Boosting Rural Market Traffic: A Product Management Case Study on User‑Centric Design

Understanding the Rural (Sinking) Market

The sinking market refers to areas outside the five‑ring road and cities below the third tier, essentially the vast network of towns and villages. 58 Tongzhen targets an even deeper tier—rural towns—posing significant product‑design challenges that require thorough user research.

User Insights

Who are the users? After three weeks of in‑depth interviews across counties and towns, we discovered that residents enjoy relatively low living pressure, cheap housing, and a surprisingly high disposable income. Their daily leisure exceeds six hours, yet entertainment options are limited.

Consumption habits show a strong reliance on online channels, moderate quality expectations, and high price sensitivity. Apart from major e‑commerce platforms, discount‑or‑savings‑oriented services are popular.

Social and information channels are dominated by familiar, word‑of‑mouth networks. Younger residents are few; information spreads mainly through close acquaintances, and app installations often rely on friends or family.

Overall impression : "Happy life, idle time"—the most striking takeaway from the interviews.

Traffic Challenges in the Rural Market

Although local information detail pages attract high traffic, users frequently leave after viewing the content, resulting in poor re‑distribution of that traffic.

As a reverse‑thinking internet product, the detail page is the first touchpoint; wasted traffic means missed opportunities.

Optimization Direction

Based on the identified problems and user insights, the optimization goal focuses on improving traffic utilization efficiency.

Attention Model Construction

We built a user‑attention model to capture both short‑term and long‑term attention triggers. The core issue identified was the lack of effective cues to sustain user attention during page browsing.

Short‑term attention triggers (external) provide sensory cues to spark immediate interest, while internal triggers connect with users' emotions and routines to foster belonging and value.

Long‑term attention pushes include resource incentives, social rewards, and self‑achievement motivations.

Interaction Design

From a structural perspective, we first improve the headline to capture instant attention, then use push mechanisms to gradually deepen engagement, encouraging users to contribute more of their attention.

Solution Overview

Results

After launch, the classified‑information traffic conversion rate increased 2.5×, and the news‑information conversion rate doubled.

Conclusion

The practical summary demonstrates that even with limited time and resources, a user‑centered redesign—grounded in deep rural user insights and an attention‑focused model—can substantially improve traffic efficiency and deliver strong performance metrics.