Xiaohongshu has not yet opened up the last mile of live streaming e-commerce

Author: Zhu Zhang, Editor: Jia Xin

In the Chinese Internet world, few companies are as fragmented as Xiaohongshu:

It has the high-quality traffic that competitors covet and has the shortest path to monetization. But after so many years, I just haven't learned how to make money.

If it was unlucky to launch the cross-border e-commerce business "welfare society" in 2014, but then was trapped by tax policy adjustments and decisively turned to being a community, then at least two waves of opportunities to go through the commercialization path were missed by Xiaohongshu.

The first wave of opportunities appeared from 2017 to 2020, and Xiaohongshu basically gave up the idea of doing e-commerce and began to engage in community construction.

From the logic of growth, this transformation is successful, Xiaohongshu successfully broke the circle during this period, found the core advantage of planting grass for itself, and has been stable to this day. However, from the perspective of commercialization, this transformation was unsuccessful, because Xiaohongshu clearly had the advantage of marketing as the shortest monetization path at that time, but the team did not start commercialization in the marketing field until 2019.

The second wave of opportunities has appeared since 2020, live streaming e-commerce has exploded with huge growth potential, Xiaohongshu also realized that it began to do live streaming e-commerce in 2020, but it still seems to be stuck in the swing of community or e-commerce, lacking substantial progress.

As a result, the current live streaming e-commerce field has formed a stable pattern of Douyin, Taobao and Kuaishou in the world, and the growth rate of video accounts is also eye-catching.

When we look back at Little Red Book, we will find that all the controversy surrounding it falls on commercialization, and even the focus of the controversy is not its ability to commercialize.

Xiaohongshu's commercialization is to a large extent inseparable from the founding team's game between commercialization and community atmosphere, and it can even be said that since the transformation, Xiaohongshu has not made a serious effort to commercialize, so it has become what it is now - a somewhat Buddhist, hesitant, you can't tell whether it is an e-commerce platform or a content community.

Xiaohongshu hopes to change this situation. It reaffirmed the strategic position of live streaming e-commerce this year, and a series of organizational structure adjustments are also paving the way.

At this point, the discussion about Xiaohongshu should also change, and the important thing is no longer the path, but the commercialization ability - can it do a good job in live streaming e-commerce?

1. Distribution: New choice questions for product form

Several mainstream live streaming e-commerce platforms Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou and Channels have almost all adopted a single-column information stream presentation method in addition to Taobao.

Of course, Kuaishou, Douyin and Channels still have a two-column information flow presentation: Douyin's "Mall" page and "Explore" page; Channels' Follow page; Kuaishou's "Home" and the corresponding four secondary entrances.

Behind the different designs of single and double columns, it not only reflects the difference in product concepts, but also depends on the content ecology, which will directly affect the content distribution mechanism and then affect the performance of the monetization end.

For example, the viewing logic of graphics and long videos is contrary to short videos. Graphic and long video content is more suitable for giving the initiative to users, while users of short video content are more likely to accept "passive feeding" - the former is determined by content characteristics, and the latter depends on the improvement of algorithm capabilities.

This also shows why short videos were made first on Douyin, why Kuaishou switched to a single column, and why Xiaohongshu has always insisted on double columns.

In fact, when Kuaishou switched from a double column to a single column, Xiaohongshu also watched and discussed it repeatedly, but in the end, he still felt that the efficiency of commercialization should not shake the persistence of the community.

Because the double column is naturally at a disadvantage in the conversion rate of ad viewing, even if the user layering is fine enough, the user is invalid if he does not click, and the single-column ad distribution eliminates the click step, and the ping efficiency of ad distribution is improved. Therefore, Douyin has eaten the biggest advertising dividend in the short video era.

