Keywords

1 Introduction

China’s Internet market competition is very intense. BAT [1] and other giants adhere to their own mainstream business while also try to innovate a variety of projects. With the popularity of Internet technology and the call of the Chinese government, a large number of traditional enterprises have begun to do the Internet products. But in reality 93% [2] of the new products will disappear within 5 years (According to data statistics of Baidu promotion). The author finds that the failure of most products is because of the product core direction is not clear or the implementation process of local links and product core are out of line. (Through the designers’ interview by Baidu UX academy on small and medium-sized company.) So the author will discuss the influence of “product strategy” and “product strategy” on other factors, in order to discuss the design of Internet products is a whole design concept.

2 How to Design the “Product Strategy”

We will do a very important analysis before doing any products: How big the market is, is it the incremental market or shrinkage market, the market share of competitors, what the user needs, what advantages we have. And finally we have the possibility of holding a certain market share.

2.1 Incremental Market and Shrinkage Market

First of all, we first analyze the product involved in the market is incremental or shrinkage: The key to success is to do the right thing at the right time. The so-called correct time is the industry market in increments. We often use the following ways to predict whether there is an increase in the industry market opportunities:

2.1.1 Technological Revolution

Every technological revolution will produce new technical solutions. The new technology solution is the old market is the opportunity to increase the market. Such as Android phone broke out in 2013 smart phone technology revolution. New android users do not know what kind of APP they need to install? So the APP that recommends the application have the potential market. It has become the entrance of company mobile App distribution market. It needs average 1–2 dollars to recommend to download an App. So in the change of market incremental set off by mobile phone technology revolution a, the first benefit of the company is 91 mobile assistant. Eventually Baidu bought it for $1 billion 900 million.

2.1.2 Policy Changes

For example, China’s liberalization of the two-child policy led to an increase in the market for child care services. China’s population tends to age in the future, which will lead to future growth in the pension market.

2.1.3 User Changes

For example, with rapid development of Chinese economic, People’s income increases and aesthetic improves. And the changes in consumer upgrade. For example, the demand for overseas tourism and international branded goods is in the incremental market.

2.1.4 The User’s Needs Pain Points

We have to understand the user after understanding the market increment. The key to research users is to find out the needs of users. We often put some users that think fun and interesting as a user needs pain points, such as somatosensory games of Xbox360. Most of the users to buy this product will not be more than 2 weeks. Eventually they back to the handle game. There are also recent meteor VR games. Users use less time. How to determine the needs of users just need it. There are actually two ways. First we can see the user on this demand is a long-term existence or not. Such as the various levels of human needs in the Maastian theory. In fact, many Internet products can correspond to this system. The second method is that we can see that if the user they want to find alternatives when the thing do not meet this demand. For example, The author once asked the user of a mobile phone UI design to improve in 2010 show, many users said it was not cool when looking at the mobile phone interface of UI animation, but they never try to find alternatives. But when the user found the phone text was too small to see clear. There are users to find a magnifying glass to see this mobile phone. This point that the real needs of the mobile phone UI design pain point is too small, not cool enough.

3 Competitive Analysis

First of all we have to know the market share of competitors. Second, we must know the characteristics and advantages of competitors which is the key to producing our “product strategy”. For example, “Hungry” take away (China local food delivery company) the pursuit of single and cheap restaurants, which gives Baidu Takeaway opportunities. Baidu takeout main concentrate on quality and brand restaurants. Although the restaurants of Baidu Takeaway are less than “Hungry”, it has won the white-collar group of market space.

4 Core Strengths

The core step of “product strategy” is to understand their own advantages. What we are good at determining our “product strategy”. We can think from the following aspects:

4.1 Industry Advantage

After 2015, China has been very difficult to produce pure Internet companies. Many new Internet companies are actually “Internet +” companies, that is, the enterprises and teams that have certain advantages in the traditional business use Internet technology and methodology to generate new products. Such as the catering industry department master, laundry industry, such as e bag washing.

4.2 Technical Advantages

Such as Baidu produces Baidu unmanned vehicles, Baidu degree and other artificial intelligence products, in artificial intelligence on the accumulation of technical advantages.

4.3 Capital Advantage

DIDI taxi rapidly occupate the majority of China’s taxi travel market through financing advantages. Let v as the financing advantage through the subsidies in the field of television has rapidly become a first-line brand.

4.4 Branded Advantages

Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba and other companies in the well-known brands in the Internet finance occupy a reputation advantage.

5 “User Research” Is Consistent with “Product Strategy”

When we establish the “product strategy” through the above methodologies, any part of the team’s work should be carried out around the “product strategy”. First of all, what we must do is the user research, which is the key link through the product research and development. There are many ways for user research, we don’t discuss here. The most basic requirements of these methods are “research target users”, while the standard of “target user” is determine by the “product strategy”.

6 Graphic User Interface Design Is Consistent with “Product Strategy”

Graphical design of the product contains a lot, in addition to the user interface, but also include the product VI system, as well as offline operation of the material (portable display, billboards, etc.). These designs must be unified in order to allow users to remember. The uniform style must be consistent with the emotion expresses of the product strategy. The series of Baidu bear is to increase the warmth and temperature for serious technology, which is the mascot of Baidu employees. So its color and style has always been lively and fun. Baidu college entrance examination “product strategy” with large data to help high school students simulate and forecast tests so the visual style the semantics combine youth inspirational and technology.

7 Interaction Design Is Consistent with “Product Strategy”

“Product strategy” is essential which involves every aspect of the product. For example, we design mobile phone products APP interactive navigation framework to make navigation Tab (Fig. 1), the average distribution (Fig. 2), or that the middle one, even the Fig. (3) in the sidebar. In fact, there is no this standard of “product strategy”, all of them are right, they are also wrong. Figure 1 the average allocation is equal to the switching frequency for each channel. Figure 2 it emphasizes the middle one, which indicates that the channel logic in the middle is different from that of the other. Figure 3 in the sidebar shows that there is only a common channel, the other can be hidden.

figure 1

Fig. 1.

figure 2

Fig. 2.

figure 3

Fig. 3.

8 The Product Promotion Is Consistent with Product Strategy

Product design and product operation is inseparable. Product marketing promotion also has a lot of methodologies and verification methods. But these methodologies, just like user research, must be based on “relevance” to promote this foundation. While the standard of “relevance” of is still “product strategy.”

9 Discussion

To sum up, the core product design is the “product strategy” design. If the “product strategy” is not considered maturely or not been initially verified, do not carry out other aspects of the work blindly. And when there are many team members or the length of the project from the initial time is very long, the team manager must observe and consider whether there is a link from the product “product strategy” to the other direction. It is possible to win in the market only all the links strive to a scientific “product strategy”.

  1. 1.

    Majority UI designers are artists background in China, how to make these artists have rational product thinking?

  2. 2.

    The core competitiveness of Internet products is technology, how to make design more valuable in Internet products?

  3. 3.

    If everything revolves around the core of “product strategy”, how do product managers focus on the details of the user experience?