Baidu Product decision Principle: have demand, have advantage, have benefit

Article Description: Baidu Product decision principle, product innovation idea, how to make correct decision to product.

The core value of the product--Why users use this product, bring the most fundamental benefits to users

Product personnel, to clarify the product analysis and decision-making thinking, the first to understand what is the product. The core value of the product is the ultimate mystery of the user's use of the product. For example, military coats and bikinis are used to wear, but the core value of the former is to warm the cold, the latter's core value is sexy. Although the mobile phone is changeable, but the core value is voice communication, so if the call quality is not good, this mobile phone dazzle again cool, will also be discarded by users.

The same applies to Internet products. Many products look the same on the outside, but if you dig deep, why should users use them? What are the most fundamental benefits? The answer is very different. For example, one is Baidu know, another assumption is online shopping site of the problem-solving platform, product form can be similar, but the essence is completely different. The core value of the former is "to make people more convenient access to information, find the request", and the latter should be an efficient online customer service tool. This essential difference leads to a lot of important and detailed product decision differences.

So before the analysis of a product, the first question is to find out why users use this product, it brings to the user the most fundamental benefits.

To answer such a question, it is not easy, many failed products in the beginning did not understand the user to use its reasons, doomed to the subsequent failure. Before product research and development, Baidu search engine product personnel first to answer this question.

Baidu Product decision principle-have the demand, have advantage, have the benefit

Search engine products in the recruitment of product personnel, candidates, especially those who are enthusiastic about the Internet often actively throw their own ideas, but did not carefully analyze why do? Should I do it?

Outside also often some questions, why Baidu does not do this product? Why Baidu does not do that product?

In "Robin Li's Baidu World", elaborated Baidu's product decision-making principle: "Regardless of Baidu launches what product, always follows three principle: has the demand, has the superiority, has the income." ”

The first is demand orientation. Whether it is customer demand or user needs, in the final analysis is the demand. First there is demand, then there is action. To borrow a classic story, two shoe sellers go to the island to open up the market, one came back and said to the boss: "There is no market, there is no one to wear shoes." The other came back and said to the boss, "there's a big market, and everyone has no shoes." "If the problem is in product decisions, ask for it first, and then decide the next step for this group of users, the benefits of their shoes and the benefits of not wearing them."

Secondly, we have no advantage in effectively meeting the demand. User experience is a complete process, the ultimate demand for users to meet, is truly valuable.

The idea of "video search" has long been considered and contacted by the search engine product department, but early Internet resources are very limited, the download of resources is a fatal bottleneck, search done well, the user finally get and watch this video is not much help, so there was no intervention; Due to the rise of professional video sharing website, the user video experience has been greatly improved, and many resources, from the user search keywords can easily find a large number of video search needs, Baidu in search of the advantages of the user to find video to provide more and better convenience, The Web search Universal search solution does not fully meet the special needs of video search, so the timing of the birth of video search. Follow-up through product design, product development, to become a large number of users to use the search product is the logical thing.

The last is to comply with Baidu Mission, focus on search, enhance the company's core competitiveness, to maintain exuberant vitality, and promote the search field more far-reaching development. Now you see, Baidu Web Search, MP3 search, image search, know, post bar, encyclopedia and each product has a huge user base, and interrelated, mutual promotion-This is not accidental phenomenon, nor Baidu to integrate products to do the integration, but they are born precisely in order to effectively meet the needs of users , they constitute the overall structure of the search engine, but also Baidu's core product competitive advantage.

Innovative ideas for products--to better meet demand

Why innovate? "The goal of innovation is to better meet demand and not innovate for innovation," Mr. Li said. The product and technology department is experimenting with innovation every day, but new technologies, functions, new concepts are just tools or means, and product design is more concerned with "why innovation".

The major innovation of Baidu's product system is to search the community, Baidu Post Bar, know, encyclopedia, space, etc., to build a complete search Community system, we review the post bar when the first page of the words: the Internet information, and the human brain, compared to the information, just bucket-Baidu experience over the past few years has proved that The search Community model like bar paste is extremely successful in transforming people's tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and enhancing the core value of search engines. So, stick is a great innovation, relative to the world is unique, and paste the search community represented by the product innovation model and unremitting practice, Baidu's search for the field to make outstanding contributions to innovation.

Some people think that what turned out to be innovation, only the things that have to be overturned is innovation, but do not overlook a point, some innovation is "smooth and silent", some innovation is the details, but they are important, but also promote a certain area of progress.

For example, in the field of image search, many people will feel that the image search, color screening, face recognition of these content recognition technology looks very novel, that only provide such a function is innovation. In the Baidu product department's image search group, early almost every new colleagues are curious about these services, but after a period of user behavior analysis and thinking, to understand the use of filtering function is not necessarily the best way to solve user problems, the application of a variety of user needs identification technology, image recognition technology to optimize the ranking of search results, The user needs more pictures directly arranged in front of the user, which is also important "embellish fine silent" innovation.

The right decision on the product--sharp insight and data analysis

Product Manager or Product designer's responsibility is to ensure product success, from product decision to product can meet the expected completion of the development of the line, of course, the most core is in the upfront demand, answer a product why do and make what appearance.

Product personnel in grasping the principle of product decision-making on the basis of a keen insight, to be able to make the right judgments, but also have two necessary conditions.

First, he is a loyal user of the product.

Baidu Product Department of each colleague, the application of the Internet is full of enthusiasm and interest, and actively become the relevant product areas of the most skilled front-line users, with the real purpose of use, and users can stand together, rather than with a review of the angle of inspection, the latter often lookers-on, can not understand the real demand. For example, the product staff in the student era is not the Ashes level Forum diver is a well-known forum of the people of the day; web search a product personnel search engine enthusiasts, into the Baidu before the search for a variety of searching engine magical.

Second, he must be able to think in terms of most ordinary users.

Baidu Product department does not require any professional background, technical background, as long as you can accurately grasp and respect the experience of ordinary users, at this point the demand is almost harsh. You can't expect ordinary netizens to be like you because you know all kinds of search techniques. When designing commonly used functions, such thinking is rejected: "If the user does not understand, you can see the help document" "The problem with shortcut keys to solve" ... In fact, the judgment is much harder to face.

Of course, search engine as the access point of information collection, the needs of thousands of users and the use of habits, Baidu's product personnel can be directly through the data to analyze the user's behavior, from their more concentrated search requests found in product issues and product demands. This is also one of the magic weapons of success.

Many people who do not understand the work of Internet products ask: "How to ensure that your ideas are objective?" "How can you guarantee that what you need is what the public needs?" "In the face of such a problem, it is easy to think of doing research, research methods are easy to think is a questionnaire survey." But in fact, many aspects of product design and improvement are that you can't directly ask the user to get the answer you want, just as you can't directly ask the user what each search needs to guide the search results more accurately. In fact, the actual action of the user has actually told the product personnel, than he said more, more true. When the user groups of Internet products reach a certain scale and their behavioral data are statistically significant, they are more reliable and direct than pure market research, which is a very valuable asset.

For example, we analyze the user behavior of the data, found that web search user behavior and image search user behavior is not the same: Web search users have a specific goal, we help these users to quickly find the search results he wants to complete this search, such as a version of the software download , and the image search a large proportion of users do not have a specific goal, he wants to enjoy a group of image search results, such as a tourist city. This time, for each image search results are one by one click, open a new window does not adapt to the continuous browsing experience, so we have to open the search results in the model to do an improvement, which also has a large number of data analysis, to determine what mode of the total user benefits are the largest.