As an ashes powder who has been in the village for 14 years, I once thought that cloud music is the most conscientious, compelling and sincere software in mobile phones, and there may not be one.
Earlier, I used QQ music all the time. Because the recommendation function rarely introduced my favorite songs, I simply downloaded and experienced all kinds of mainstream and non-mainstream music software, so I found Netease Cloud Music, which was still very small at that time. After several uses, I was conquered by its powerful recommendation algorithm. Since then, everything else has been done.
This article mainly wants to talk about the reasons why Netease Cloud Music, which has always had a good reputation, was badly evaluated in the recent version 5.0.
Netease Cloud Music’s ranking in the Apple App Store and music category has been steadily improving in recent years. In the first half of 2017, it topped the music list several times, and it remained at the top of the music category for nearly a month around July. Perhaps due to copyright reasons, it declined slightly and remained stable in the third place. In February of 18, the news that Netease shared the copyright with QQ Music and obtained the full copyright of Huayan Music seems to let us see the hope that Netease Cloud Music will reach the top again.
However, on March 9th, the major update of version 5.0 received perhaps the worst feedback in the history of cloud music. Before writing this article, I talked to my roommates about the latest update, but they didn’t seem to feel anything. In order to avoid the embarrassment that only I thought this update was bad, I specially looked up the data on the Internet.
We can judge whether this update is bad or not from the following two aspects.
It can be seen that both the overall ranking and the application ranking have shown an obvious downward trend within one or two days after the release of the new version on March 9.
In the music ranking, it only dropped from the third place to the fourth place, with a small decline, indicating that the lost users have all moved to several platforms in front of the leaderboard.
It can also be seen from the rise in the overall ranking of QQ music and cool dog music after March 9.
As can be seen from the figure below, after the release of the new version on March 9, the one-star rating increased sharply.
The same is true for user comments. Although positive comments are also on the rise, the sudden outbreak of negative comments is more obvious.
In addition, on the Zhihu, some people specifically asked questions about version 5.0. The number of followers of this question was close to 900, and the number of views exceeded 80W. Most of the high-vote answers were negative comments, and many of them were teaching you how to return the old version.
According to the above data, we can confirm that the 5.0 version of Netease Cloud Music is really a bad update for quite a few users. This update has brought a great negative impact on the reputation and market share of cloud music. According to Yuncun’s comments, Zhihu’s answers and Penguin’s wind news data, this time, the spitting point is basically in the video function. Since the "disaster" is caused by video, let’s take a look at the growth history of Netease Cloud Music Video function.
From the version record information, we can find that the video function has undergone four major changes since its birth.
Netease Cloud Music first supported the video function in version 4.0.0, and short videos appeared in a very low-key way. It only appears in friends’ dynamics. Users can only see videos sent by others or themselves in friends’ dynamics. For some people who don’t watch dynamics often, they won’t even find this function online. Until version 4.2.0, the video function has not changed much in the past six months, which is also the stage of accumulating the initial content, paving the way for the further exposure of the video function.
After half a year’s accumulation, the initial video resources should be ready, so in version 4.2.0, the video function no longer has no sense of existence as before, but escapes from the shackles of friends and has its own independent page on the home page. And the location is next to the music page, and you can reach it by swiping right once after entering the home page.
From the time when the 4.2.0 video had its own separate page to the time before the 5.0.0 version, the video page itself didn’t change except adding the functions of video classification and video search. It can be seen that Netease Cloud Music was very cautious in adjusting the video before, and there was no radical performance on the page, and the transition between each version was smooth.
In version 5.0.0, the page has changed obviously. First of all, the "My" page is no longer in its original position, but is replaced by "Video". After that, "Video" is no longer a separate page, and there are 7 sub-pages below it, which correspond to different video categories.
(4.3.5 Interface VS 5.0.0 Interface)
Let’s analyze why version 5.0 will detonate users’ emotions and become a topic that everyone spits.
It’s just six months since the video appeared as an independent page in version 4.2.0, and it’s long enough to be familiar with a function in version 5.0. Why is there a sudden outbreak of bad reviews?
