The "right brain" of the Internet: A woman-led New Kingdom of sensibility

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The internet age is shifting from rationality to sensibility, from function to experience, from left brain to right brain. The understanding of this trend determines the future business value of innovators.

The internet has been a very instrumental word since it was born.

We constantly turn out all kinds of tools in such a large "garage", email, instant messaging, browsers, search engines, and various forum templates, all kinds of desktop tools and browser plug-ins, constantly satisfying people's need to search for information and deliver information.

In this "garage", new tools and technologies have been the most pampered for the past 20 years, and the definition of "good" is very rational and straightforward, faster, more, and cheaper--who can give users a chance to get rich rewards.

But in recent times, some seemingly less technical revolutions have done nothing in terms of faster, more, cheaper, and even functionally stunning products, but have begun to be surprisingly popular.

The 1 billion-dollar image shared by Facebook, the path and Pinterest, which has just won the B-round 40 million-dollar Instagram, is being analyzed for a 7.7 billion-dollar-worth, fast-moving, guessing-word game draw something, There are domestic shopping-type website Mushroom street ...

Because love takes pictures, loves to share, likes to collect, let these seemingly independent detonation events, by the same keyword link: female users. Most active users of these products are women.

The rise of female user groups in the Internet has its inevitability, they are the real world leader. At the same time, their gradual strength in the internet world is clearly changing the direction of the entire Internet. Their use of the more sensual right brain is making the left-brain thinking of the internet last for years deviate from its original trajectory.

In fact, this is a very good understanding of the trend. The Internet from a functional tool-type industry, has been generalized into the infrastructure of human survival, the internet has not been a small number of pioneer groups to explore the world of the "garage", its infiltration of human life has been so deep, this variety of people have been inseparable from the space every day, is eager to expand its "warm bedroom" and " Gorgeous parlour. "

In the past 1 years, we have seen almost all the models and products that can be detonated, mostly with "weak function, strong experience" temperament. And the key word-"experience"-is the word that is dominated by the human right brain, giving these products plenty of room to manoeuvre in the internet world of technology pioneers and industry giants.

We have to think: when more and more people's expectations of the Internet are no longer the left-brain thinking of instrumental and rigid logic calculations, and start putting their right brain in charge of intuition, emotion and imagination, will the theme of the next 10 years of Internet be rewritten?

Men who study women

Without the fans of female users, it is almost impossible to grow up fast in this age. Therefore, the study of the psychological and needs of female users has become the new trend of internet entrepreneurship. For example, 4 male founders, who study a group of women all day, are the focus of the social shopping mall mushroom Street entrepreneurial plot.

"The electricity quotient is a funnel model, the core of the model is the conversion rate, if from the female angle, 3 conditions have a great influence on the conversion rate." "After studying women's buying habits and psychology, Chen, the CEO of Mushroom Street, found that the display, classification and sequencing of goods are very important to women.

February 2011, Chen saw the United States of Pinterest, "from the display, this UI can solve a few problems, one is not to let users produce the impression of selling sites; second, the experience of shopping is very good, Pinterest in the unit area of the picture density increased, visual impact stronger, Very suitable for female users. ”

What about the sort? Taobao is a rational sort, according to the search layer of progressive. And Chen chose to serve the female user is, "mushroom cool people need perceptual sort." This is a non-standard sort of way-not to look at sales rankings and publish successively, only to see if "New and hot". This is like a waterfall, new things appear on the top, as time goes by quickly falling, until someone clicks "like", the product will continue to rise, and each "like" action will pass through time, diminishing value, like marginal curve. "This is a complex set of mathematical operations, but the selection of products is everyone needs the fresh trend and hot." Chen.

At the same time, there are two female features that are important for the operation of communities and products: conformity and chasing stars.

Women are more likely to herd than men. In Mushroom Street, "like" is the most frequently used action, Chen that, should be inclined to believe that women's herd mentality, so that a lot of people like to emerge and be seen by more people, like "reverse buy" such products, (that is, the client launched the demand, when the number of participants accumulated more than a certain range can be a group) It is not a trading product, but a social product, because there is a female herd mentality of the grasp.

Are there really so many people who are willing to "share" compared to the low threshold of "like"? We do not need to have a lot of people to share, the minority is enough. "Girls love Chasing Stars, love follow the people walk, we go to cultivate their own community experts and talent, they and users from the nearest." These people have gained recognition on the one hand, when they share something that is consumed by many, that is, high productivity. "If it's a male community and no one is involved in the discussion, hang on. "Chen added.

