Is the Douyin Mall version a step backward?

Douyin launches an independent e-commerce app "Douyin Mall Edition". This article analyzes its logic from three dimensions: consumers, merchants, and competition. Let's take a look at it.

Recently, Douyin’s attitude to “do business” in e-commerce has been very clear.

Douyin E-commerce has launched its own independent APP "Douyin Mall Edition". This application is now available on the Android system. The number of downloads is increasing rapidly, and it is said that it has captured hundreds of millions of Android users from the beginning.

Party A Finance also downloaded the app and conducted a trial evaluation as soon as possible. The first impression that came into view was, isn’t this just the TikTok version of Taobao?

Left: Douyin Mall layout Right: Taobao layout

This article analyzes the logic behind Douyin's big move from three dimensions: consumers, merchants, and competition.

1. The Taobao version of Douyin is here!

It is not difficult to see that placing an order on the Douyin e-commerce version is a serious matter. The entire layout is very similar to Taobao. We changed several different accounts and refreshed it, and found that most of the products recommended on the mall homepage are white-label products, mainly priced at 9.9 yuan and 19.9 yuan.

After further experience, I found that if it is required to be a shopping software, it seems that the "Tik Tok Mall Edition" is not doing enough.

We tested the same account watching videos on Douyin and Douyin Mall version at the same time. The video experience was that the video content of "Douyin Mall version" did not have much more content to guide orders than Douyin. It was not even like the Douyin main site where you would see advertisements while watching videos or enter a live broadcast room selling goods while watching videos.

I don’t know if it’s because the huge amount of traffic has not yet been connected, or if the Douyin “Douyin Mall Edition” is still in the stage of testing user behavior and is relatively restrained.

The bigger problem may be the personal center, that is, the "I". The personal center of the "Douyin Mall Edition" is the same as Douyin. It is not as rich as Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo. There is only one lonely order viewing entrance, and the rest is work management that has nothing to do with content.

Comparison between Douyin Mall and Taobao Personal Center

In addition, the Douyin mall version currently does not have a clear entrance to coupons and red envelopes. Isn’t the fun of using e-commerce software to look at coupons, play mini-games, and then consider what to buy?

If there is anything we haven't mentioned, readers and bosses are welcome to add it.

2. Will the customer pay for it?

Regarding the emergence of the Douyin Mall version, the relevant person in charge of Douyin e-commerce said: "We have observed that some users have a strong demand for active shopping. In order to better serve these users, Douyin e-commerce has launched the Douyin Mall version to help these users find good products at good prices and manage orders conveniently."

Regarding this potential demand, we also interviewed several bosses and service providers who have businesses in Douyin e-commerce.

Service Provider A: Actually, we are also wondering, under what circumstances, users need two apps to watch Douyin? You should know that QQ, a social software, was beaten by WeChat. If it is purely for shopping, why not convert directly on Douyin? Therefore, we temporarily recommend that merchants make too many plans for the mall version, unless they contact us with traffic subsidies.

Merchant B: We are more worried about whether Douyin e-commerce will charge us twice? Investing in Qianchuan is a sum of money. Now it seems that the Douyin mall version is just an independent app from the mall.

However, as a shopping app, the idea of ​​traffic is definitely different from that of short video software. If we want to launch the "Douyin Mall Version" in the future, will the product display be charged again like Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo? Many consumers have complained that buying things on Douyin e-commerce is the most expensive among several platforms. This is because Dabo+ investment traffic is really not cheap, and we have no way to deal with it.

C, an e-commerce operator of a well-known brand: We held a meeting to study the issue and found a bug in the Douyin mall version, which is that there is no place to build more positions.

Tmall and JD.com have mature positions, such as store membership system, U-first trial, etc. These messages are usually sent via messages.

Although the Douyin flagship store also has members, the shopping information of the Douyin mall version is still a secondary entrance, and even only shows a small red dot. The current prediction is that it is difficult to do private domain under such a cumbersome system. Let's see whether the product side will continue to improve in the future.

3. Can user psychology be rebuilt with money?

For users, shopping is just an additional attribute of the entire Douyin series. Some people say that Douyin's traffic is currently still for leisure and entertainment, rather than shopping consumption.

From the perspective of user psychology, how to make users develop the habit of placing orders on the Douyin Mall version also needs to be cultivated slowly. Someone has imagined a scenario - there is no detergent at home, I can't just open the Douyin Mall version to see which food expert's detergent doesn't hurt my hands.

