Original title: "10,000 Words Analysis of New "Search", the New Lifeblood of Content and Shelf E-commerce", header picture from: Visual China
Search is an old topic. Regarding search, in the past, everyone thought of Taobao, Jingdong and Pinduoduo, which were traffic acceptance and conversion, and the first step for consumers to place orders. But now, the e-commerce industry has entered a "new era of search".
First, users are using more search platforms. In 2023, users will use an average of 4.5 platforms to search, an increase of 42% compared to 2022 (GroupM Think Tank). E-commerce search is not only on Taobao Jingdong, but also on Douyin Xiaohongshu. Third, the generalization of e-commerce search behavior. The user's e-commerce search is not just for price comparison, but starts from solving the confusion of a life scenario.
At the same time, businesses are facing new challenges and opportunities:
- The search traffic of shelf e-commerce has generally declined, and the most certain conversion method has lost certainty;
- It's getting harder and harder to plant grass, but active search users are the most likely to be planted.
To recapture the dividends of the new search era, we must first understand its basic principles and the traffic distribution logic of each platform. Regardless of whether it is a traditional shelf e-commerce platform or a content platform, search follows the following logic:
User-initiated searches→ platform intent recognition→ recall → sorting→ presenting search results to users.
The two cores in the search process are intent recognition and product sorting. If intent recognition tests the technical capabilities of the platform, commodity ranking is related to various factors such as platform genes, business model, commodity supply/structure, and platform values. For example, the main differences between shelf e-commerce platforms and content platforms are:
First, the core index of shelf e-commerce search revolves around commodities, and makes an e-commerce closed-loop content platform, and the core indicator is still the quality of content; second, active search is the basic disk of shelf e-commerce; through content to stimulate search and passive search, it is the ability of the content platform to grow - the new wind of the search era is being brought by them.
This chapter will focus on the three major shelf e-commerce platforms (Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo) and the two major content platforms (Douyin and Xiaohongshu) to introduce the current status of their traffic structure, search logic, and operational methodology.
1. Tao e-commerce + Jingdong + Pinduoduo
The search for shelf e-commerce is a basic and ancient topic. Even the decline in search traffic is already a status quo faced by many businesses. But when we mention shelf e-commerce, we can't avoid search.
In particular, Tao e-commerce provides a quick way for users with a clear consumption purpose, but it is difficult to meet vague needs. It sorts the items to show the ones that users want the most, but most likely not the cheapest of their kind. It is constantly balancing between fairness and efficiency, between large and small merchants, and has become the e-commerce platform with the most complex search logic. If you understand Tao e-commerce, you can also understand the general idea of other platforms.
1. The importance of search is seen from the traffic structure of Taojingpin station
Search, recommendation, short video, activity pit, private domain...... More than 100 traffic entrances in Tao e-commerce have shaped a complex merchant ecology. According to the logic of traffic distribution, Song Liquan, an expert at the think tank of Yicai Business School, divides the traffic entrance of the Tao system into 7 categories, namely search, recommendation, payment, activity, content, private domain, and content planting inside and outside the site. Taobao started from search e-commerce, and under the mind of "shopping" today, the main traffic entrance has changed from search to recommendation.
And on JD.com, search is still the main source of traffic. Xie Haoxuan, an expert at the think tank of Yicai Business School, said that the search traffic of many businesses can account for about 7% of the store. Its traffic structure is roughly the same as Taobao, divided into search, activities (tens of billions of subsidies, cheap free shipping, auction leakage and other activity channels), content (shopping, Jingdong live broadcast, Jingdong short video and rankings, etc.), recommendation, payment and fragment traffic (buyer show, new product small Rubik's Cube, Jingdong trial channel and Dongdong Farm, etc.), also in the past two years to develop recommended traffic, and on April 10 announced that it would take out 1 billion cash for content, but because more users are used to searching here to place orders, After buying and leaving, the content traffic and recommendation traffic of JD's main station account for a relatively low percentage.
A few years after its birth, Pinduoduo underwent a huge change in its traffic structure: a "goods to find people" platform that originally weakened search has become a platform where search dominates.
