On May 16, 2023, the 3rd Douyin E-commerce Ecological Conference was held in Guangzhou.
Wei Wenwen, president of Douyin e-commerce, disclosed that the GMV of the platform has increased by more than 80% in the past year. Among them, the GMV of the mall increased by 277% year-on-year, the GMV of e-commerce search increased by 159% year-on-year, and the GMV of the shelf scene accounted for more than 30% of the GMV of the platform. In the past year, Douyin's e-commerce live broadcast has been viewed more than 2.9 billion times per day, e-commerce intentions have been searched more than 400 million times per day, and the platform has sold more than 30 billion products throughout the year.
Wei Wenwen said that although global interest e-commerce has shown great value, Douyin e-commerce is still in the early stage of "global e-commerce". The boundary of global interest e-commerce is very large, and in the future, "global domain" will be an overall ecology, covering various traffic and fully meeting the various transaction needs of users. This year, the platform will invest 10 billion cash in the commodity card commission-free project, use real money to support merchants to do a good job in the "whole world", and accelerate the development of shelf scenarios.
These key indicators point to the fact that Douyin e-commerce is still maintaining strong momentum in its third year. Compared with simple digital growth, this unstoppable growth trend may be a more worthy part of the industry.
What important messages can we gain from this conference? What are the key points for future traffic growth? How do merchants deploy Douyin SEO to get more traffic? Let's find out together.
01
From hobby e-commerce to shelf e-commerce
Jack Ma founded Taobao 20 years ago, and Jingdong Mall was launched 16 years ago, during which eBay, Excellence, Paipai, Vancl, Dangdang, Jumei, and many e-commerce platforms surged and fell. Until the confrontation between Ali and JD.com, and the e-commerce pattern was stable, Pinduoduo was born, relying on the potential of the sinking market to turn the industry into a three-legged one.
Douyin officially tested e-commerce 3 years ago and is an absolute latecomer.
There is no e-commerce gene, no mature supply chain, and no own logistics network. The three elements of people, goods and venues, Douyin at that time barely made up the pole of "people", and it is still unknown whether users who favor leisure and entertainment content will buy into e-commerce content.
In August 2020, Douyin launched its first platform-level e-commerce promotion event "Douyin Wonderful Good Things Festival", which is said to have received more than 10 billion live broadcast views and a total turnover of 8 billion.
However, price-driven promotions are not sustainable, and the turnaround of Douyin will not wait until April 2021, when the first Douyin e-commerce ecological conference is held. Kang Zeyu, then president of Douyin e-commerce, proposed an emerging concept "interest e-commerce" at the meeting: an e-commerce based on people's yearning for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests and improving consumers' quality of life.
Until then, search was a key part of consumer buying behavior. The shelf e-commerce model of "people looking for goods" is the focus of each platform, and marketing activities revolve around the shelf.
The sales model of interest e-commerce is "goods to find people". Consumers watch a large amount of content on the short video platform, and analyze user portraits through the accumulation of big data. The products attached to short videos and live broadcasts are distributed to consumers according to the platform algorithm, and consumers complete the purchase behavior after becoming interested in the products.
Driven by interest e-commerce, Douyin has made progress on the merchant side and consumer side, and gradually entered the mainstream market.
Douyin did not stop at the concept of interest e-commerce. At the 2nd Douyin E-commerce Ecology Conference, Douyin changed the reference to "interest e-commerce" to "global interest e-commerce".
Shelf e-commerce is the hinterland of traditional e-commerce giants such as Ali, JD.com and Pinduoduo, which means higher ceilings and fiercer competition.
The official judgment of Douyin e-commerce is that the shelf scene is a new traffic engine. As Douyin began to walk on the two legs of interest e-commerce and shelf e-commerce, content and shelves became flywheels for each other, high-quality content and high-quality goods diverted traffic to the platform in different scenarios, and the construction of Douyin's global ecology was completed.
02
There are opportunities for all types of merchants
This year's conference is the third session, about the methodology released by the previous conferences, we will summarize it for you in one sentence——
2021: Douyin e-commerce is an interest e-commerce "FACT";
2022: Douyin e-commerce upgraded to global interest e-commerce "FACT+";
2023: Global integration, the growth flywheel "FACT+S" will be opened.
