Product Teardown 13 — Bing Mobile App

— a comparison with Mobile Baidu

I do this teardown for one purpose — to see how these two apps approach the same problem in a different way. I will focus on Bing, but with Mobile Baidu as a benchmark.

Basic questions to think about

1. What’s the experience of getting started?

Both apps have a good experience of getting started. As a searching app, Bing, however, has a more intuitive first time user experience. The information is organized and presented in a very simple and elegant way. There is a search box, and the several vertical search category. At the bottom, there is a news bar.

Mobile Baidu on the other hand, try to present too much information at the same time. There is a search box, and vertical search category below that, and then the information cards which load the hottest search word. At the bottom, there is another bard which has local service, voice search, personal account and more.

2. How does the app explain itself in the first few minutes?

This is putting too much information at the same time can actually hurt you. Bing is particularly good at self-explainary. Users can feel and understand that this app focuses on searching, on helping them find information they want.

Mobile Baidu gets confused here. What is Mobile Baidu trying to encourage users to do? The most important function — search — is overshadowed by hottest search word card. Search, trending topic, local service or voice search? Baidu might have a lot of clicks or search inquiry at the home page by placing hottest word there to guide user. But I think the best way is to give users tools and let them decide.

We can also see from Bing that it is focusing on “click interaction” — users need to type what they want into the search box to get results. You have to go to search page to use voice search.

Baidu tries to find a balance between typing and voice input — it places these two functions at the same page.

Google has an even better information presentation — just type or say what you want.

We also see in terms of guiding user flow, that Google gives users full control, followed by Bing, and that Baidu basically owns user flow.

I think both Bing and Baidu can improve here: showing the information( news, keywords, notifications, etc) more relevant to users. You can collect users’ information and customize for them.

3. How easy to use the app?

Well, Baidu does a poor job in user experience, but it does win in terms of connecting users with service.

If I search restaurant nearby, Bing gives a list of Ads which has key words “restaurant”, while Baidu lists all the nearby restaurant I could go to or order food. Baidu implements this by putting the local service into an entire category which includes almost everything you can think of. This greatly boost the “usefulness” of the app. After all, we want to find information we can consume, not just information good to know. That is the reason why vertical search service, such as Yelp, Dianping are popular.

Obviously, lack of strong local partnership keeps Bing from integrating services.

4. How do you feel while exploring the app?

As users continue using the app, they would feel that Bing is around finding information while Baidu is around connecting you with service. You might feel that they are two different apps. They diverge.

5. Did the App deliver your expectation? What compels you to use it?

Bing absolutely delivers. I could find user information through it and results are very relevant, especially when I search in English. Baidu misses the search, but it delivers on finding service. I use them in different scenarios.

Some more strategic questions to think about

6. What the most important task the UI asks users to accomplish?

I vote for Bing, because Bing is crystal clear that it wants users to search for information.

Again, Baidu is a little bit confused. On the homepage, what the most important thing it wants users to accomplish? I dont see a clear answer. I assume, actually, this comes from conflicts among different BUs in Baidu. Search team want users to have a intuitive search experience or higher DAU, while local service team might want users to find service easily, and monetization team might want features that can increase revenue. The compromise is that they all put a little bit of their own stuff out there.

7. Is this the simplest solution?

No, for both. Google wins. You cannot find the simplest solution if you don’t have a clear product vision or product strategy. Who is the most important users? what’s the most important task they need to accomplish?

8. Is the information organized logically?

Again, ask who are the important user groups? what important tasks they want to accomplish? Are there any common tasks?

For Bing, it definitely needs local partnership to extend its search service on areas such as nearby, movies, images, so that it can provides more relevant deals. Improve on vertical search.

PS: credits to julie zhuo who provide some frameworks on analyzing UI.