Huang Zheng said in 2018 that the models of Pinduoduo and Taobao are fundamentally different. Taobao is the logic of traffic, the main body is search, and users have to find products by themselves, and Pinduoduo is matching, recommending products to consumers, with limited SKUs, but to meet the structural richness. As a result, the early Pinduoduo mainly relied on grouping, slashing, and algorithmic recommendations to achieve the matching of people and goods - as an e-commerce platform, it did not have a search box at the top of its homepage, and only placed a small search button at the bottom.
At that time, Pinduoduo's traffic came from navigation category pages (accounting for more than 30%) and third-party platforms such as WeChat. However, after absorbing a larger number of merchants and goods (especially the introduction of tens of billions of subsidies), Pinduoduo's traffic structure has changed, according to Tianfeng Securities, at the beginning of 2020, the proportion of search traffic began to exceed that of recommendations, dominant, and the traffic structure accounted for about 30% and 25% respectively.
2. Search complexity from the perspective of traffic distribution: Taobao> JD.com> Pinduoduo
From the perspective of the search process, there are two core points: one is that the platform understands what the user wants through the user's search terms and recalls, and the other is how to accurately display the goods that the user needs, that is, the sorting of goods. They correspond to the two major issues that merchants are most concerned about: how to make the product exposed, how to make the product rank higher?
Whether the product can be "recalled" determines whether the product has traffic, and the main influencing factors include:
(1) Commodity category. Category is the basis for optimizing search traffic, and the wrong category of the product will affect the search recall and cause the product to be unexposed.
(2) Product title. As a search entry, the title condenses the core information of the product, which not only allows users to search for the product faster when searching for keywords, but also allows users to continue to click by quickly conveying the selling point. Both Taobao and JD.com have long and short titles: long titles appear on product pages, while short titles appear on micro details, search results pages, shopping carts, etc.
The long title is the basis for the platform to recall the product after the user initiates the search - the long title contains search terms to be recalled and displayed, while the short title affects the user's click-through rate - therefore, the short title needs to consider the user's readability, clearly show the selling point, and do not pile up words with mutually exclusive attributes.
The "sorting" of goods determines how much traffic the product has. For example, when Taobao sorts, it will take the lead in filtering out stores suspected of swiping orders, silent and dead stores (no sales, and have not logged in to the customer background for a long time);
From the above points, it can be seen that there are many factors that affect search ranking, which can be summarized at least as: category, title, keyword, buyer, product, transaction, brand and store. JD.com's ranking is also largely based on the same criteria, related to three things: products, stores, and value propositions.
3. Functional completeness of the page: Taobao = JD > Pinduoduo, content: Taobao > JD > Pinduoduo
A user's search process on Taobao, JD.com, or Pinduoduo will go through the homepage search box - search page - search results page. The functions of the three pages of the three platforms are basically the same, and in comparison, Pinduoduo's interface functions are the simplest.
In the search box on the homepage, the search boxes of the three platforms have default search and photo recognition functions, but Taobao and Jingdong also have a "scan code" entrance at the same time - but the interface of scanning the code and taking photos is completely the same.
The search page shows the extent to which the content of the three platforms is being utilized. All three have search history and guess what you want to search, and Pinduoduo does not have a "hot search list". From the point of view of the hot search list topics, Taobao's topic list is divided into"Taobao hot search"""Star same"and"What",Compared with Jingdong, which is divided into categories such as "new home appliances" and "fashionable wear", it is more social and topical, such as"Star with the same style"There will be the same starring model of the hit TV series, and "What's it" will appear"Folded ear root yogurt" and "Einstein's brain" and other novel and exotic products.
On the search results page, Taobao and JD.com have functions such as filtering, sorting, and tag navigation, with three main differences:
First, from the composition of the search navigation bar, Jingdong has picture navigation - when searching for "essence", the image navigation will appear essences with different effects, firming, brightening skin tone, anti-wrinkle, etc. In fact, Taobao took the lead in launching image navigation before 618 in 2021, but now it has been integrated into the tab navigation to reduce the occupied area.
