When the consumer market enters the era of refined competition, the sinking market is no longer synonymous with “low price and low allocation”, but a blue ocean that hides real needs and emotional resonance. This article delves into how to meet the pursuit of cost-effectiveness, functional practicality and emotional resonance of users in the sinking market through accurate user insights and localized design, providing a valuable reference for the design of products and services in the sinking market.
When the consumer market enters the era of refined competition, the sinking market is no longer synonymous with “low price and low allocation”, but a blue ocean that hides real needs and emotional resonance.
Users here not only pursue the pragmatism of “spending a little money to do big things”, but also desire the experience of “being seen and respected” – the core of sinking design is to use accurate demand translators to transform business logic into user-perceptible value.
01 Five rules of sinking the market
1. Cost-effective: Make “saving money” a pleasant experience
Case: Pinduoduo’s “ultimate cost-effective philosophy”
The rise of Pinduoduo is to seize the price-sensitive characteristics of the sinking market. With the “group + low price” model, the platform introduces a large number of white label and factory-direct products, such as 9.9 yuan 30 pairs of socks, 19.9 yuan electric cooker, etc., cutting off the middle premium link, and using the ultra-low price strategy not only to open up the sinking market, but also allow users to gain satisfaction in affordable consumption and improve the overall shopping experience.
2. Minimalist and practical: Thoughtful design with “0 learning cost”
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
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Case 1: Kuaishou’s “One-Click Friendliness”
The interface of the early version of Kuaishou is simple and intuitive, with no complex operation logic, and new users can shoot and upload videos with simple clicks. This minimalist design greatly lowers the threshold for use, allowing middle-aged and elderly groups and ordinary users in third- and fourth-tier cities to easily get started, focus on recording life, and build a comfortable and stress-free experience in the smooth operation process.
Case 2: 58 Local version of “Town Service Module”
In the interface design of the 58 local version, focusing on the main site drainage, local content promotion, and sinking market service needs, a dual-track interface layout is adopted to clearly divide the service diversion area from the local content area, effectively avoiding user cognitive confusion. The service diversion area significantly improves the conversion efficiency of core services through visual level optimization and simplified operation paths. The local content zone relies on the algorithm recommendation mechanism to greatly enhance the exposure of local webmasters’ posts and activate the vitality of the regional ecosystem.
3. Deep channel penetration: let the service “long” in the user’s life
Case 1: Offline scenario: OPPO’s “1,000 towns and 1,000 stores” strategy
It has stores in more than 2,000 townships across the country, providing services such as “after-sales maintenance within 1 kilometer” and “exclusive teaching for the elderly”. The clerk uses the local dialect to explain the function, and even helps users set up mobile phone family numbers, turning the store into a “touchable sense of trust”.
Case 2: Online and offline linkage: Alipay’s “sinking life network”
Jointly launched the “Scan QR Code to Pay and Get Eggs” campaign to attract users with localized benefits such as “$5 off water bills”. Life Account pushes the “XX Town Temple Fair Schedule” and “Rural Medical Insurance Handling Guide”, making the APP a “township bulletin board at your fingertips”.
4. Localized content adaptation: shorten the “sense of distance” with “familiarity”
Case: Douyin’s “Dialect Universe”
Northeast chatter, Sichuan dialect to set up a dragon gate formation, Cantonese to talk about ancient …… The platform has introduced more than 20 dialect content, and set up topics such as “#Rural Stage” and “#Small Town Youth”, allowing users to swipe videos of “living like a neighbor’s house”.
5. Emotional Resonance Design: Make the brand an “emotional partner”
Case: Behind Hongxing Erke’s “wild consumption”
After the heavy rain donation incident in Henan, the brand launched a “patriotic theme” co-branded model, with the calligraphy font of “mountains and rivers can be leveled” on the T-shirt and the “Chinese red” color scheme of the sneakers, which accurately poked the feelings of the sinking users.
Design temperature: The product details page replaces professional parameters with the copywriting of “supporting domestic products, the king of cost performance”, so that consumer behavior becomes a window to “express attitude”.
02 Sinking needs to break aesthetic prejudices
1. Reject the “earthy label”: re-understand the aesthetic logic of sinking users
The visual preference of sinking users is “rich is beautiful”, and conveys “fireworks of life” and “affordable gain” with high-density information and high-saturation colors. In the early days, Pinduoduo used the “red and yellow system + waterfall commodity wall” to build a “low-price mentality” to meet the cost-effective needs of the sinking market.
With the advancement of the aesthetics of sinking users to a “sense of quality”, Pinduoduo injects “simple and orderly” design while retaining “affordable cognition” through “color noise reduction, space blanking, and functional layering”, balancing “richness” and “quality”, confirming that the sinking market has moved from “functional consumption” to “aesthetic consumption”.
2. Balance: Find a fulcrum between “local preferences” and “aesthetic upgrades”
Case 1: Douyin Express Edition
Taking Douyin Express Edition as an example, when it deeply penetrates the rural market, it does not adopt the “Tuhi style” UI design, but achieves effective coverage of diverse user groups through the collaborative strategy of lightweight design language and localized content ecology.
In terms of design, the speed version maintains the consistency of visual language with the main version of Douyin, and adopts the modern style of simple single-column full-screen video streaming, which meets the aesthetic preferences of first- and second-tier users while taking into account the sinking crowd through a minimalist style.
At the content level, the platform pushes localized content such as rural life, folk culture, and practical agricultural technology in a targeted manner, replacing the “visual bombardment” of the interface with real “fireworks”, so that high-quality content becomes the core carrier of connecting users.
This practice proves that the acceptance of design by users in the sinking market is not limited to “low-quality aesthetics”, and the organic combination of modern lightweight design and localized content can not only maintain the aesthetic height, but also accurately adapt to the cognitive habits of users at different levels, and realize the two-way value of “design inclusiveness” and “user resonance”
Case 2: 58 Local Version – Localization Module
58 The local version of the sinking design, abandoning the fancy vision, takes the icon as an example in the local module, the icon brings people happiness to the folk elements + modern simple integration ideas, through the concept of “conveying happiness, so that people can live and work in peace and contentment”, refining the outline symbols of folk musical instruments, with simple geometric graphics, which not only allows users to have a sense of familiarity, but also clearly conveys the service, lightweight presentation reduces the burden of browsing, and realizes the balance between “local empathy” and “efficient experience”.
3. Design inclusiveness: Make “high quality” within reach
Simply classifying low-tier market product design as “extensive style” is a misreading of user needs. Taking the “Good Want” supermarket as an example, it is in stark contrast to the traditional canteen:
- Commissary: Goods are stacked chaotically, promotional information is arbitrary, classification is vague, and shopping flow is chaotic.
- I want to come: standardized shelf partitioned display, with warm light and clear logos, to retain the sense of affordability while improving quality; Optimize shopping flow, introduce convenient payment, and take into account diverse needs in details.
This transformation from “disorderly and cluttered” to “orderly experience” allows users in the sinking market to enjoy low prices and obtain a shopping environment like a first- and second-tier city, proving that the sinking market needs a refined design that balances cost performance and quality, rather than an extensive style.
03 New mission of sinking design
What sinking users need is not “handout-style simplification”, but “complexity that is taken seriously” – they not only want to buy daily necessities for 9.9 yuan, but also look forward to seeing the design details of “Understand My Life” when they click on the APP.