FACT is a business methodology proposed by Douyin e-commerce in the past, but it is more suitable for businesses that are good at doing content, and the core is: Fielding + Aillance + Campaign + Top KOL.
"FACT+S" adds shelf S (Search-Search, Shopping Center-Mall, Shop-Store/Window), which means that whether it is a merchant with only supply-side advantages or a participant with rich content; Whether it is a brand or a small and medium-sized business, everyone can choose a growth model that matches their strengths.
Focusing on the "FACT+S" business methodology, Mu Qing, vice president of Douyin e-commerce, proposed four growth paths at the e-commerce ecological conference.
The most important thing in the shelf growth model is good goods, and its elements include sufficient products, good quality, competitive prices, etc. In order to achieve a significant increase in sales, it is also necessary to pay attention to the operation of the mall activities. Brands and small and medium-sized businesses can participate in a variety of mall activities that can bring sales, such as Douyin Mall Value Purchase, Douyin Extreme Edition Value Deal, etc. Growing sales can give products the opportunity to enter the Douyin mall to guess the product recommendation page you like, and then continue to drive sales growth.
For merchants with content advantages, the two business paths summarized by Douyin e-commerce are: "drive the overall sales growth through good products, content measurement and shelf lifting" and "create content explosions with the help of the alliance talent matrix, and drive sales brought by search and 'guess what you like'".
In the former path, the focus of the merchant should be on the combination of Field and Shopping Center. Brands and small and medium-sized businesses can directly list different styles in their short videos and self-broadcast rooms to test potential and explosive products. At the same time, merchants optimize the display page of products in the mall, decorate the store, and focus on operating and testing products that may explode.
GLM, the fashion menswear brand under the Semir Group, adopted the "F+S" model and eventually achieved substantial growth. With the advantage of the supply chain, it puts a large number of low-priced good goods on the shelves, and has formed a relatively mature frequent listing process. It first uses short videos and new product links to filter out potential models with good click conversion, and then hang these potential products in the live broadcast room to increase product popularity and increase sales. Next, GLM transmits the signal of the content field to the shelf field, and the good products will enter the recommendation pool of "guess what you like" on the mall page, realizing the explosive growth of product sales in the global scenario.
According to official data, GLM has more than 1,700 stores in Douyin in a single month, creating GLM's monthly sales of 15 million, of which more than 65% come from commodity cards.
The latter path is mainly through cooperation with a large number of experts, who can bring a large number of people interested in the product to the merchant, stimulate user search through the content, and the product will have the opportunity to enter the "guess what you like" recommendation pool. Mu Qing summed it up as, "The alliance matrix explodes, and at the same time drives search/guess what you like sales".
The snack brand Shiotsu Shop is a sample of its success through this path. In 2021, Yanjin Shop, a snack brand that has entered Douyin e-commerce, previously chose to cooperate with a large number of influencers to publish short videos and do live broadcasts to attract users. Due to the relatively low price of snack products and the good conversion rate, the willingness of influencers to bring goods is high, and the orders of live broadcast + short video can account for 55%. A large number of experts bring goods to Yanjin Shop, bringing a large number of interested people and active search popularity, further diverting traffic to the store.
The business orientation of "global integration and flywheel growth" may change the understanding of Douyin e-commerce among industry participants. In people's inherent impression, only players with very strong content trading experience, live broadcast/short video capabilities, or brands and merchants who can afford a large advertising budget can succeed in Douyin e-commerce.
Now, different types of merchants can find their own growth path here, and then achieve a new breakthrough.
03
Douyin search has become a new growth pole in the search market
A foreseeable fact is that as more and more brands choose omnichannel operations, competition on Douyin's e-commerce platform will also intensify, but opportunities will always be there, just different every year.
Interest can be stimulated by content and promote short-term conversion; Interest will also be extended and sustainable, and the consumer demand derived from user interest needs to be naturally undertaken by more scenes. Jiang Zhi, head of e-commerce search on Douyin, observed that in the past year, users' search behavior has not been limited to searching for content, and the proportion of store and brand searches has increased rapidly.