The following picture shows the App Store evaluation of Netease Cloud Music from September 1, 2017 to March 17, 2018. The sudden increase in bad reviews has occurred three times. The second time, because the exclusive interview with Joker Xue was launched, people were dissatisfied, so they came to give a bad review. This bad review event has nothing to do with the software itself and can be ignored.
The other two times are related to video. The first time was September 7th and 8th, which happened to be the release date of version 4.2.0. The video page was launched for the first time, and most of the negative comments expressed dissatisfaction with the appearance of the video page. However, because the video page at that time was still conservative and did not have much impact on the user experience, the matter passed quickly and the evaluation returned to normal after the 8 th.
We can get two pieces of information from this incident. First, Netease Cloud Music won the reputation of users by relying on good user experience.Music softwareTherefore, when the video function was introduced into cloud music, there were indeed some users who were no longer purely dissatisfied with cloud music. However, the second point is that at this time, because the video function is relatively low-key, there is not much influence on the user experience, so there are not many dissatisfied users and there is not much influence. In other words,Before version 5.0, the video function of Netease Cloud Music was acceptable to users.
The appearance of the third large-scale bad review is the time point of this 5.0 launch. Obviously, this bad review is the most serious, with a high peak. On March 10th, the ratio of negative reviews to positive reviews was 85:166, which lasted for six days. These two points indicate that the scope and depth of this change are great.
If we compare the structural diagrams of the versions before and after 5.0, we can intuitively see what changes have taken place. Previously, "My Music" was at the same level as the homepage "Discover Music", while "Video" was a sub-page of "Discover Music". By version 5.0.0, the positions of the two pages "Video" and "My Music" were completely reversed. The original position of the first-level menu "My Music" was changed to "Video", and there were seven sub-pages of different categories under "Video". The status of video has been greatly improved, and there is even a feeling that it exceeds the importance of music function.
In order to improve the exposure rate.
The process of video appearing in the state of friends from the very beginning, to having an independent secondary page, and then to having an independent primary page shows that the cloud music team attaches importance to video. And upgrading it from a secondary page to a primary page is to increase its exposure to users and increase traffic. However, this step may be too big.
The location of the "My Music" page has not changed almost before the 5.0 version, and this page contains important and core functions such as my music and my collection of songs. Users will stay on this page for quite a while, and they have also developed the habit of swiping right into "My Music" once after entering the homepage to listen to the songs collected or downloaded before.
And choosing to swap "video" and "my music" is precisely to take advantage of this habit of users. Habits are not formed in a day, so they can’t be changed in a short time, so almost all users will make the mistake of trying to find "My Music" several times and habitually sliding into the video page. In this way, many users who can’t use the video function before have to "force" close contact with the video function several times. Since these "new users" have contacted, there will always be a certain proportion of people who like this function and stay.
After the first slide from the home page to the video page, you have to go back through seven sub-pages of the video. Although you can directly return to the home page by sliding to the right along the edge of the screen, many people will not find this in the first place. Seeing more video covers will increase the probability of finding favorite videos, so this design of the sub-page once again helps users who want to go to stay on the "video" page for a few more seconds.
However, it is precisely because the user’s habits are used that this bad review event broke out. Some people will ask, isn’t it just a habit of entering the wrong page, and it’s ok to spend two more seconds back? Why does it seem that there is nothing serious, but it causes users to be so dissatisfied?
Perhaps the answer to this question can be found from the psychological point of view. As I just said, basically after changing the new version, everyone will make several mistakes in entering the wrong page. Everyone makes mistakes. If a mistake is made only once, everyone can accept it. However, if the same mistake is made twice, three times and four times, people will feel stupid subconsciously. Because the user’s own habits caused him to make a mistake, we can really say that this mistake was caused by the user’s stupidity.
But,Nobody wants to admit that he is stupid.So when you make users feel stupid, users will definitely pass the reason on to you."It’s not because I’m stupid, but because you’re bad. You deliberately moved the page and made me make a mistake."So, the culprit is of course you-Netease Cloud Music 5.0. In this way, users who are critical and can’t accept their stupidity will naturally vent their dissatisfaction after making several mistakes.
