After e-commerce platforms move closer to user needs, can they win back more users’ minds?

Previously, Taobao, JD.com, Kuaishou, Douyin and other platforms collectively cancelled the pre-sale system in an attempt to grab more C-end users. However, many consumers still expressed dissatisfaction. What are consumers dissatisfied with? After e-commerce platforms move closer to user needs, can they still win back more user minds?

“This year’s 618 is so chaotic.”

Zhao Mei, a female college student who planned to take advantage of the big sale as usual, has not yet figured out the "math problem" after the cancellation of pre-sales on 618.

"I spent a week on shopping guide, but when I went to checkout, I found that all the cosmetics I added to my shopping cart had gone up in price. I might as well have bought them before the promotion. I don't know why these merchants are raising prices, the price curve is clear."

There are more than one consumer in the same situation as her.

Many consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the price increase and then price reduction during the 618 shopping festival on social platforms. One mother found that the bottle sterilizer she had been waiting for for a long time was more than 20 yuan more expensive than usual even after applying for the 618 quotation, and finally returned it directly in anger; another consumer said that he thought the cancellation of pre-sale plus the 300-50 discount would be a big deal, and he spent a lot of time browsing posts to see how to buy it cheaper, but found that it was not as cost-effective as the price he bought at the 200-30 discount during the 618 shopping festival last year...

Previously, Taobao, JD.com, Kuaishou, Douyin and other platforms collectively cancelled the pre-sale system and extended the duration of the 618 event in an attempt to grab more C-end users. However, the upgrade of discounts has resulted in "dissatisfaction" among consumers and a large number of merchants "running away".

In addition to the "old-fashioned" price increase issue, many consumers also complained that after the platform canceled the pre-sale, some anchors still retained the pre-sale mechanism, causing many people to confuse the start time of the event. In addition, some merchants have found that more and more of their peers are not participating in the 618 event. A merchant in the daily necessities category said that in the same category, only 19 of the top 32 merchants in terms of sales participated in the 618 event, and one-third did not participate.

So, after e-commerce platforms move closer to user needs, can they win back more users’ minds?

1. E-commerce platforms return to users

After the C2C link matured, e-commerce platforms began to focus on optimizing user experience in order to increase conversion rates. To this end, the platform carried out a series of reforms.

The first is the "overwhelming" cancellation of pre-sales. So far, Taobao Tmall, JD.com, Kuaishou, Douyin, and Vipshop have all announced the shift to selling spot goods during this year's 618.

After the first round of fierce competition, Taobao and Tmall, which took the lead, announced their platform performance. According to Tmall data, in the first hour of sales on the evening of May 20, the transaction volume of 28 brands exceeded 100 million yuan, and there were 216 single products with transaction volume exceeding 10 million yuan.

Kuaishou and Vipshop have not yet announced their 618 related results, while Douyin and JD’s activities will start on May 24 and May 31.

In fact, this is not the first time that an e-commerce platform has cancelled pre-sales. The concept of pre-sales was proposed by Zhang Yong, then president of Tmall, in 2012. In order to increase sales, Zhang Yong renamed the then Taobao Mall to Tmall and added a 27-day pre-sale period. He hoped to help merchants reduce production and supply chain costs while saving money for consumers. In the same year, Taobao Tmall's sales did not disappoint, increasing from 52 million yuan three years ago to 19.1 billion yuan.

After that, pre-sales gradually became a standard feature of major e-commerce promotional festivals. Consumers locked in products through pre-sales, creating a stable record for merchants and platforms.

Earlier in 2021, Pinduoduo launched the slogan "No deposit, no pre-sale" on Double 11, and JD.com also advanced the event time and canceled pre-sales on Double 11 in 2023. Why did the cancellation of pre-sales come to the fore again this year?

One of the main reasons is that the platform pays more and more attention to consumer experience. In the recent Alibaba earnings conference call, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming mentioned that one of Taobao's tasks this year is to increase investment in user experience.

In addition to canceling the 618 pre-sale, Taobao also re-optimized the web interface, which delighted millions of PC users. Since the end of December last year, Taobao has also launched services such as free shipping in Xinjiang and pay later, which greatly improved the user experience. It is worth mentioning that this time point is very close to the first time that Pinduoduo's US stock market value surpassed Alibaba.

Source: Taobao and Xiaohongshu

After returning to users, Taobao Tmall's GMV showed strong room for growth. According to the financial report, as of March 31, Taobao Tmall's total merchandise transaction volume (GMV) and number of orders both achieved double-digit year-on-year growth, and the number of 88VIP members exceeded 35 million, also maintaining double-digit growth.