If I want to buy computer accessories, I will go to JD.com for the expensive ones and go directly to Duodian for the cheap ones. It is impossible for me to directly open TikTok and watch the video before buying.

The fashion vertical e-commerce “Douyin Box” previously launched by Douyin was a “failure case” in grasping the mental state of shopping scenarios. The daily active users and huge traffic that Douyin was proud of were not successfully grafted into the Douyin Box.

In addition, Douyin Box’s track is too vertical in the fashion circle, so Douyin Box is seen as a product to resolve the contradiction between Douyin’s interest e-commerce business and content ecology, but it ended in failure.

In fact, whether it is the Douyin mall version or the Douyin box, merchants and products still need to acquire users from the traffic pool of the Douyin content ecosystem in order to achieve conversion.

Shelf e-commerce is based on the logic of search + repeat purchase. Ultimately, in the e-commerce field, the Douyin Mall version does not currently have a clear user mindset and has not fully formed a cycle of planting grass + search + repeat purchase.

However, the mall version of Douyin may use "cash power" to solve mental problems. It depends on whether the group will approve the budget for Douyin e-commerce. After all, there is nothing that cannot be solved by "reasonable spending of money."

Spend money, give users coupons, and simply and crudely let users choose Douyin e-commerce. Taobao and Jingxi also used this trick when they were conquering the world.

It costs money. Now there are a lot of mall promotions in the video content of Douyin creators. Then they can directly promote the mall app in the video, just like promoting Zhuxiaobang and Dongchedi apps.

Spend money and provide subsidies to merchants during the entry stage so that merchants are willing to take the Douyin mall version seriously.

In short, problems that can be solved with money are not problems, and Douyin Group is currently recognized as the richest company in the Internet industry.

4. Will it follow in the footsteps of Taote and Jingxi?

Douyin E-commerce has been making plans for shelf e-commerce. The entrance to the Douyin Mall alone has been located in various positions, including the top and bottom of the page.

In fact, people don’t really care about the changes in the entrance. Consumers are more concerned about the price; merchants are more concerned about the changes in the product traffic distribution algorithm.

Later, the mall had a definite entrance, and the global interest e-commerce was officially opened. The summary of Douyin e-commerce in 2023 shows that in the past year, Douyin's shelf scene business has grown rapidly, and the mall's GMV has increased by 277% year-on-year. This is the reason for the emergence of the "Douyin Mall Edition".

Is it a step backwards to separate Douyin Mall as a shelf e-commerce and then return it to a shelf e-commerce?

After all, among the e-commerce apps that have been separated from the main site, Jingxi and Taote have already failed.

It is generally recognized in the industry that the reason for the failure of Taote and Jingxi is that Taote is backed by Taobao, and Jingxi is backed by JD.com, and it is impossible for all the traffic to be directed to Taote and Jingxi, while Pinduoduo's traffic is all in Pinduoduo.

If the main site has always been supported, Taobao and JD also put a lot of effort into Taote and Jingxi.

After Douyin e-commerce split out the mall section, although many people are downloading it now, the original traffic advantage of Douyin’s main site will definitely show a "diminishing marginal returns effect."

In particular, Douyin e-commerce is still catching up on e-commerce lessons in terms of fulfillment and supply chain. After the newly launched "Douyin Mall Version" has gradually evolved into an app that is closer to shopping scenarios and has taken on the mission of placing orders on shelf e-commerce on a large scale, it is difficult to compete with Pinduoduo, Taotian, and JD.com in terms of low prices, sku richness, and experience. Therefore, it is hard to guarantee that it will not "reverse" under the layout of global interest e-commerce and follow in the footsteps of Taote and Jingxi.

Before, everyone said that the end of the Internet would be finance, but now the end of the Internet is that everyone has to do e-commerce.

The number of Douyin users means attention and traffic. When users are willing to stay, Douyin e-commerce has already won at the starting line in e-commerce.

But after becoming an independent "Douyin Mall", the starting line has changed, and it is even a long way behind Taobao, Dongbao, and Duoduo. In this game, the speed of "Douyin Mall" is a leopard, but the speed of other players is not a turtle.

To answer the sharp question in the title, we think not. At least it is a standard piece of Douyin's e-commerce ecosystem.

Chief writer: Zhenhuan Chuan, article architect: Miaomiao

Official account: Party A Finance