Wen | Chen Qiaohui
Tech Planet exclusively understands that Douyin recently tested a new mall entrance, which is located in the navigation bar at the bottom of the App, replacing the previous "Friends", and "Friends" as a channel, placed above the home page, which means that Douyin is weighing the importance of e-commerce and social networking.
Tech Planet Experience found that the mall inside the new entrance has not changed in design, it is still the previous model, and users can shop faster through this entrance.
Compared with the previous test entrance, this time the adjustment makes the e-commerce entrance significantly higher in status, especially replacing "friends", which means that within Douyin, the importance of e-commerce may be higher than that of social networking.
For a long time, Douyin social networking is the top priority business for the development of Douyin. Starting from 2020, Byte has increased its investment in douyin in social play. Social functions such as "Connect", "Video Chat", "Friends", "Shake Together", "Watch Together" have been launched successively, and have been involved in social networking of acquaintances and strangers, trying to find a breakthrough in the process of continuous trial and error.
At the "Innovation Conference 2021", Zhang Nan, CEO of Beijing Bytedance, shared his views around the social function of Douyin. Zhang Nan said that the social function of Douyin is a natural process, and the user's expression and interaction needs have begun to ferment within Douyin, which has promoted the socialization of Douyin.
However, after two years of development, social networking has not brought the desired results and changes to Douyin, especially The social product "Multi-Flash" under Douyin has finally been incorporated into the Douyin App and become an independent function, and Douyin Social has become a "pseudo demand".
In contrast, e-commerce, with the increasing rise of e-commerce business, urgently needs an entrance to bring greater traffic exposure to it, so as to increase the transaction rate. Douyin e-commerce has tested relevant entrances on the search page, personal homepage and App homepage, but these entrances are still hidden compared to the entrances in the bottom navigation bar.
This time, the navigation bar will be used as a new entrance to the Douyin e-commerce "mall", which means that Douyin will increase the priority of e-commerce business and the proportion of business in the App. It can be seen that compared with social relations, it is more important to monetize business, and if the Douyin e-commerce "mall" is officially settled in the navigation bar at the bottom of the App, it is bound to bring certain improvements to the Douyin e-commerce GMV.