As mentioned earlier, users can basically accept the existence of the "video" function before, and combined with the above analysis, we can think that the outbreak of this bad review is ultimately due toRadically adjusted the position of the video pageNot the "video" function itself (after all, many users still like this function).
Perhaps we can make further analysis that is not necessarily reliable here. Although there are many bad reviews on various platforms, it is still a relatively small part compared with the current user scale of Netease Cloud Music. What kind of people may this part be?
A person who is critical and can’t accept his stupidity.
Picky people are often well-informed, while people who can’t accept their stupidity are generally smarter. Naturally, a smart person can’t accept his stupidity. So to paint a portrait of users who have bad reviews, maybe,perhapsHere’s the thing: 22 to 30 years old, highly educated, more than 68% male, with high IQ and EQ, mostly living in first-tier cities, having traveled to more than three cities, maybe college students with more ideas, maybe Cheng Xuyuan or other types of brainworkers, and of course, more likely, product managers of different ages (only they have many things:)).
Since the cause is the position change of the video page, let’s go back to the problem itself.
Why did the version number jump directly from 4.3.5 to 5.0.0, and why did the priority of video pages suddenly increase so much?
From the launch of the video function a year ago to the subsequent function upgrades, it can be seen that the video was originally a part of the development plan of cloud music. However, the explosion of video software such as watermelon video caused by the wave of live answering questions in January of 18, and the recent great improvement of Tik Tok’s reputation and popularity undoubtedly brought great pressure to Netease Cloud Music video. The cake was split up too late, and it was carefully reserved for one year. Cloud Music certainly did not want to see such a thing, which led to this situation.
So the video is definitely to be pushed, but now it seems that it is not a correct choice to directly switch the positions of the "Video" and "My Music" pages. Is there a compromise that can improve the exposure of "video" pages without seriously affecting the user experience?
There may be two ideas:
Since users don’t like the design of exchanging video and my music pages, I will restore the status and position of my music. As a first-class page, video has two choices, either setting the first-class page to four and keeping the status of "video", but moving it to the right side of the home page before "friends". As shown below:
Or you still only need three first-class pages, but move the "Friends" page to "Discover Music" as a sub-page. As shown below:
However, in view of the fact that cloud music’s comments, song lists and other functions are also strengthening social attributes, and the "friends" page is of great importance in social functions, the former method may be slightly better.
Since both the "Video" and "My Music" pages have been changed, making another big change may lead to vomit, so it is better to make some changes on the basis of the current page to ease the mood of the masses. In addition to accidentally clicking on the video page, another reason why users are angry is that they have to slide after clicking on the video for the first time.seven timesIn order to return to the home page (many people will not think of or find the design that you can directly return to the home page by swiping along the screen once).
Therefore, we can also change this feature. Among the seven sub-pages of Video, the "Recommendation" page is located at the far left as the first page, which is the direct reason for sliding back to "Discover Music" for seven times. It is better to put the "Recommendation" page at the far right of Video and still use it as the first page of Video, so that even if the user accidentally slides to the "Video" page, the same can be used. The left and right pictures below show the effects before and after the change according to this idea.
(left: before the change; Right: After the change)
In this way, after entering the home page, swipe right once to enter the Recommended home page of the Video page. If you want to watch videos of other categories, just continue to swipe right. If you don’t want to, swipe left once to return to the home page.
Finally, although I have used the 4.1.3 version without video, as an ashes powder, since Netease Cloud Music can’t stop from moving from a niche software to the public, I still hope that the road behind her will get smoother and smoother. I believe that the strong and smart cloud music team will definitely solve this incident.
Above all, all the analysis and improvement ideas are immature ideas of a 1-year-old product manager. Welcome seniors and Daniel from all walks of life to shoot bricks. Please give me more advice and thank you ~
Source: Seven Wheat Data, Penguin Wind News.
Author: JVever, WeChat WeChat official account "A photographer without ABS is not a good product manager (ID: Hituheart)"
This article was originally published by @JVever. Everyone is a product manager. It is forbidden to reprint without permission.
The title map comes from the network.
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