This year's 618 is more lively than ever, and the rise of interest e-commerce has brought new vitality to the e-commerce market. In the past year, I bought books, tea, clothes, and a lot of agricultural and sideline products on Douyin. I believe that many people, like me, used to think of Douyin as a short video app, but unknowingly started shopping on Douyin and got used to it.
Douyin e-commerce proposed "interest e-commerce" in April 2021. At that time, I thought "interest e-commerce" was more like a concept serving market segmentation. After a year, my understanding of it has improved— —Actually, interest e-commerce is not only showing the value difference between it and traditional e-commerce platforms, but also bringing a new model upgrade to the e-commerce market.
1. The rise of interest e-commerce: behind the traffic changes is the media upgrade
In June 2020, Douyin e-commerce was established. After more than half a year of exploration, in April 2021, the concept of "interest e-commerce" was officially proposed. This year, at the 2022 Douyin E-commerce Ecological Conference, Douyin E-commerce officially disclosed that in the past year, the GMV of Douyin e-commerce was 3.2 times that of the same period, and more than 10 billion items were sold.
Judging from the data, interest e-commerce has been verified by the market. Interest e-commerce is not only feasible, but also has great potential.
Why does Douyin interest e-commerce develop so rapidly?
Some people attribute the rise of hobby e-commerce to Douyin’s traffic advantage. There are 600 million daily active users on Douyin. The platform has more than 200 million short videos per month and more than 9 million e-commerce live broadcasts. Some people say that with Douyin's fertile traffic, even a pole can blossom. It is undeniable that Douyin’s traffic advantage has laid the foundation for the rise of interest e-commerce, but traffic is only one of the factors for the rise of interest e-commerce. Looking at the history of e-commerce development, many cases have repeatedly told the market that when doing e-commerce, you may not be successful if you have traffic, but you will definitely not succeed if you don’t have traffic.
Traffic is only a necessary condition for the success of an e-commerce platform, not a necessary or sufficient condition. Interest e-commerce is actually content e-commerce. The development basis of Douyin interest e-commerce is actually the content advantage of Douyin, or in other words, it is the upgrade of traditional graphic media by short video and live broadcast.
Behind the rise of Douyin interest e-commerce is the upgrade of information media and the upgrade of the e-commerce model based on this. It is by no means a simple traffic change.
Over the past 20 years of development of e-commerce in China, with the foundation of socialized logistics and mobile payment, the threshold for e-commerce entrepreneurship has been continuously lowered. However, the current situation of the e-commerce industry is: it is becoming easier and easier to start an e-commerce business, but it is increasingly difficult for e-commerce platforms to innovate.
We know that the three groups of elements surrounding e-commerce are logistics, capital flow and information flow. While logistics and payment have become "public goods", there is only one way for e-commerce platforms to break through, starting with information. There are two e-commerce models born from the mobile Internet, one is social e-commerce and the other is interest e-commerce, both of which start with information. The rise of social networking relies on social networks and peer-to-peer communication, which has changed information dissemination and interaction; the development of Douyin e-commerce actually relies on two rich media methods, short video and live broadcast, to improve content efficiency.
As mentioned above, behind the rise of Douyin interest e-commerce is the upgrade of information media, not a simple change in traffic. The media upgrade from graphics to video is somewhat similar to the upgrade from books and newspapers to radio and television. Anyone familiar with the history of media knows that radio and television are mass communication in the true sense.
The Internet has evolved from PC to mobile, and the hardware threshold for accessing the Internet has been lowered, which has doubled the number of users. The dissemination of information, from pictures and texts to videos, has also brought about exponential growth in content and information volume.
One of the most direct manifestations is that in the era of graphics, tens of thousands of views are hits, and the graphics and texts of hits in the mobile era have been upgraded to 10W+. For short videos in the mobile era, the standard for hit videos is tens of millions. Even hundreds of millions. When merchants are busy with product text descriptions and display retouching, a video can simply, straightforwardly and vividly show users its features and effects. Short videos lower the threshold for content creation and dissemination, and also make content richer.
