/high-quality goods in offline shopping malls, mostly during local discount seasons.

Product behavior: Highly active user who is willing to share shopping notes, young and passionate, eager to share the products to be recognized, so he will cooperate with Captain Tu to modify notes and patiently reply to comments; be careful with money and research on the use of points redemption Very deep; since I am abroad, I rarely buy welfare products.

Lauren, a white-collar worker from a foreign company in Shanghai, who lives a petty bourgeoisie life

Basic attributes: 28 years old, major college degree, temperamental and well-educated, lives a petty bourgeoisie pursuit of quality. I am usually busy with work, so on weekends I gather a group of friends to go shopping, eat, drink and have fun.

Shopping habits: I can afford to visit big shopping malls, and I can also save my face and search Taobao; I occasionally buy luxury goods and use mid-to-high-end skin care products and cosmetics; I wear clothes that have both big-name brands and cost-effective items; I often buy them High-quality and loving decorations/daily necessities.

Product Behavior: More willing to share shopping notes, with both high-end big brands and small but beautiful products. The main shopping force of Welfare Club pays attention to the price, but will make impulsive purchases when encountering something he likes. I am willing to write high-quality product reviews, but my time is limited and I cannot accept frequent revision of notes. Replying to comments depends on my mood.

Peggie, an elite woman in the workplace

Basic attributes: 35 years old, has worked hard in the workplace for many years and has achieved something. With a higher income, he has no worries about food and clothing. They are extremely busy. Maybe they are not married because they focus on their careers, or maybe they are married and take care of their children every day in addition to work. They are exhausted and under great pressure.

Shopping habits: I am willing to buy high-end products, mostly in shopping malls, and also online during discount seasons; skin care products and beauty products are all high-end items. I travel abroad regularly every year, and I do a lot of shopping during this period.

Product behavior: Will not share shopping notes frequently, and is relatively unconcerned about becoming featured notes and points; will collect high-end shopping notes, find friends to purchase on behalf of others or purchase by himself when he is free; occasionally shop for welfare items When purchasing cosmetics, skin care, daily necessities, maternal and infant products, etc., you are not very price sensitive and have no time to compare prices. You will have a high repurchase rate on high-frequency daily necessities.

3. Product function list

The picture below is the overall function map of Xiaohongshu V4.1.1 version:

Product function mind map

4. Usage scenarios

(1) When preparing for cross-border/Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan travel, check the selected shopping notes of the destination through Xiaohongshu, find the most worth buying products, and add them to the album. Form a shopping list;

(2) When you buy something good, share your shopping notes on Xiaohongshu to gain appreciation and attention, answer other users’ questions, and feel a sense of accomplishment;

(3 )Loyal users optimize the content of notes, apply for selected notes, and accumulate Red club memberships for that month;

(4) In daily leisure time, they browse Xiaohongshu without any purpose and look at the current popular trends. Discover good products by the way;

(5) In your daily free time, visit the Xiaohongshu Welfare Club and find the good things you like to buy;

(6) Discover the good things you like in the note sharing community, Find a friend to purchase on your behalf, or go to Taobao to purchase on your behalf;

(7) You have a purchase need in a certain direction (skin care/perfume/coat/sports), but don’t know what to buy or where to buy it. Use the "Discover" module of Red Book to browse the corresponding categories or albums;

(8) Be attracted by the push messages from Xiaohongshu and enter the App to browse special topics;

(9) Obtain coupons for Use it before expiration to purchase welfare club products;

(10) Red Club membership, redeem monthly points for gifts/activity privileges;

5. Relationship between core modules

Note community, discovery, and purchase are the three core functional modules of Xiaohongshu. The relationship between the three is as shown below:

(1) Shopping note feeds flow (product homepage) is The main functional module of Xiaohongshu, and the discovery module and purchase module all have information interaction with it;

(2) The discovery module information all comes from the note sharing community, which can be understood as a reference to the content of the note community Classification and organization, but it is also an important supplement to the feeds stream. Users can find accounts and albums worthy of attention in this module;

(3) The shopping module has a very clever connection with the note community. In the note community Some high-frequency products are prioritized and introduced to Welfare Club, and on the product details page, editors will link selected notes as product reviews. In addition, when adding notes, Xiaohongshu also encourages users to associate welfare club orders. If they are associated, the product purchase link will be displayed in the note. Whether the notes are linked to the details page has nothing to do with whether they were purchased from Xiaohongshu.

Next, we will mainly analyze the core product logic of these three modules, and compare them with products with similar functions in the process.