On the user base, if roughly divided into the male and female camps, Mushroom Street is almost all female users, in fact, there are many products, although the product itself is not all women, but the participation of women because of the obvious changes.

Open the list in the App store, very typical is with the United States, photo-related products, CAMERA360 CEO Xu Xian told reporters, "We found that when the main target for female users of the Japanese, skin and other filter effects, especially the Japanese effect, the popularity of the degree of more than our imagination." "In fact, the data show Camera360 is a more male users of the product, the main precision visual camera class tools." But with the addition of the beauty filter, the download quickly increased by 10,000 on the original level.

"And female users are very sensitive to the product experience," he said. In fact, there was an upgrade, some filter algorithms were fine-tuned, and almost all male product managers found no difference in color-level retention--they thought it was at least invisible to the naked eye, but that day, they got feedback from a lot of female users. Xu Xian says more female users, such as Mito, beauty cameras, and photo-processing tools, Camera360 will also be able to launch filters and special effects products that are more tailored to the needs of the female user base.

In addition, the Gourmet app has also become a product of high female user aggregation, especially based on "cooking at home" recipes. Installation of more than 3 million, active users up to nearly 300,000 of the beans and fruit food, female users as high as 78%.

The demand and behavior habits of female users lead the continuous upgrading and revision of bean-fruit cuisine. For example, when you click on a menu, see the production process feel very good to share it out, by clicking on the familiar share icon in the lower right corner, you will see a lot of social sharing pathways such as sharing Sina Weibo, sharing QQ space and sharing it with Renren, but you will also find that the last option to parallel these shared channels There's no clear way to share it, it's a phrase like "Eat this tonight!" What do you mean by that? Curious people will click, so you will find your text box opened, text message is: "Eat this tonight!" and recipes for the site link.

"Later research found that 75% of women think this function is very love." "The founder of the Wang Yuxiang said that this sentence itself is derived from the user's suggestions, they think if it is written" texting "is very common, the effect of the modification is very warm, can be readily sent to their close people, such as husband and mother.

There is also a strong demand escalation from users. "Many female users say that when they look at this software, they are bored before bedtime, see some delicious, weekend want to learn to do, but also afraid to forget the weekend, if you can set alarm clock to remind the good." "The timer function, born on the basis of this demand, is proven to be more than 10,000 times per day."

A new Kingdom based on women

Avant-garde and cutting-edge things are never mainstream, when all is finally extended to the depth of value and mode of mining, women in the future of the Internet world is bound to be the core of the business driving force, this is an emerging trend and process, their pursuit of detail and experience, is in line with the most mainstream, the most basic needs of the people.

Just 5 weeks, 30 million downloads, the IOS App Store and the Android apps market rankings first, add 1 million users a day, daily income reached 6 digits, game application draw something how can quickly detonate the popular?

"What I want to do is a happy game without winning or losing." "game designer Dan Porter said. Can you imagine a super athletic, or a game of rational rivalry, that quickly hits your "girlfriend Circle"? For most people it's almost impossible. A game of success there are many factors, but for draw something, is the product of the adjustment determines its detonation-only tacit understanding and cooperation to guess the success of the plot, this is full of small moving interaction, precisely from the right brain results.

So how to build a new business and business model on the basis of women, what is the logic behind it? Many businesses have to take this into account.

The Mushroom street mentioned above, a company set up less than two years a day to bring Taobao 800,000-900,000 of traffic, 5 million turnover, from Taobao open platform to obtain 10 tens of thousands of commission. Calculated to generate 150 million of the turnover per month – the total turnover of Taobao's open platform for the year 2011 was only 3 billion.

This business does not sell goods to users, more do not need to store goods and logistics, but an integrated social characteristics of e-commerce form, the image is said to be "shopping Guide", if you are a male user, you are in the Mushroom Street registration page will be the first "shock": welcome you mushroom cool. Seems to have told you this is a "woman heap". Millions of female users every day in the community to share shopping and fashion, the community has countless products, if you like, you can directly click the link to Taobao sellers and complete the purchase.

This form of soil is on the open platform of Taobao, within the ecosystem. As an ecosystem with innate advantages and huge commodity resources, Taobao has set its own rules, and it also needs a rich species to play in this game. and the value of Mushroom Street is to give love to fashion, shopping women to provide interesting places, shopping may be a result, more importantly, find the same fun people.