After the advent of the live streaming e-commerce boom, the simple single-column form actually does not exist. Looking back and sorting out these products, it is not difficult to find that in the current single and double column design, the following rules are presented:

1. In addition to Taobao, the first page reached by the user has a single column of information;

2. Almost all pages related to private domain traffic are double-column; Almost all marketplace pages are also double-columned;

3. Except for Taobao, almost all video streaming content related to public domain traffic is a separate column;

4. The first double column was changed to a single column, and the first double column will be added later.

In this way, everyone has reached a certain consensus - single and double columns can complement each other, the public domain is more suitable for single-column distribution, and the private domain is more suitable for double-column distribution; The video stream content of the "goods to find people" logic is suitable for single-column distribution, and the graphic + video streaming content of the "people to find goods" logic is suitable for double-column distribution.

This is the inevitable way for the platform side to create a closed loop of e-commerce ecology, doing private domain can increase the unit price of customers, making a mall can expand the user's consumption scenarios, and designs such as "explore" pages can improve the platform's ability to grow grass.

We see that whether it is Douyin, which relies on a centralized traffic distribution mechanism, Taobao, which is the original background of e-commerce and the earliest live broadcast e-commerce, Kuaishou, which relies on the rise of strong private domain family play, or the video account that grows in the WeChat ecosystem, their closed-loop paths are inconsistent, but now they pay more attention to the construction of grass planting capabilities than before, which is the icing on the cake for them.

The biggest advantage of Xiaohongshu is to grow grass, the chain from planting grass to trading, is longer than simple and crude short videos, live streaming goods, which determines that Xiaohongshu relies on e-commerce to commercialize, and live streaming is almost the only choice.

The problem of Xiaohongshu is that its content ecology has always been based on graphics and text, coupled with the management's previous concerns about commercialization, it has always maintained the product form of double column, which is not easy to explode, because the traffic is decentralized.

As a result, Xiaohongshu wants to do live streaming under the premise of maintaining a community atmosphere——

Either embed the live broadcast room in the default homepage, that is, the graphic content, but that relies more on private domain construction, and the chain of users jumping to live broadcast is longer and less efficient;

Either let go of the first-level entrance of the live broadcast alone, Xiaohongshu is now trying this, but that product will become heavier, the platform needs to do multiple choice questions on the entrance, and the user's interactive experience will become more complicated, which was almost the red line of Xiaohongshu's product before.

Second, breaking the circle: the practical problem of live broadcast volume

Xiaohongshu's live broadcast e-commerce is different from Douyin Kuaishou, Taobao, and Youtube at the beginning, because the background of the product is different, Doukuai is a short video, Taobao is a shelf e-commerce, and the video number is an acquaintance social.

What we discussed above is ostensibly a problem of product design, but in essence it is a problem of ideas and path selection, and from this point of view, Xiaohongshu has not been thoroughly thought out so far.

But Xiaohongshu can't be stuck in this step all the time, and the problem it needs to solve most quickly now is how to quickly complete the breaking circle of live streaming and attract more brands and merchants to Xiaohongshu to do live streaming goods.

Supporting celebrity anchors is one way.

In the article "Simba tears fast, the voice of the super-head anchor continues to fall", we pointed out that for the platform that was still racing and competing for time and traffic in the early days, the head anchor undoubtedly enhanced the platform's ability to retain users; After the development of content e-commerce, it is in the interests of many parties for the head anchor to bring goods: the platform relies on the head anchor to break the circle, the merchant needs to break the circle of the product, and the consumer can achieve the purchase demand at the lowest price.

This determined that in the early stage of the development of live streaming e-commerce, super head anchors were the core competitiveness of a platform, such as Kuaishou had Simba, Douyin had Luo Yonghao, Taobao had Li Jiaqi and Weiya.

Xiaohongshu seems to be interested in this direction recently.

On February 24, actor Dong Jie conducted a 6-hour live broadcast on Xiaohongshu, and official data showed that the live broadcast had more than 2.2 million views, and the GMV of a single live broadcast exceeded 30 million. In another live broadcast in January, she scored 50 million GMV.

Dong Jie's delivery results are not bad, and the GMV level of 30 million is also close to the daily delivery level of Dongfang Selection on Douyin.

But one Dong Jie is far from enough, and one or two phenomenal live broadcasts that have been prepared for a long time are far from enough:

First, only sustained "phenomenal live broadcast" performance can establish Xiaohongshu's merchant mentality and user mentality on live streaming goods.