Previously, JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong said: The starting point of any work of JD.com should be "don't forget the users when making decisions". On May 20, JD.com officially announced that it has achieved interconnection with WeChat Pay, becoming the first third-party payment institution in the industry to connect WeChat personal code and merchant code at the same time. Previously, in order to improve the user experience, JD.com lowered the threshold for free shipping for the first time. At present, ordinary users can enjoy free shipping when they purchase JD.com's self-operated products with a purchase of more than 59 yuan, and members can enjoy unlimited free shipping throughout the year.

Source: JD.com

Meanwhile, in terms of refund mechanism, in addition to Pinduoduo, Taobao and JD.com have joined the "refund only" camp. According to reports, a JD.com insider revealed that JD.com launched the "refund only" service in 2014 and has been using it ever since. In December last year, the rules were further improved to extend the service to third-party merchants stationed in JD.com.

Xu Ran, CEO of JD.com Group, said that thanks to the continuous optimization of user experience, in the first quarter of 2024, JD.com's quarterly active user numbers have maintained double-digit year-on-year accelerated growth for two consecutive quarters, and users' shopping frequency, NPS (Net Promoter Score) and the number of users in lower-tier cities have all increased significantly.

In addition, the cancellation of pre-sales by content platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin is inseparable from the change in consumer consumption habits under short video content. The content of these platforms is mainly short and fast, and the audience is mostly easy to be attracted by it. Long pre-sales will affect the fast-paced user mentality that the platform has previously established for them, resulting in a higher return rate.

Therefore, at a time when competing for users is the primary principle, canceling pre-sales during big promotions is bound to become a new trend for e-commerce companies.

2. Will consumers buy it?

After the platforms announced the cancellation of pre-sales, an interesting phenomenon emerged. That is, some anchors and brands still retained the pre-sale mechanism, explaining the pre-sale time and products and why they still retained the pre-sale in the live broadcast room before the event started, such as Li Jiaqi, Lieer Baby, Bee Surprise Club, and Mushrooms Are Coming. The Taobao live broadcast rooms of these anchors successfully exceeded 100 million in sales in just one hour.

Take Li Jiaqi as an example. His pre-sale time is May 19, which is the day before the start of Taobao's 618 event. In the live broadcast, Li Jiaqi revealed that the pre-sale was reserved for one day to give fans enough time to collect discounts and platform coupons, and the balance of these pre-sale products can be paid on May 20.

Because the anchor and the platform had different opinions on the pre-sale mechanism, a wave of consumers were confused. Some consumers said: Although they didn’t understand why there was a deposit, they still grabbed it first; they didn’t like the cancellation of the pre-sale while partially pre-selling, which made consumers even more confused...

In fact, in order to follow the platform's cancellation of the pre-sale mechanism, some anchors and brands have launched a deposit-free campaign for pre-sale products, by distributing red envelopes to reduce deposits for consumers, and even multiple red envelopes can be used together to achieve a "0 yuan purchase". For example, Li Jiaqi distributed 60 rounds of red envelopes for pre-sale on the 19th, with a cumulative red envelope amount of 300 million yuan. One order can be stacked with 10 red envelopes, and many fans achieved "0 yuan purchase" when paying the balance.

Source: Xiaohongshu

In addition, many consumers also said that the promotion activities are getting longer and longer, and the price difference of goods is giving them a headache. A Xiaohongshu user said: This year's 618 event actually started on May 19, and I didn't have time to do my homework; another consumer said: Although I applied for price protection, I have to watch the price fluctuation for a month, which really affects my mood...

The reason why consumers have such concerns is that during previous major promotions, many consumers placed orders enthusiastically on various e-commerce platforms, only to find that the discounts were not as good as the daily prices, which made consumers feel very frustrated.

Taking this 618 as an example, Kuaishou had the longest promotion period of 42 days, followed by Tmall with 32 days. JD.com had the shortest promotion period of 21 days, followed by Douyin with 26 days.

As the promotion period continues to extend, consumers' "price comparison" emotions will also be prolonged. They will continue to jump between major e-commerce platforms, comparing factors such as price, quality, and reviews, in order to find the most cost-effective products. The extension of this emotion not only increases consumers' shopping time and energy investment, but also makes the competition between e-commerce platforms more intense.

Regardless of whether pre-sales are cancelled or new gameplay is introduced, the primary task of e-commerce platforms is still to win the hearts of users, not only to attract fans but also to retain them. Therefore, the performance report of major promotion nodes such as 618 and Double 11 is particularly important, and the generation of the performance report is directly related to the user experience of the platform. Currently, only Tmall and Xiaohongshu have released the performance report of the first day of 618, and the performance of the second half of 618 is still waiting for users to verify.