Douyin's e-commerce support for the "mall" has been effective, and the transaction volume has reached 30%.

Wen | Dou Xuan Dong Jie

Editor|Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

The core strategy of Douyin e-commerce last year "making the mall bigger" has improved significantly.

36Kr learned from a number of people familiar with the matter that from the fourth quarter of last year to January to February this year, in the entire Douyin e-commerce market, the proportion of GMV in a single month of Douyin pan-mall (including mall, search, and shop window) has stabilized at nearly 30%, which has increased significantly compared with the first half of last year.

At this time, nearly a year has passed since Douyin announced that it will vigorously do mall and search-based shelf e-commerce. According to 36Kr, the overall GMV target of Douyin e-commerce this year is not less than 2 trillion, of which the target of pan-mall is about 30% of the overall target.

"Pan-mall is the most important sub-business of Douyin e-commerce this year." The above person told 36Kr. Whether it is personnel investment, marketing budget, subsidies, this year will be biased towards pan-mall.

The reason why Douyin shifted the focus of its e-commerce business from live streaming to pan-mall is, on the one hand, because Douyin DAU has maintained a volume of 600 million in the past year, and it is difficult to break through; On the other hand, due to the consideration of balancing the traffic of various businesses and maintaining user experience, it is difficult to increase the proportion of traffic allocated to e-commerce companies by Douyin. A person close to Douyin said that last year, Douyin distributed about 10% of the traffic to e-commerce.

High-cost unit prices and high-frequency repurchase categories such as 3C digital and fresh food are also average in content scenarios such as live broadcasting, and are more suitable for shelf e-commerce. According to the above-mentioned sources, such goods are also the key categories of the current pan-mall.

In May last year, Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin e-commerce, announced that she would focus on shopping malls and search, and the new field would account for more than 50% in the future. A person close to Douyin said that specifically, Douyin e-commerce planned to gradually increase the proportion of pan-mall to 30%, 40% and 50% within three years.

How to achieve this?

The first thing Douyin gives is traffic. From March to April 2022, Douyin Mall began to test the first-level entrance of the mall until 618 officially gave the first-level entrance to the mall.

According to a number of people familiar with the matter, after the opening of the entrance, the traffic of the entire pan-mall has increased significantly, "quadrupling or five times", and in April last year, the DAU of Douyin Mall was only in the order of 20-30 million, and by June DAU had exceeded 150 million.

However, at this stage, the surge in mall traffic did not have a significant effect on the actual GMV transaction at that time. A person familiar with the matter revealed that during the 618 period in 2022, although the number of UVs (unique visitors) of Douyin Mall is close to 1.5-160 million every day, the actual transaction conversion rate is only 2-3%.

There are many reasons, such as users have not yet developed the habit of trading in the mall, and the mall does not yet have a sufficient supply of goods.

In order to increase investment attraction and improve the supply and richness of goods, in addition to the Douyin 2000 project in early 2022 (introducing the top 2,000 brand merchants in Tmall sales), by August-September 2022, Douyin e-commerce also specially established a merchant development department dedicated to serving small and medium-sized businesses.

The main function of the business development department is to do the investment promotion of industrial belts and white-label merchants, maintain, cultivate and incubate small and medium-sized businesses, "because big brands are relatively difficult to leverage, they are more inclined to put the shelf market on Tmall and Jingdong, and focus on live broadcast e-commerce on Douyin, while small and medium-sized merchants live broadcast performance is average, because of the lack of professional operation, talent, investment team, the traffic of the shelf yard is cheaper, and the operation mechanism is simpler." The person said to 36Krypton.

This is a "roundabout tactic" - first pry small and medium-sized businesses, improve the richness of goods, make GMV of the pan-mall, and then attract brands to come in.

By the end of last year, the number of merchants on Douyin Mall had increased significantly. A person familiar with the matter revealed that last year, the number of mobile sales merchants in the pan-mall also increased from about 650,000 at the beginning of the year to nearly 900,000 at the end of the year.

Douyin e-commerce also invested more resources in the mall during the 818, 921, Double 11 and other promotions, such as guiding merchants to sign up for mall activities, giving merchants and users subsidies and coupons in the pan-mall, and even putting part of the main venue in the mall to emphasize the transaction scenarios of the mall to users.

The results of these measures are obvious. A number of people said that in the first half of 2022, when the traffic entrance was still testing, the proportion of pan-mall in the GMV market was less than 20%, and after entering the fourth quarter of 2022, this indicator was close to 30%.

Of course, the wave of new crown infections in the fourth quarter caused some anchors to be unable to start broadcasting, which also promoted the proportion of the pan-mall sector. It remains to be seen whether this level can be maintained in the future.

In the past January-February 2023, the proportion of Douyin pan-mall was also about 27-28%, temporarily continuing the momentum of the fourth quarter of last year.

Pan-mall can bring not only GMV growth to Douyin e-commerce, but also an increase in advertising revenue.

A number of people familiar with the matter told 36Kr that in the first half of this year, Douyin Mall has also begun advertising tests in some cities.

A person familiar with the matter revealed that last year's big promotion, the commercial traffic of the mall was tested, but because the traffic of the entire mall was not stable enough at that time, the number of merchants was not much, and the advertising space was not officially launched.

However, in the fourth quarter of last year, Douyin Mall has been inviting some brand merchants to do traffic testing tests. The person familiar with the matter also said that the ad load (ad load rate) of the store may be around 10%.

It is understood that last year, Douyin e-commerce brought nearly 40% of the advertising revenue to the platform, which was the main driving force for the growth of byte advertising last year. If the commercial traffic of the mall is officially launched, Byte's advertising revenue will gain higher growth space.