Is Taobao, which offers free orders to users, getting better?

Taobao has made a lot of moves recently, such as canceling pre-sales and offering free orders, but are users buying into this? Let's take a look at the author's analysis.

Taobao has been a hot search "professional" in recent times, canceling pre-sales, upgrading the web version, and launching free-order activities. Before the 618 promotion officially begins, Taobao is eager to hand over the reform report card to users.

Since last year, Jack Ma, Joseph Tsai, and Wu Yongming have all pointed out that Taotian Group’s problem is that it neglected user experience. During those years of hard work, Taotian’s territory was infinitely expanded, but its own bloat was also increasing day by day. It was not until the new requirement of “facing the current situation and starting a new business” emerged that Taotian’s internal “big change” was put on the agenda.

After a "slimming down", Taobao rushed to release a series of heavy bombs before the 618 promotion, with its face full of expectations for the return of users. Whether it is the long-awaited web version that has finally been revised, or the simple and crude free-order activities, Taobao seems to be using this set of actions to tell consumers that "my youth is back".

1. Win back consumers, starting with free orders

On May 6, the first day of the free-order activity on Taobao, the related topic directly topped the Weibo hot search list, with over 1.67 billion views and nearly 860,000 discussions. Coincidentally, one of the free-order activities on Taobao used "The Legend of Zhen Huan" as the topic, which aroused discussions among a group of "Zhen scholars" and brought the activity to a new level of popularity.

Zinc Scale learned that Taobao's free-order activity will last from May 6 to May 8. Different questions will be asked during the free-order activities in different periods. Users can guess the range of the free-order amount based on the pictures, and then place an order for the corresponding products to have a chance to get a free-order quota.

For example, the first free-bill event on May 6th started at 0:00, and the free-bill amount was 51 yuan; the first free-bill event on May 7th started at 11 o'clock, and the free-bill amount was 110 yuan; the free-bill event on May 8th started at 11 o'clock, and the free-bill amount was 156 yuan.

Title setting for free activities

However, in addition to guessing the amount correctly, you also need to pay quickly to have a chance to get a free order. But overall, for Taobao, this is a long-awaited high-user participation event after the Double Eleven "Stacking Cats" event.

As for whether there is really no trick, it depends on one’s opinion. For example, Qingqing is not satisfied with the planning of this event. “I participated in the free-order event of Ele.me before and got a direct cashback. I personally think this is called no trick. Taobao’s free-order event this time has to set a threshold for answering questions and placing orders for goods. What’s even more speechless is that in the end, only a red envelope is returned, which means that you have to continue to place orders to really experience the joy of free orders.” Qingqing told Zinc Scale that she thinks this can only be called “bound consumption”. “Since the free-order amount and the number of places have been limited, the cashback should be direct, so that the experience can be maximized.”

Many consumers also took a more positive attitude to participate in the event. "It's a welfare event. I'm not a professional wool-pulling player. As long as I win, I'm lucky." "The returned red envelopes can be used to buy urgently needed products. It's a profit no matter how you calculate it." "This is suitable for people who already want to buy something. Although it's not a 0-yuan purchase, it's more than the 618 event discount." "You can regard this event as a 50% discount. Buy two items and only pay for one. This wave is not a loss." ...

In addition, some users have found derivative ways to play. They set up group chats on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo to analyze the answers to questions in different time periods and explain the rules to new users who don’t understand the rules, thereby gaining account exposure and increasing fans. From the current point of view, the popularity of Taobao’s free-order event has exceeded expectations. Since the announcement of the free-order event on May 6, the interaction data on Taobao’s official Weibo has risen sharply, which can be regarded as a warm-up for the upcoming 618 event. However , it is still too early to judge whether this wave of interaction and traffic can reverse Taobao’s reputation in the past two years.

2. Low price and simplicity, what do young people need?

Compared with the entertainment attribute of the free-order event, the cancellation of pre-sales is Taotian’s big decision. Twelve years ago, in order to facilitate merchants to prepare goods in advance, reduce logistics pressure, and extend the promotion period, the pre-sale model began to become the mainstream sales model during the promotion period of e-commerce platforms.

Platforms and merchants may be able to gain something from the pre-sale model, but users have suffered from pre-sales for a long time. "It takes half a month or a month to wait for a piece of clothing. If it can't be made, just don't sell it. Did I buy a cyber T-shirt for my parallel world self to wear?" Tan Yiwen told Zinc Scale that the waiting period of the pre-sale model often makes her expectations for the product gradually decrease, which greatly affects her mood.