Like many websites, Taobao's model is a male-oriented web site. Look at those search tags, according to the hierarchical level of the page, as well as the use of clear keywords to index the way, which is not a strong purpose, straight line, rational behavior clues? And for more emotional, like the purchase of a woman, when Taobao products are still very little, although there is no "shopping" feeling, But they can also be done through simple paging action to complete the screening and purchase, but when Taobao has 1.8 billion of products today, the purchase of female users will be difficult.

In Mushroom Street There is a channel called "Group" channel, which has a lot of interesting and hot "group": "The airport does not cry" group, "big chest mm against flat chest fashion" group, "original single control" group ... The very feminine pronoun and the demand characteristic is the community most active place, "the key this is Taobao cannot provide" the Mushroom Street CEO Chen tells the reporter, this model opportunity lies in you can provide the valuable service, but Taobao does not.

Women love shopping and socializing. Nearly 56% of adult women say they use the internet to keep in touch with their friends, according to a study published by COMSCORE2011, a market research firm, in which women are online: how women affect the Internet. 46% of adult males hold this view.

Facebook is the first wave of female users more than male users, while the rise of the housewife in the Pinterest, the monthly active users have more than tens of millions. According to AppData statistics, more than 97.9% of Facebook users like to use Pinterest are women. For Groupon and Gilt, the proportion of female users is also 77% and 67%, and that is the group of women who contribute most of the money to Yelp.

The same is true on the mobile end, according to research data shows that the iphone now more than 20 million of the domestic users, nearly 70% are women, and the entire smartphone market, the 2011 end of the female smartphone user base has more than 29 million people. Of the users who use mobile devices to shop on Taobao, the proportion of women is more than 50%. Appchina's figures show that the proportion of Chinese smartphone users has grown to 53%.

Just as some people speculate that all products that interact with the "shake" process must be developed and dominated by male product managers, because this is a very "impatient" straight-line approach, very similar to the male physiological characteristics. But in fact, women's social needs to have a close process, to create a tacit and perceptual interaction path, and based on location dating is too simple and rough and straight to the subject, although it can be an auxiliary, but obviously not a most delicate way.

This may be a revelation to social networking sites, the next 10 years of the Internet's logic must not be tough, cold, in the left-brain control of the logical communication, the right brain delicate and perceptual things need to be added to the core of future products. This is part of the reason why Facebook and path can successfully become gossip and spit in the circle of relationships, and they have a lot more room for interaction in their hobbies and wisdom, to satisfy their desire to be known about her life, and not just to be a purposeful tool.

Design and Balance

If you continue down from the product and pattern layer, the deeper level is the design. and UI and interaction are the core of design.

The great reversal of the famous product industry is the Path1.0 version to version 2.0. A completely different UI and UE experience brings a surge in user volume and active users. Lower left corner of the small plus open to form a sector, enhanced timeline feed style, as well as simple and intuitive expression and so on are all amazing. Only 18 days after the release, active users rose from 10,000 to 300,000, downloading a breakthrough of 1.5 million--and a year before 1 million.

So there are more and more people who care about how to use design to influence the core value of a product. In fact, after the advent of Apple, this is already a proposition.

Companies like Google and Microsoft, they all exist in a digital way, they use rational thinking to try to turn a lot of things into data, including assessments of people, and Apple looks at everything in terms of human nature and sensibility-its success is that people really need it.

There is a design company, EICo, whose name is far more low-key than its product reputation. Weico, because of its exquisite design and rich features, has become a popular microblogging client with high popularity. Currently download 7 million, daily activation volume of 1 million, more than 65% female users.

"Everyone sitting in this room is very sensual. "The design also has sensibility, including the pursuit of quality that is always in the subconscious, especially after the basic work is complete," said founder Zhang Wei. There needs to be a company that can generate influence from design and innovation.

The early Sina Weibo client infrastructure style was designed from EICo design, but "Sina wants to create a powerful tool, and we want to create a powerful experience and empower users." Weico was born to deliver a voice that was not the same as the official client, and the Sina Open platform encouraged the third party to do the product.