Second, the information in the product flow is presented, Taobao shows the number of people who pay for the goods, while Jingdong mainly displays the number of reviews and praise rates, and Pinduoduo shows the number of odds.
Third, product labels and selling points. Yicai Business School entered different category words in Taojing Pin, and found that the three platforms will display the selling points of price and service direction, but Taobao focuses on showing crowd tags, such as when searching for "essence", it will display "X skin care parties have seen it" in the product, JD.com emphasizes the performance timeliness and parameters, and Pinduoduo will emphasize whether the flagship store is or not/genuine invoice.
The implication for merchants is that the selling point needs to be combined with the decision-making factors of various industries, such as when buying major appliances such as refrigerators, product functions and specifications, and delivery services, and when searching for heavy goods such as alcoholic beverages, the price per can can be emphasized to show price competitiveness.
4. The decline in search traffic, the response of Tao and JD merchants
As the most valuable traffic, there is no other way to convert users more efficiently than search - some merchants told Yicai Business School that the average conversion rate of search is 3~5 times that of recommendation. In addition, judging from the traffic linkage rules of Tao e-commerce and JD.com, the better the search, the larger the traffic pool that can be recommended. The volume of search largely determines the volume of traffic, and it also basically determines the volume of business plates. Many brands' e-commerce budgets also revolve around search.
However, in recent years, a large number of merchants have found that the search traffic of their stores has declined to varying degrees. This is a challenge for both platforms and merchants. A leading e-commerce service provider proposed four ways to deal with it:
- Divert part of your search delivery budget to recommendations;
- Through the whole area of grass planting, to Taobao drainage;
- Increase the ARPU value and repurchase of intending users;
- Try other channels to attract new users.
Yicai Business School used the case of Xiaoshi, a small household appliance brand for personal care, to dismantle how Taobao guards traffic internally and seeks traffic externally, and also summarizes practical methods for Jingdong merchants.
Amoy small household appliance brands keep search traffic: select big words in the station and control ROI.
Like most of the target categories, it mainly grows through search on Taobao - search accounts for 30% of the store's free traffic, which is the largest traffic entrance. In recent years, Xiaoshi has faced the challenges of declining overall search traffic and rising cost of on-site drainage, and has begun to attract traffic to Taonei through global marketing.
Promotion methods inside and outside the station: In the station, it is mainly in the way of "paying to drive free". Yu Xin, manager of its Tmall flagship store, said that at present, a small business starting from 0 can no longer get free search traffic. Therefore, when launching a new product, it is necessary to obtain a large amount of traffic in the form of payment before driving the spiral of free traffic.
In this process, when the organic traffic and on-site promotion budget are not as good as those of big brands, Xiaoshi's search strategy can be summarized as: choose "big words" and control ROI.
"Big words" refer to industry words or category words with large search traffic, and the bidding cost is high, but Xiaoshi adopts a more conservative promotion method: controlling ROI or controlling costs. This promotion method makes CPC (cost per click) between 2~3 yuan - although it is not the highest bid, and it will not let Xiaoshi appear in the top few of the search results, but under the traffic rule of "paid with free" of Tao e-commerce, it can also bring some free search traffic to Xiaoshi.
If the brand wants to appear in the top three search results, the CPC will soar to 6~8 yuan, which will greatly increase the cost and reduce the promotion ROI.
Outside the station, Xiaoshi mainly cooperates with Li Jiaqi and other super-head talents in live broadcasts, and will also use Taoke to carry out community and Weibo drainage, and cooperate with KOLs to publish content on Xiaohongshu and Douyin.
Although a large number of top brands want to reduce their dependence on super-head anchors, it is undeniable that among the many methods, the effect brought by influencer anchors is the most certain. In particular, the link of the store itself cannot be increased, and the talent anchor can be used as an effective sales supplement and a way to increase volume. Yu Xin said that whether it is Douyin or Xiaohongshu planting grass, "there is a great element of luck", and in terms of the probability of product explosion, cost and explosion cycle, they are far inferior to talent anchors.
The bonus period brought by the super head anchor to the link or store can be maintained for about 1 month, during which the conversion rate will increase from 6 to 11, which can bring more than 100,000 searches to the store in one day.