Xiaohongshu first needs to support more "Dong Jie" to come out, and tell those merchants and users who are still watching through the play of the explosive live broadcast room, you can sell more goods and buy products that you want when you come to me.

The good news is that from the perspective of paper strength, Xiaohongshu has the ability to create a popular live broadcast room, after all, there are enough star reserves on Xiaohongshu.

Second, the richness of the live content ecology needs to be raised.

Ideally, Xiaohongshu can create a popular live broadcast room through ready-made star resources, but these are far from enough.

First, the past experience of Jitkuaitao has shown that over time, the balance between the relationship between the head anchor and the platform is difficult to grasp, because there are conflicts of interest that are difficult to reconcile; Second, the trend of live streaming is decentralized, and in the early stage, you can bring goods through star anchors to hit the world, but in the middle and late stages, more merchants are needed to self-broadcast to guard the world.

So the real crux of Xiaohongshu is how to attract more merchants to bring goods to the platform.

3. Ecology: How to undertake the demands of good merchants?

With the development of live streaming e-commerce to now, the competition is no longer the basic capabilities of the bottom, but the capabilities of the higher platform and ecology.

The improvement of capabilities and the demands of merchants are mutually causal, and we can say that in recent years, the expectations of merchants for live streaming have been raised by the competition and ability supplement between platforms.

For example, at the beginning, the merchant may just want to find a head anchor to bring goods, and then find that they should open their own live broadcast room, and then find that the matter of live streaming goods is to be refined operation, and it is necessary to split the links to do a scientific layout, need to do private domain, and need to find a way to increase the unit price of customers.

This is a large-scale switch of ideas for merchant groups: live streaming is not just a channel for selling goods, it is a business.

This will invisibly raise the difficulty of Xiaohongshu's live broadcasting, because the other few have grown up with merchants step by step, but Xiaohongshu is not, it defaults to the need to undertake more complex and refined needs of merchants from the beginning.

The first layer of demand is the most basic, whether it can meet the needs of merchants to bring goods.

The challenges encountered by Xiaohongshu at this level have been frequently exposed before——

The traffic is vertical enough, but not abundant and diverse, the monthly active data of 200 million is still low, most of the users are post-90s, and there are obvious content consumption preferences (beauty, travel, fashion);

The advantage of "planting grass" has even become a disadvantage when doing e-commerce, because many merchants will believe that the drainage value of Xiaohongshu is higher than the value of selling goods, and the traffic distribution mechanism also leads to the relatively inefficient conversion chain of e-commerce business;

The back-end supply chain, fulfillment, payment and other links are not as good as Douyin, Kuaishou, Taobao, and Channels that have already made achievements, not to mention the lack of capabilities.

The second layer of demand is a higher level, whether it can meet the needs of refined operation of merchants.

In the past two years, Xiaohongshu has built a series of related business platforms. For example, dandelions, platforms for content cooperation management, spotlights on the delivery platform, and fries, heating tools for note payment, etc., are basically equipped with basic commercial products.

Not long ago, Xiaohongshu also launched the business data insight system "Lingxi", a platform to help merchants do marketing insights. In the official statement, Lingxi will conduct data analysis based on the expression of the needs and pain points of the massive users of the Xiaohongshu community for SPU-product granularity, and provide marketing insights for brands from the perspectives of track entry, demand analysis, audience analysis, and product favorability, helping enterprises focus on growth opportunities more efficiently.

At the "Will Business Conference" a month ago, Xiaohongshu COO also officially announced the concept of "grass planting value" in his speech, saying that by quantifying the depth and active behavior of Xiaohongshu users, providing data close to the real grass planting scene, forming a more scientific and efficient grass planting system, and solving the two major problems of measurable and optimizable grass marketing in grass marketing.

Referring to the platform construction of Taobao, Kuaishou and Douyin, although the layout of Xiaohongshu is slower, it is good that almost all of them are available.

But a potential question is, will Xiaohongshu's set of capabilities eventually fall on live streaming e-commerce?

It depends on the progress of Xiaohongshu live streaming e-commerce, and whether Xiaohongshu's determination to do live streaming can be maintained.