6. Efficient and simple note feed flow

The style is not very similar to other similar competing products. Entering the homepage of Xiaohongshu will give people a simple and clear impression. . In general, this simplicity and clarity stem from the product manager's restraint in setting features. On the feeds stream, Xiaohongshu hopes to provide users with the best information reading experience.

Homepage

As you can see, Xiaohongshu attaches great importance to the look and feel of note pictures. The picture is in the form of a single sheet, covering the entire mobile phone screen horizontally, leaving no space on either side. This design approach stems from Xiaohongshu’s core positioning—finding “good things.”

So how should we show the "good" side of something? The expressive power of words is always limited, and the best way of expression is pictures. Therefore, you can often see messages in the notes where users communicate with Captain Tu to modify the cover image, and the product itself also provides exquisite stickers and filters to help users produce high-quality images.

In addition, in the Xiaohongshu shopping sharing community, there is no such concept as a "note details page". A note will only appear in three places: feeds, user note list and album list. There is only one reason for this setting, which is that it can meet the needs of any scene without a details page, and it is more efficient. The advantage is to reduce the interference of page jumps on the user's browsing process, allowing users to immerse themselves in good things as much as possible without being disturbed.

Among similar competing products, few handle feeds flow in this way. The left side of the picture below is a screenshot of the "Pinterest" home screen, and the right side is a screenshot of the "Duitang" home screen. It can be seen that both of them adopt the waterfall flow display method. They both have the same purpose, that is, they hope to attract users to continue browsing by displaying some of the next row of pictures. What is very interesting is that as early as 2011, Duitang began to emphasize that it did not want to be China's Pinterest, and until now it still uses an interface interaction method similar to Pinterest.

Pinterest & Duitang

But if you look closely, there are actually many differences between the two. The purpose of Pinterest is very straightforward, which is to socialize pictures and allow users to be moved by beautiful pictures. So Pinterest took the lead in creating a waterfall flow, allowing users to immerse themselves in the process of browsing beautiful pictures and scroll down naturally. In this scenario, users have no clear purpose of browsing, so Pinterest has weakened the category indexing function (not available on the mobile version).

The product positioning of Duitang is more similar to Xiaohongshu, which is to make personalized content recommendations in a certain (or several) fields, and pictures are just the best way to express it. Therefore, Duitang is deeper than Pinterest. Clicking on a picture on the web version of Duitang will jump to a new page. However, in order to ensure interaction efficiency, Pinterest simply pops up a floating window, which is more conducive to allowing users to focus on the picture itself.

In addition to the large display mode, Xiaohongshu has also made innovations in some small interactive details, such as:

Click the "All Comments" button and you will only see Comment list, pictures will no longer be displayed. This setting is also based on the emphasis on the picture itself. On the one hand, for Xiaohongshu, pictures are the core content of a note. Clicking the "All Comments" button means that the user leaves the core scene and enters another functional area. At this time, if the picture is displayed in a heavier way , it would be a bit redundant.

The product purchase link was added to the feed flow, but it was very "restrained" - only the link was added under some notes in the feed flow. Note that there are two aspects of restraint here. "Only in the feeds flow" means that when you enter the user's homepage, you cannot see the product purchase link. You can think of it as an advertisement in the feeds flow. "Under some notes" means that only a small number of "non-welfare club purchase notes" have been selected to insert purchase links. The reason for choosing a non-welfare company is probably because we hope to introduce objective evaluation of the product itself without interfering with disturbing factors such as user services and emotions.

7. Product logic of the discovery module

From the perspective of the entire community information closed loop, Xiaohongshu’s “discovery” module exceeds the definition of “discovery”. Regarding the usage of "discovery", there are three popular ways:

The first one carries other functions besides the main function of the product, such as WeChat for the public, and Moyou for the niche. When users click "Discover", they clearly want to access a separate function (such as WeChat's "Moments" and Moyou's "Activities"), and this function has a certain mutually exclusive impact on the main function. Generally speaking, this method is more likely to be used when a product wants to develop a new dimension of functions in addition to its main functions.

The second type is to simply discover unknown content, mass products such as Zhihu, and niche products such as Nian and Tushou. The feeds stream is responsible for presenting the information you are interested in, and "discovery" means finding new undiscovered points of interest, which can be recommended to users in a imaginative way. In this case, the user accesses the Discovery module without any explicit purpose. This method is more suitable if the products have already been classified in the feeds stream, or if they cannot be classified at all.

The third type is to look for information in a certain field. Popular ones such as Weibo, and niche ones such as the strategy module of Cicada's Travels. This method is very suitable if the user has a very clear search scenario for classified information, but it is difficult to implement it in the feed stream.