The traffic advantage can explain Douyin's ability to engage in e-commerce, but it is not enough to explain the explosive growth of Douyin's e-commerce. According to the official data disclosed by Douyin e-commerce, in the past year, more than 10 billion products have entered thousands of households through Douyin e-commerce; Thousands of institutions and service provider ecological partners accompany businesses to grow.
If we only look at Douyin e-commerce from the perspective of traffic advantages, it may be just a platform supplement to the original e-commerce model. Only by looking at Douyin e-commerce from the perspective of changes and upgrades in information media can we truly understand its explosive power.
The rise of Douyin interest e-commerce is not the change of the Internet from one traffic platform to another, but the media upgrade of e-commerce from graphic information to video. Its real value is actually the upgrade of the e-commerce model. Douyin's interest e-commerce brings new operating models and shopping experiences to merchants or consumers that are different from traditional graphic e-commerce.
In a sense, interest e-commerce is a new model with broad prospects for e-commerce in the short video era.
2. The development logic of Douyin e-commerce: Keyword “certainty”
After a year of experience, Douyin e-commerce has proposed the concept of "global interest e-commerce" on the basis of "interest e-commerce". How to understand "global interest e-commerce"? We can find out more from the development of Douyin’s e-commerce book category.
On April 22, 2022, Douyin E-commerce released the "Douyin E-commerce Book Industry Development Data Report". The report shows that in the past year, driven by live broadcasts and short videos, the scale of Douyin e-commerce book consumption has grown rapidly. The platform sells more than 450,000 books a day, and the number of monthly consumers exceeds 10 million, a year-on-year increase of 205%. As of December 2021, live broadcasts have driven book sales to increase by 143% year-on-year; short videos have relatively stable performance due to their high starting point, driving sales to increase by 64% year-on-year.
Since 2020, the number of searches for Douyin’s book-related content has continued to rise, reaching more than 140 million at its peak. "Search for a short video and discover a good book" has become the choice of more Douyin users. As the search volume increases, more and more people are sharing book-related knowledge on Douyin. By the end of 2021, the number of monthly contributors has reached nearly 30 million, a year-on-year increase of 43%. In terms of creative content, “book recommendations” increased by 441% year-on-year, becoming the category with the largest growth.
In the description of the Douyin e-commerce report, we can make a simple summary. One of the signs of the "global interest e-commerce" proposed by Douyin e-commerce is search. In 2021, the core of "Interested E-Commerce" is "find people for goods". In 2022, "Global Interested E-Commerce" is based on short videos and live broadcast content to stimulate users' interest in shopping, adding search and mall scenes to realize "people Looking for goods”.
According to Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin e-commerce: "Interests are stimulated by content, which can promote short-term conversion; interests will also be extended, and there will be continuity, and users' interests will be naturally taken over by more scenarios."
Douyin e-commerce data shows that, in addition to content scenarios, data reflecting user needs has grown faster, and search behaviors with product intentions have increased by 217% year-on-year; this year, the number of page views of stores on the platform has increased by 279%, and the GMV of Douyin Mall has increased by 6 times . After a year of development, more and more users will actively search for stores and place orders to purchase products of interest after seeing interesting live broadcasts or short videos.
From recommendation to search, from "goods find people" to "people find goods", it can also be summarized as "certainty".
This kind of "certainty": For merchants, "interest e-commerce" is no longer just an attempt, but to take Douyin e-commerce as one of the main positions of normal operation; for consumers, "interest e-commerce" "Business" is no longer just an incidental shopping behavior inspired by one or two recommendations, but has become a normal shopping habit.