Budget allocation: The proportion of on-site and off-site budgets is basically the same. The site budget is roughly 20% of the store's GMV, which is mainly used for in-station promotion. Off-page budgets are relatively uncertain – budgets may be added on an ad hoc basis when new products are released or collaborations with influencers are made.
Two major search improvement suggestions for JD merchants:
Although the weighting factors that affect search ranking look similar to Taobao, due to differences in business models, merchant ecology, category structure and user minds, merchants are relatively lagging behind in the layout and operation of search - but the information gap between platforms is precisely an opportunity for POP merchants.
JD merchants have two major areas for improvement in search operations:
(1) Learn from the search hot words of other platforms, and you can be faster than your peers on JD.com.
When JD merchants are conducting search keyword operations, they can pay attention to the popularity of search terms in Taobao Data Bank and Douyin Compass - it is likely that a word has already gained a certain popularity in Taobao or Douyin, but the search volume on JD has not yet formed a trend.
For example, after 315 this year, some media exposed that the raw material of starch sausage is chicken bone puree, and starch sausage has appeared on the hot search list of many social platforms. Taobao and Douyin's starch sausage merchants reacted on the same day, emphasizing that the product "does not contain bone mud" in the product header picture and live broadcast room, but few Jingdong merchants reacted in a timely manner.
On the one hand, because JD.com used to be mainly self-operated, many merchants lacked operational enthusiasm and rarely took the initiative to deploy short videos and live broadcasts on the site. Although JD has been actively carrying out operational training for POP merchants in the past two years, most merchants still use JD as a platform to undertake traffic conversion.
On the other hand, JD.com has long lacked content genes, and merchants lack content sensitivity. The hot search lists of Taobao and Douyin both contain social hot events, while the JD hot search lists are basically only related to commodities and rarely reflect off-site hot spots.
(2) Different industries need to have differentiated search operation ideas.
Beauty industry: Mainly brand-driven, fierce competition within the platform, and high traffic costs. For beauty merchants, especially new merchants, avoid using more competitive "big words" or efficacy words that are easy to cause violations, but should combine off-site planting to find out the crowd words or scene words to target specific groups, such as "student mask", "send boyfriend", "Mother's Day", etc.
Sports and outdoor: There are more new trends and new products in the industry, and there are fewer search contributions, which is more suitable for information flow recommendations. Therefore, merchants need to display product usage and trend categories through content: plant grass outside the site to cultivate users' minds, and at the same time visually display product functions in the form of graphics, texts, short videos, etc.
Fresh food category: The brand attribute is not strong and the price sensitivity is not high, but consumers pay attention to quality, taste and product evaluation. Therefore, merchants need to pay attention to seasonal and seasonal search popularity, maintain product evaluations and Q&A, and improve product service star ratings through logistics fulfillment, product quality, transaction disputes, service capabilities and other dimensions (product service star ratings have a greater impact on search than store service star ratings).
Second, Xiaohongshu search is the beginning of precise grass planting
In 2023, Xiaohongshu turned a profit for the first time, with revenue soaring to $3.7 billion, an increase of 85% year-on-year, mainly composed of advertising and e-commerce, accounting for 80% and 20%. Although no more specific revenue structure has been disclosed, judging from Xiaohongshu's current commercialization actions, "Search Field" is bringing in the most important advertising revenue.
Xiaohongshu, which is regarded as a "new search engine", not only takes away the market share of traditional search engines, but also undertakes the front-end link of the consumer decision-making chain.
(1) More and more consumers are "indecisive in Xiaohongshu".
With real-time lifestyle solutions and vertical depth of UGC content, Xiaohongshu's consumer search penetration rate in 2023 has almost doubled compared to 2022, ranking first among major mainstream platforms, while traditional search engines such as Baidu and Sogou have seen varying degrees of decline in consumer penetration (GroupM Think Tank).
(2) "Consumer graduate students" who actively search.
Xiaohongshu users are highly proactive in their search behavior. According to the data, 70% of the monthly active users on the site have search behaviors, of which 88% are initiated by users, and the rest of the search actions are completed by clicking "Guess You Want to Search" or "Xiaohongshu Hot Spots" in the search page.