Cao Lei, director of the E-commerce Research Center of the China Internet Network Information Center, concluded, "The pre-sale system is equivalent to a 'reservoir' that locks in orders, that is, locks in user purchasing power and production capacity forecasts, helps determine market share and recover funds. In fact, whether it is pre-sale or spot sales, they are all used for the overall transaction rules of the platform, so they are also applicable to the Consumer Protection Law, the Contract Law and some related regulations. Criticisms against pre-sales are not uncommon, especially for big promotions such as Double 11 and 618. The waiting time is related to the consumer's shopping experience, and pre-sale products must ensure consumers' right to know. Before consumers place an order for pre-sale products, they should pay attention to the pre-sale quantity and duration, which are generally clearly indicated on the product details page."

JD.com and Tmall cancel pre-sales during 618 shopping festival

Perhaps it was because of the dissatisfaction from many parties that Taobao and JD.com both announced the cancellation of the pre-sale mechanism before the 618 promotion this year. Taobao's investment documents show that Taobao, which canceled the pre-sale, moved the 618 event forward to late April, with late April to mid-May as the "front stage", mid-to-late May as the first wave of 618, and 8 pm on May 31 to June 20 as the second wave.

Simply put, although the pre-sale mechanism has been cancelled, the 618 cycle has become longer. Taobao wants to stimulate consumption through such changes and also provide enough time for decision-making.

It is worth mentioning that since Wu Yongming took over Taotian Group, targeting young consumers has become a top priority for reform. During the first major promotion "New Year Goods Festival" after the young management team took over, they began to use low prices to attract young people who are more price sensitive.

During the "New Year Goods Festival", Taobao's main venue used a lot of advertising slogans such as "Grab limited edition New Year gifts for as low as 1 yuan", "Grab a rights gift package for 1 yuan", "Grab large coupons for 1 yuan", and "Grab physical gifts for 1 yuan" to promote the event, hoping to directly reach the main consumer groups with the activity of "grabbing bargains" for 1 yuan.

During the 618 promotion, Taobao will continue to implement the "ultimate price mentality". On the one hand, it will "trade price for volume" on super single products, and on the other hand, it will focus on the low-price battlefield with 10 billion yuan in subsidies. Coupled with the previously added refund-only service and the "unlimited return and free shipping" rules of the 88VIP rights upgrade, it is obvious that Taobao wants to win back the hearts of consumers.

3. “Cat and Dog” Race, Who Can Grasp the Pain Point First?

Regarding Taobao's reform and focus over the past period of time, Jack Ma commented this year: "The most important change this year is not to catch up with KPIs, but to recognize ourselves and return to the track of customer value. We have started to treat the big company disease, and returned from an organization with slow decision-making to efficiency and market first, making the company simple and agile again. The new management team faces problems and the future, believes in young people, fully empowers the young team, and makes decisive and clear choices about what we want and what we don't want."

Under the purpose of "returning to Taobao, returning to users, and returning to the Internet", the super APP Taobao is simultaneously adding and subtracting.

Compared with the low-price promotion, cancellation of pre-sales, and support for refunds only, another action of Taobao may better reflect the return to the original intention. On May 9, Taobao officially announced the first major upgrade of the PC version of Taobao in 7 years, and re-launched Taobao's early forum "Taojianghu".

Although this is an era of mobile Internet, the upgrade of Taobao PC version is still a real need of many users. "Those of us who love PC version have finally been discovered. Many times we really want to watch on computer screen, and mobile phone is too straining for the eyes." A user commented.

Some merchants also revealed to Zinc Scale that more B-end customers can be traded on the PC side. "My store's monthly sales average 1 million yuan, and the PC side generates the most transactions. Taobao should have paid attention to the PC side a long time ago. I personally predict that during this 618 promotion, the traffic from the PC side will also increase significantly."

A series of "returning to youth" reforms are all aimed at achieving growth. After all, the current e-commerce environment is too competitive. In the past year, Taotian Group has made enough cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing measures, and the march of layoffs is still being sung loudly. However, cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing is a dialectical topic. If efficiency-enhancing is done well enough, there is no need to rack your brains on cost-cutting.

Alibaba must have realized this as well. It uses money-saving cards to increase the frequency of consumption among sticky users, uses free-of-charge activities to attract users with a wider coverage, and has established a Small and Medium Enterprise Development Center since May last year to continuously increase its support for small and medium-sized businesses. Those small and medium-sized businesses that were once left behind in the dual-brand operation structure of Taobao and Tmall have now become new opportunities for Taobao.

Judging from the current activity results, Taobao in the hands of the "young generation" is indeed different, but simple "flattery" may not be able to truly win back the hearts of consumers. The new story should not be just about canceling pre-sales and free-of-charge activities. In the "cat and dog fight" competition, grasping the user's consumption pain points is still a difficult problem.

Author: Xing Wan, Editor: Chen Dengxin

WeChat public account: Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)