In addition to Douyin's enhanced search, another sign of the implementation of "all-area interest e-commerce" is the launch of mall and merchant membership functions. That is to say, the core of "Global Domain" is the "full-scenario" coverage of interest e-commerce: merchants can stimulate users through short videos, live broadcasts and other content, so as to make efficient transactions or in-depth planting; they can also accumulate users through shopping malls, search and other scenarios, Do continuous daily operations.
"Interested e-commerce" is the first stage of Douyin e-commerce. It is to connect content-based products with potential interested users, use content to stimulate consumer demand, and use interest to facilitate transactions. The operation at this stage is essentially the operation of 600 million daily active traffic of Douyin. "Global interest e-commerce" is the second stage of Douyin e-commerce. It is an attempt to normalize business operations and user shopping. Focusing on the insight of "interests", it has changed from traffic management to user management.
The proposal of "all-area interest e-commerce" means that Douyin e-commerce has begun to become an e-commerce platform in the true sense.
3. Challenges and opportunities of repurchase rate
Douyin e-commerce has seen many classic cases emerge in the past year.
For example, the official flagship store of Shirt Lao Luo is an enterprise located in Gan County, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province. It has been making shirts for 15 years since its establishment in 2007. After coming into contact with Douyin e-commerce, Shirt Lao Luo felt the power of retail, and determined to create a Douyin brand on Douyin. Starting in 2021, this company will start from the market segment of business shirts, one-click wear, only New Year’s goods For the first time during the festival, the GMV of a single game exceeded 1 million.
For another example, in October 2020, Douyin e-commerce launched the "Seeing Technology Plan". In 2021, driven by this plan, the total turnover of intangible heritage inheritors on the Douyin e-commerce platform increased by 15 times.
In the past year, Douyin interest e-commerce has maintained strong growth: there are 1,211 merchants with annual sales exceeding 100 million, including 134 cutting-edge brands; more than 12,000 talents with GMV exceeding 10 million; and annual sales exceeding 100 million There are 175 types of products, 163 merchant service providers have annual GMV exceeding 100 million; and 172 MCN institutions have annual GMV exceeding 100 million.
If the past data has verified the possibility of "interest e-commerce", then the challenge facing Douyin e-commerce today is how to continue to lead the growth and maintain the sustainable and stable development of the ecology. Here, Douyin e-commerce needs to do two things: one is platform governance to consolidate consumers' shopping minds and make consumers Douyin shopping a habit; the other is to improve the ecological layout and build a more stable business environment for businesses. growth to provide more services and capabilities.
The "2021 Douyin E-commerce Consumer Rights Protection Annual Report" shows that Douyin e-commerce has optimized the shopping environment through upgrading technology, strengthening testing and special governance; the annual payment of 180 million yuan in protection funds is used to help consumers protect their rights; The content quality grading standards were launched and a content ecological diversified identification system was established, which significantly improved the overall content quality. In addition, customer service levels have been continuously strengthened, logistics capabilities have continued to improve, and consumer information security and brand intellectual property rights have been effectively protected.
"Global interest e-commerce" means that the key to the growth of the platform is no longer simply "conversion rate", but an upgrade to "repurchase rate". From traffic management to user management, from conversion rate to repurchase rate, Douyin e-commerce needs to further improve its platform governance capabilities.
"All-area interest e-commerce" needs to be upgraded, and Douyin e-commerce also needs to build a more stable business environment and more service capabilities. Recently, the Douyin e-commerce "FACT Operation Matrix" has also been upgraded to "FACT+ Global Operation Methodology". Through self-operated positions, talent matrix, themed activities and top Vs, four tracks for the supply of interesting content in the business book. In addition to strengthening the construction of content scenarios such as short videos and live broadcasts, Douyin e-commerce has also strengthened the construction of merchants’ stores, malls, and search products. In the future, Douyin e-commerce compass, Douyin, and Douyin e-commerce supply chain cloud will also be upgraded. Warehouse and other products and services.
In a word, Douyin has proved that it can do a good job in interest e-commerce in the past year, and it needs to do better in the future.