Behind the active search, Xiaohongshu users are at the front end of the consumption decision-making chain - in shelf e-commerce, searching for a brand is out of understanding, while in Xiaohongshu, the search is likely to be out of ignorance.
Especially in industries with long decision-making cycles or high information thresholds, a lot of search homework needs to be done. According to the data of the Xiaohongshu platform, its top ten popular search areas are: education and training, clothing, shoes and bags, food and beverage, tourism, home furnishing, beauty and personal care, medical and health, technology and digital, mother and child, and trend, while the three categories with the fastest growth in search traffic are 3C home appliances, travel and education, with year-on-year growth of 84%, 242% and 173% respectively.
(3) High-value fields for high-value people.
Search is an important basis for consumer decision-making, and therefore it has become a key for brands to occupy the minds of users. Nearly 9 out of 10 users believe that the results of a search on Xiaohongshu have an impact on their consumption decisions.
In addition, Xiaohongshu also tries to illustrate the high value of its search group in several ways:
- First, Xiaohongshu search users have the characteristics of high-tier cities and high consumption. Users from first- and second-tier cities account for 60% of search users, higher than the overall community of 50%, and the per capita consumption of Xiaohongshu search users will reach 5,000 yuan in 2023, twice that of China's personal consumption (2023 National Bureau of Statistics Statistical Yearbook data).
- Second, the search users are young. As of December 2023, 74% of search users are under the age of 30, and teenagers and young adults are growing rapidly.
1. The commercialization process of search: consumer insights + KFS methodology + search direct tools
Since 2023, the number of notes in Xiaohongshu's dashboard has been growing rapidly, but the total number of interactions has been relatively stable, diluting the number of interactions with a single piece of content. Grass notes with brand- or product-related information also showed an increase in the number of notes, but a decrease in interaction (Qiangua data). This shows that more brands are willing to plant grass on Xiaohongshu, but the extensive delivery method of pure publishing notes will make grass planting inefficient and the relationship with users shallow.
Users: Pan search + fine search
The commercialization of search is built on understanding the behavior of Xiaohongshu users. The search characteristics of Xiaohongshu users are diverse, but they can be roughly divided into two categories: pan search + fine search (accounting for 64%). This search method is like a funnel, and users will gradually narrow down the scope of their query, such as a novice in home improvement, who will first search for scene style words such as "cream wind" that does not have a clear brand/product point. After going through a lot of notes, you will determine what specific products are under the style, and then search for product terms such as "cloud sofa".
The user's behavior path provides brands with more opportunities, and through the combination of fine search + pan search, it can influence the user's mind on a large scale and improve the conversion rate.
Methodology: KFS (KOL + Search + Feed)
In Xiaohongshu's KFS methodology model, search is the beginning of planting, and information flow is the continuation of planting. As shown in the figure below:
- K (KOL): When the brand finds bloggers to produce high-quality content based on target groups and keywords;
- S (search): Brands need to target a few core search terms and occupy a front-row position with high-praise notes. In particular, the search group for brand product words and scene words has the most conversion potential.
- F (information flow): Information flow and search are upstream and downstream of each other. First, repeatedly reach the searcher. Under the "Search Crowd Chasing" function of the Xiaohongshu Spotlight platform, merchants can place in-feed ads to users who have searched for relevant keywords within 1 day, and secondly, expand the scope of crowd exposure and reach new customers of brands/products. Merchants can publish more targeted content based on upstream and downstream terms (the rest of the keywords searched within 10 minutes before and after) to expand the scope of crowd exposure.
For example, the Spotlight platform shows that the upstream words for "cream" are "mask"/"essence", etc., and the downstream words are "sunscreen"/"cream dry skin", etc., so brands can create new content for these keywords and embed them in the title and tag to reach more users.
Commercialization tool "Search Direct"
In 2023, the search promotion of Xiaohongshu Spotlight Platform will be upgraded to search direct, mainly providing merchants with tools and capabilities such as word selection, placement, and grass planting CID (data return technology). The word selection tool can increase the relevance of keywords to increase the exposure of notes, and the delivery tool is a must to amplify the effect after the content model has run through.