Weico and Starbucks have a good partnership with the theme to promote their brand, "the first time to do this is to help Starbucks design a set of themes that can be synchronized with their marketing." The client will be prompted to download. "Surprisingly, when the partnership ended with the need to take down this set of topics, many users ' feedback was that they wanted to keep it, because they didn't resent the ad, but got a good theme experience. More intuitively, the theme has allowed Starbucks ' official microblog to grow more than 21,200 real fans-they like Weico, Starbucks, and more than 70% are "right-brained" girls.

Follow-up and Mini Cooper, blade cooperation has also harvested, and the recent user use rate is very high "Zhi Ming and Chun Jiao" theme, but also EICo design and Atlas of cooperation projects.

In fact, two years ago, the emphasis on the UI and UE had started, and all the products and teams in the Internet and mobile Internet had UI, UE designers. In an era of emphasis on experience, the importance of the UI and UE is not limited to women, but to the minutiae of functionality. This change has also been deduced from men who design men, to men who try to design for women.

Rational product managers need a different kind of ability to check and balance his overly strong engineering background. "The balance that no company can achieve is that it is bound to be a business-led, technical background, or operating background, or the financial background of the leading companies, and we are the design background, rational encounter sensibility, so many companies want to produce a chemical reaction with us, It is the best state to use design and perceptual thinking to influence the product logic of their particular rational line. Zhang Wei said.

Coincidentally, the EICo design has just done their ipad version of the client designs for Mushroom Street. Shopping Guide products on the ipad on the value of browsing and purchase value is high. The design of the original intention is to create a relaxed sofa experience, that is, a girl in the sofa, do not need to think, to enjoy the process of consuming content.

For example, the threshold of the lowest "like", this is the most commonly used in Mushroom Street Click, the data show click "Like" This action was completed in the first quarter of 2012 only 90 million times-design, although the overall tone and style of the page is very fresh and concise, but EICo Design thinks that this high frequency action needs to create a sense of surprise and achievement, which makes every girl is within reach-the page is just click, and the ipad is clicked, the circular "like" icon quickly flipped, like a coin in the rotation, very interesting.

However, perceptual design is not "fancy design", but a simple, convenient and comfortable experience between content and user. This is similar to the understanding of the founder of the Entrepreneurial Project, White Jay (Weibo). "The design of the Internet today is not art, but it can be extrapolated." including what color, the button should be rounded or angled, so we will find that the Internet design more and more women. In fact, the Internet UI should be about how to use visual language to make the interface logic clear, not how to be more beautiful. May be mixed into the perceptual factors, but it is still rational to see. ”

In the end, people consume an experience while consuming content and use experience to strengthen the communication of content and keep users. This does not mean that the perceptual Internet has completely become feminine thinking, but on the basis of rationality, it is not a subversion to rebuild the release of perceptual value. In the UI, UE Circle, the most appropriate description is: You may need to spend a lot of effort to make others look effortless.

Looking for increments

Throughout the above keywords: women, sensibility, experience, exquisite ... The more critical variables behind it are the rise of the right brain, which is a key factor in the behavioral decisions that are triggered by the right brain.

The rise of the Pinterest-reading era has led people to pay attention to the "right brain value", which controls the "price-oriented, linear search, rational interaction" and so on, which dominate the internet for many years. Internet from a "can use on the line" environment, gradually become more and more pay attention to experience, more and more revealing its perceptual side.

And more importantly, under the new technology, all aspects of hardware and software are increasingly supporting the "right brain rise." For example, countless high-quality pictures, with higher computing power, bandwidth and network support to be released. The picture itself carries more information than text, or more efficiently. At the same time, more relaxed than the text, and can be different people according to their feelings and constantly be understood and re-deduction.

Mobile internet pervasive infiltration of life--anytime, anywhere communication and information access, take a picture immediately can upload it to share, accurate understanding of the people and things around them, and so on, from the total information to the bandwidth to the real-time upgrade, is giving more and more perceptual thinking to provide the basis for support. Because in essence, these exploding information is not the left brain can be handled alone, the right brain to join is a necessity.

From the current stage of the Internet, we are still most of the time from the functional and technical perspective to resolve it. At this point we tend to find that the Giants have filled out the site, so where is the increment?

Getting through the left and right brain may be a very promising direction. When users no longer use technology and functionality to measure the product. From the right brain of those who are closer to human nature and more experience-oriented signals, there are plenty of space and a lot of value to be excavated, those female users focused on the hot products, is a best footnote.

Activate your right brain and you'll find that the internet is still a tempting fertile ground.