According to the latest data we have learned, the average daily e-commerce intention search PV of Douyin e-commerce is 460 million+. With more and more merchants on the platform, the products are becoming more and more abundant, and the demand for users to search for products is also growing rapidly. Jiang Zhi divides the user's search behavior into two categories: one part is active search, that is, the user's active expression of needs, and the other part is that the user's demand is stimulated in the process of watching the content, and the content is further searched, which is called "search after watching".
For merchants, whether it is the user's active search or the post-search search, it is a new opportunity that has not been explored before.
One of the favorite phrases of many brand owners and industry practitioners is "where the user is, where you are going", the deep meaning of this sentence is to always stand firmly with the user. According to the official data of Douyin e-commerce, in April 2022, Douyin e-commerce has an average of 100 million+ e-commerce search users per day, and the GMV of search transactions has increased by 110% year-on-year, and the average conversion rate is 30% higher than that of other on-site channels.
After many brands form a round of outbreak in the live broadcast room, the popularity will not immediately return to zero, but have extension, then the shelf yard can continue the long-tail demand brought by the content field, helping merchants build a transaction scene with more water storage capacity and more stable operation.
Merchants have a "fixed booth" to open their doors to welcome customers, which will bring more stable customer flow and income to all participants of Douyin e-commerce, and a broader incremental space will also come.
For brands with content production capabilities, Douyin e-commerce search not only provides new tools and evaluation dimensions for brands to efficiently operate crowd assets, but also refine user tags. Moreover, search O&M can guide users to search after watching short videos, jump to the search results page, and increase the search volume of products.
Why is the best time to enter the Douyin e-commerce search now?
On the one hand, Douyin DAU has exceeded 600 million, and the huge number of users brings stable traffic while also sending out content creativity; On the other hand, users have developed the habit of shopping on Douyin e-commerce, providing a basis for timely conversion, and search is the key to integrating the two.
Many brands' awareness of Douyin is still stuck in short videos and live broadcasts, and Douyin Mall has accounted for 30%-40% of the sales of many mature brands. It is a vital thing for business. Search, coupled with the certainty of traffic, brings stability to business.
From SEO SEO, PPC auction advertising, information flow recommendation to the current global interest e-commerce, search-based marketing methods have changed several times. Every change in search trends presents new opportunities for brands, and this time is no exception, and almost all of a brand's business is worth doing again with search. Whether it is a mature brand or a cutting-edge brand, you can find a new breakthrough in the search 3.0 trend.
The essence of global interest e-commerce is people-oriented. From recommendation to search, user behavior from passive to proactive, brands need to take "people" as the core, create high-quality content, and stimulate user interest. In interest search, content can be the result of the search or the reason that triggers the search, and improving content creativity is the key to growth.
As an intermediate link to undertake pre-transaction links and post-transaction links, interest search can not only meet clear purchase needs, but also stimulate potential demand through content, bringing business increments to brands. At the same time, content forms such as live broadcasts and short videos not only enrich search results, but also provide brands with a space for storytelling, which is more conducive to conveying the brand mind.
In an era when brands are seeking to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and integrate product efficiency, global interest e-commerce provides an opportunity to enter the market at a low cost.
epilogue
In the future, as Douyin further opens up the content scene and the shelf scene, the integration of the two can provide brand merchants with more complete marketing plans and provide consumers with richer content supply. As a result, the traffic potential is deeply explored, and eventually it is converted within the Douyin platform.
Under the big concept of the whole world, there are graphic and text grasses similar to the Xiaohongshu model, and there are C2C attempts in the style of Douyin small shops, Douyin continues to launch products, does not hesitate to try and make mistakes, looking for untapped business models in the already highly mature e-commerce industry, and the boundaries of interest e-commerce continue to expand, intending to supplement Douyin's e-commerce territory.
At the same time, Douyin's rapid expansion in the field of local life has also paved the way for the next linkage of online and offline scenes, and what Ma Yun and Wang Xing have not done may be completed by Douyin.
Whether from the current achievements or future possibilities, Douyin has become a heavyweight player in the e-commerce industry that cannot be ignored.