2. Practical operation of Xiaohongshu search operation
Search results sorting
Understanding the sorting factors of Xiaohongshu's search results can help businesses occupy a place at the top of the search results. Almost identical to other content platforms, there are two main factors that affect the ranking:
- Keyword matching: The closer the content and title are to the search term, the higher the ranking;
- Short-term engagement: Notes get more engagements (including likes, comments, and other forms of interaction) within a short period of time after they are posted, and will rank higher in the search results page.
Wu Yuchen, an expert at the think tank of Yicai Business School, said that the search ranking of Xiaohongshu will also consider the identity of the note. For example, the ranking of water notes (referring to the cooperation notes of the brand to find the talent through the dandelion platform) and the official certification number will be higher, followed by the degree of keyword matching and the amount of note interaction.
Search term layout
When you lay out search terms in Xiaohongshu, you can divide keywords into brand/product words, efficacy words, category words, scene words, competing products, crowd words, and so on. As mentioned above, these types of keywords represent users' refined search and pan-search behavior, respectively, and brands need to understand the user's intent to search for these keywords in order to efficiently plant grass through targeted content and search operations.
Branded product words
Layout idea: high conversion rate. When users search for brand/product terms on Xiaohongshu, there is a high probability that they do not know about the brand and product. As a result, they're a new group of customers who have a high conversion potential but still want to learn more about your brand. Brands can lay out brand areas, or occupy the top few with high-profile notes.
Content suggestion: The brand name and product name need to appear in the title, first image and other eye-catching positions, which can be used as brand product collection notes and promotional notes to attract customers with strong conversion potential.
Efficacy words
Layout idea: high conversion rate. It is necessary to do a good job of matching the efficacy words and content to occupy the first place. At the same time, after optimizing and adjusting bids for multiple notes, the note with the highest click-through rate can be used with the highest bid to reduce click costs.
Content suggestions: The title, first image, and note content are created around the specific efficacy of the product. When planting "WYSIWYG" categories such as cosmetics and clothing, you can show the comparison between before and after, and introduce the efficacy of product ingredients.
Competitive words
Layout idea: When users search for competing words in Xiaohongshu, they are likely to be only in the "curious" stage, so brands can buy competing words to gain new customers for themselves.
Content suggestion: Do not appear the brand name in the title, first image and other obvious positions, you can highlight the product function and effect, and then appear the brand/product name at the end of the note, otherwise there will be a low keyword conversion rate.
Category words
Layout ideas: Users have vague needs and want to understand the popular trends or word-of-mouth products under this category/demand point. Therefore, the search crowd of category terms is a high-potential conversion group for brands, especially when the top few of the search results are not high-profile notes, brands can seize the front row at a relatively low cost and intercept target customers. Generally speaking, the higher the position in the search results, the higher the click-through rate of the note – an increase in engagement such as click-through rate will also leverage the brand to drive organic traffic.
Content suggestion: In order to ensure a high click-through rate and high conversion rate, you need to display the category words in the title or first image of the note.
Crowd/scene words
Layout ideas: Specific groups of people who have needs in a certain life scene in the near future, such as "Mother's Day gifts", "student party skin care", etc. Although the crowd/scene term is a pan-search term, it also represents the brand's precise and high-potential people. Brands can preempt the front row of search terms, interact with target users, and push themselves to more people with the same portrait, bringing more organic traffic.
Content suggestions: Combine the recent festivals, weather, and target group rules, such as "staying up late", "working overtime", "student party", etc., to create notes, and highlight the words of the scene in the first picture and title to attract potential consumers with relevant needs in the near future to click.
3. Budget allocation based on the KFS methodology
The Xiaohongshu KFS methodology only provides a theoretical framework, but in terms of specific practice (especially budget allocation), it needs to be changed in light of reality. For example, merchants can make different budget allocation ratios based on brand maturity, category decision-making thresholds, and promotion nodes:
New product promotion node:
- Water storage period: In the content testing stage, the group of people needs to be delineated. K=100%。
- Boosting period: The content penetration stage, which influences consumer decision-making through a large number of bloggers' notes. KFS ratio 3:7:0.