In recent years, Weibo has gradually phased out a large number of low-quality content accounts, allowing a group of producers of highly readable content to stand out. It has basically completed the transformation from socialization to mediaization, and this year began to carry out vertical field content attempt, and the discovery module mainly carries this strategic goal. Based on a large number of accumulated travel notes, Cicada Travel Notes has put a lot of effort into compiling destination travel guides to provide the best guide experience for users with clear travel needs.

The "discovery" of Xiaohongshu is basically a combination of the second and third types. The top row of buttons (category, brand, destination, theme, expert) is the classification and integration of different dimensions of note information. Below are recommendations for popular albums and notes.

Destination discovery

If the user has a very clear purpose - for example, he is planning to travel to a certain place and needs to make a shopping list - then the user can find the entrance as soon as possible . And if the user does not have a very clear purpose and just browses through the feeds stream and wants to see what other interesting things there are, he can ignore the first row and continue browsing down. In general, information classification can meet users' needs in specific scenarios, while popular recommendations increase user stickiness.

I have two opinions about the "Discover" module:

(1) The current efficiency of information classification is not high and needs to be optimized slowly. For example, in my screenshot, if I select the destination - Japan, there are more than 300,000 notes and countless brands (it takes about 5 minutes to scroll through, and search is not supported).

First of all, for the notes section, if we count the distribution of the number of screens viewed by users, it must be far lower than the home page. It is impossible for users to browse so many notes. This number itself will discourage everyone. As for the brand part, the user is likely to choose a targeted brand, and with so many brands, it is a bit tiring not to search.

In fact, it can be seen that the topic is the most valuable function in this scenario. In the early days of launch, Xiaohongshu relied on high-quality destination shopping topics to attract fans crazily. The appeal of the topic content can be seen, so I think we can consider putting the topic in the default position. At the same time, it is necessary to optimize the display mechanism of notes and brands.

(2) Popular recommendations are an important supplement to the entire product, but they will gradually weaken as the product matures.

Popular content finds it difficult to emerge as a core feature of the product. In version 2.0 of Douban, “Discovery” was regarded as a strategic function, hoping to increase users’ frequency of use by bringing surprises.

I can’t judge the final result, but judging from the fact that Douban 3.0 abandoned the “discovery” function, it probably did not achieve the desired effect. Users open an application either to access a certain function (usually a core function) or to form specific usage habits. In the early stages of the product, when the overall number of notes and the average number of content users follow are not sufficient, popular recommendations can help them discover new things. As the product matures and users develop an inherent information acquisition mechanism (focusing on rich accounts and topics), the importance of popular recommendations will gradually decrease.

8. Interactive innovation in the purchasing sector

In 2015, two types of eye-catching products appeared in the e-commerce field. The first type was vertical e-commerce in niche fields. , which have outstanding industry characteristics in product design, product design and operation, such as Wo Niu Decoration and Dongjia; the second category is the combination of social networking (or community) and shopping, such as Xiaohongshu, Duitang, and Xiachichu.

For the latter, the most innovative design is to introduce community content as product reviews into the product details page. Low-quality reviews are a major pain point for traditional e-commerce websites. The product evaluation areas of Taobao, JD.com, and Suning are filled with a large number of invalid or even false reviews. The comment area is not essentially a complete community and cannot effectively motivate users to write high-quality comments. The model that combines social networking and e-commerce exactly solves this pain point.

But the social + shopping model also has pain points. In the traditional e-commerce product system, evaluation is a tool for users to check and balance merchants. During the shopping process, if you are dissatisfied with the service or the product itself, you can encourage the merchant to resolve it through low-score reviews. On the product detail pages of Xiaohongshu and Duitang, you can only see a small number of shopping notes selected by editors. Although Xiaohongshu uses many non-welfare society shopping notes to link to the product details page, single users still only know how good the product is, but have no idea about the quality of logistics and after-sales service. This is a major weakness of this model, and I can't think of a solution for the moment.

From the perspective of the entire shopping process, Xiaohongshu tries to simplify it as much as possible. On the product details page, there is only an add to shopping cart button; there is only one shopping cart, and the harvesting address information is placed at the checkout counter. However, the general logic of traditional large-scale e-commerce is shopping cart 1-shopping cart 2-checkout counter. Under such a simplified process, users only need four steps from selecting products to purchasing, which is very simple and convenient.

In Android version 4.1.1, the original "Welfare Club" tab was renamed to "Purchase". Behind the name change, it represents a change in strategy. The e-commerce platform is gradually becoming the core of Xiaohongshu’s strategy. However, any product can only have one main function. The development of e-commerce will inevitably mean that the note-taking community will be weakened. How to find a balance in the process will be a big challenge.