- Outbreak period: the transaction conversion period, focusing the budget on search undertaking. The KFS ratio is 3:3.5:3.5.
However, Wu Jie, an expert at the think tank of Yicai Business School, found that the ratio of K to FS can be controlled at 2:8 after a lot of practice in the past. Because KOL content currently has a fairly high degree of certainty, but the investment based on information flow and search has a certainty guarantee. If KOLs allocate too much of their budget, it can lower CPE (Pay Per Engagement) performance.
3. Douyin's original search method
Douyin, which started with in-feed recommendations, is seeing search as a strategic opportunity for commercial advertising. Unlike all other platforms, Douyin has created a new form of search: content-fueled, ubiquitous passive search.
In the past two years, with Douyin e-commerce hoping to build a "two-wheel resonance" of shelf and content fields, its business methodology has also been upgraded from FACT to FACT+, and then to FACT+S, and the importance of search has gradually increased. It seems that search is only one-third of the S, which stands for Search (search operation), Store (mall recommendation/channel activity) and Shop (store/influencer window) in the FACT+S methodology.
In addition, the huge cloud map data shows that Douyin users use 2.5 order entrances per capita, and the top 3 are Douyin Mall, brand live broadcast room and talent live broadcast room. The search ranked only fifth.
But the status of search in Douyin cannot be ignored:
First, as an important part of the shelf field, it can bring incremental growth to merchants through the interaction with the content field. If the content field is done well, users will go to the shelf field to search and place orders, and merchants can not only obtain more natural search traffic by undertaking and converting search, but also seize the category mentality and feed back the content field transaction again. Data shows that on Douyin, an average of 60 transactions can be brought for every 1,000 searches.
Second, "Plant A3 if you plant grass, and A3 if you plant search crowds". Douyin emphasizes that "planting grass will plant A3 people", because they are closer to conversion than A1 and A2 people. The data shows that 50% of A3 people will directly convert to A4 people (buying people) in the next four weeks.
In Douyin's 5A crowd model, the A3 crowd refers to those who have been in contact with the brand's products twice, or have interacted with the brand, such as multiple clicks/searches/add-purchases/watching videos/sharing/commenting, etc. However, among them, search and add-on users are the most valuable for conversion - because a short video content is very informative, users' content interactions such as sharing and comments are likely to be just discussing shooting skills or bloggers, and have nothing to do with the product itself. Therefore, the A3 crowd under pure content interaction is out of focus, and only the search and add-on crowd really have the brand and product mentality.
1. Douyin e-commerce search operation ideas
Douyin's search ranking is mainly based on two points: (1) keyword matching, and (2) content quality (interactive data such as retweets/likes/comments/favorites).
However, unlike the relatively single search results of shelf e-commerce, Douyin's content is complex: from the perspective of form, it includes short videos, live broadcasts, graphics and texts, Q&A, mini programs, encyclopedias, commodity cards, etc., and from the perspective of business, there are e-commerce, local life, clues, downloads and pure content. Douyin will identify whether the user needs a product or content based on the directivity of the keyword, whether they want to shop or want to check in at a nearby online celebrity restaurant.
Focusing on the e-commerce business, after the search test of Yicai Business School, it was found that when searching for keywords with product directions, such as category words and brand words, the front row position is dominated by the live broadcast room and product card, while when searching for more general scene words or interest words, the search results will give priority to displaying content.
The above chart can provide some inspiration for merchants. We divide the search operation of Douyin e-commerce into three levels:
(1) Basic operation actions: optimize the title and optimize the product
For any merchant trying to get organic search traffic from Douyin's e-commerce shelf, optimizing titles and products is a basic action to increase exposure and improve product conversion rates.
Optimize the title: cover hot words, improve the basic information of the product, and describe the product truthfully, and put the key points in front.
Optimize products: meet the specifications, no violations, eye-catching first pictures, put 5 first pictures, optimize promotional prices, participate in mall activities, and pay attention to cumulative sales.
(2) Increase direct conversion: Cast live broadcast rooms and product cards to seize the front row of search
Users have a strong conversion potential when they conduct a more specific e-commerce search through brand/product words or category words. Douyin's search results will also be more inclined to recommend products. Therefore, start-up merchants can use search ads to place live broadcast rooms and product card ads to increase the direct purchase rate.
(3) Let the brand category occupy the mind: buy the brand area + attack the front row of the category words
Keep the brand word: brand area. Brand words are a must-hold position for every merchant when searching for layouts, especially big brands, which will pay to buy brand areas. When users search for brand/product terms such as "L'Oreal" and "L'Oreal Small Financial Tube", the L'Oreal brand zone will appear at the first place in the search: during the non-live broadcast period of the brand, the fixed store product card will undertake the search demand, and the header image of the live broadcast form will be directly displayed during the brand live broadcast period.
Attack category: advertising streaming. When users search for category terms, they are often vague about brand selection. At this time, if the merchant needs to focus on outputting high-quality content, build a category mentality by pushing short videos or live broadcast content through streaming.
2. Douyin originality: search after watching and create search traffic
The linkage path between Douyin content field and shelf field can be roughly divided into three categories: short video-store, short video-search, and live room/short video-mall.
Among them, post-viewing search, as Douyin's original search form, creates the shortest distance from content to search.
Post-watch search means that after the user sees the short video they are interested in, the system will predict the keywords they want to search for according to the user's behavior, and appear in the search box on the homepage, guess what you want to search, the hashtag of the short video title, the small blue word in the comment area or the top word in the comment area, and other scenarios.
There are three major differences between the post-search and the traditional search mode: first, the traditional search is an active behavior, while the post-search is stimulated by the short video content, which is a passive search; second, the traditional search form is mostly just a box at the top of the page, but the post-search can be seen everywhere; third, the traditional search is mainly to obtain or convert traffic, while the post-search is to create traffic for the search through the content.
The operation needs to go through the process of "making words, raising words, and undertaking", so it is more suitable for brands with large budgets, or for promoting new products. The basic operation mode is as follows:
- Video to build momentum. After determining the main products, selling points and keywords, you can build momentum by posting short videos by a large number of influencers to increase the popularity of keywords. For example, in 2022, the outdoor sports brand Camel has released a large number of videos related to the main product "jacket" for autumn and winter through its official account and KOC in May.
- Guided search. In the short video content, consumers are guided to search by means of oral broadcasts, titles and topics, or relevant copywriting at the top of the comment area, and the search volume of keywords will be increased again.
- Search for undertaking. After the user clicks on the little blue word to jump with one click, the user needs can be undertaken through the live broadcast room and commodity card to form a conversion.
When searching for words for post-viewing, there are a few things to keep in mind:
First, the search term should be relevant to the content to attract users to click after watching the video.
Second, it can handle the traffic, preferably the brand/product word. If you choose a more general category word, you need to ensure that the merchant has occupied the front row, otherwise it is easy to be cut off by competing products with higher bids - after the user clicks on the small blue word, he sees the competing content or product, and loses the meaning of looking after searching.
Third, the search term has a certain amount of popularity. Merchants can combine Douyin e-commerce compass to find hot search words with industry trends.
brief summary
The search is worth having the merchant redo.
First, search is an indispensable part of the consumer's decision-making path, and it is also a further reflection of the deeper relationship between users and brands, but each search may have a different purpose for each user, especially in categories with long decision-making cycles. For example, when buying refrigerators and other major appliances, consumers are likely to have known the names of major brands from various channels, but do not know which brand or which model is more suitable for themselves.
Second, merchants generally face the problem of declining search traffic of shelf e-commerce, and the most certain conversion method is uncertain. Tao and JD merchants need to continue to improve the efficiency of on-site search, and at the same time seek opportunities for search reflow.
Third, on content platforms, the efficiency of extensive brand planting is declining. At the same time, users have gradually developed the habit of e-commerce search on content platforms - when users actively enter the search page, they are more likely to be planted. As a result, the search field has taken the lead in becoming the joint of the commercialization and monetization of content platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and it is also a position that merchants need to layout.
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