Douyin strongly promotes product cards, how can merchants seize the traffic?

This article starts from the product card launched after Douyin e-commerce was upgraded to a global interest e-commerce, and explains the marketing strategy of the product card. It is recommended for those who want to know how to seize Douyin traffic.

In 2023, "Mall" is one of the most noteworthy sections of Douyin e-commerce.

According to data disclosed by the platform, from January to December 2022, the average daily number of views of Douyin's e-commerce live broadcast room was 3.2 billion, and the GMV of shelf scenes accounted for 28%. From November 19, 2021 to November 18, 2022, the average daily PV of e-commerce intent searches on the platform was 460 million+, the DAU of Douyin Mall was 160 million, and the average daily PV of store windows was nearly 100 million.

More importantly, the overlap between users who watch short videos/live broadcasts and users who visit the mall is only 17 %. Therefore, the mall is an important incremental source of revenue for merchants operating Douyin e-commerce businesses in 2023, in addition to short videos, self-broadcasting, and expert distribution.

It has been nearly a year since Douyin announced that it would vigorously develop shelf e-commerce with mall and search as the main focus. According to Douyin insiders, the overall GMV target of Douyin e-commerce this year is no less than 2 trillion, of which the target of pan-mall will account for about half of the overall target.

Therefore, in order to achieve the goal, this year, a certain proportion of both free and commercial traffic will be allocated to Douyin Mall. In the annual summary article, Kas also pointed out that in 2023, Douyin will continue to develop the "center field", optimize the category width and product depth of the mall, and strengthen the "search-push" experience.

The vigorous promotion of the development of "shelf" e-commerce is related to the slowdown in the overall traffic growth of Douyin.

A senior practitioner in the live streaming e-commerce industry told Kas, "In the past, Douyin allocated 35% of its traffic to 'e-commerce + advertising', of which 5% was given to lifestyle services. This year, Douyin allocated a lot of content traffic to lifestyle services, about 20% to lifestyle services, and the remaining 20% ​​to 'advertising + e-commerce' . E-commerce traffic has been compressed, so Douyin has to develop a mall to increase user stickiness, so that merchants can see compound interest."

In addition, a recent industry research report shows that the proportion of e-commerce traffic in the traffic distribution of Douyin's main site is gradually decreasing. "From 2022, e-commerce traffic will drop from the original 13+% to 9+% . In the future, the proportion of e-commerce traffic in the overall market will become lower and lower."

Public information shows that Douyin is indeed releasing positive news in terms of mall traffic operations.

On March 1, Douyin e-commerce held a press conference to launch a commission-free policy for commodity cards and operational guidance for platform merchants, which can be regarded as a major benefit. Liang Yi, CEO of Red Rabbit Interactive, mentioned in his official account that for many supply chains and certain low-profit categories, the 5% platform technology service fee is exactly the meager profit, and it is also the confidence to work hard and scale up Douyin e-commerce.

Since Douyin e-commerce was upgraded to a global interest e-commerce in 2022, shelf scenes have become an important focus of the platform. Doing a good job of product cards is one of the keys to operating a good shelf e-commerce. So, who can get the dividends of product cards? What are the methods and cases for operating product cards?

01 What is the Douyin store product card?

What is a merchandise card?

Product cards are cards that display product information in shelf scenarios . After merchants release products, they can directly gain product exposure through product cards. In addition to non-live broadcasts and short video trailers, order data generated by users directly accessing products will be classified as product card orders.

So far, Douyin e-commerce product cards mainly have the following high-traffic entrances: Douyin search, Douyin mall, showcase, store homepage, channel activity page, and others (shopping page, collection, footprints, messages, sharing, guess you like, etc.).

Compared with other methods, product cards have the advantages of low threshold, large traffic, and multiple display scenarios . Specifically, merchants only need to prepare header images, titles, product details pages and other graphic materials to complete the production of a product card. The completed product card can be displayed through Douyin search, malls, stores, windows, channel activities and other scenarios, bringing merchants 24 hours of natural traffic.

It is reported that from March 1, Douyin e-commerce will return the technical service fees generated by product card orders to merchants. Product card orders refer to orders generated by users clicking on product cards on Douyin through non-live broadcasts and non-short videos. Merchants need to sign up for the event and complete the "three-choice-two" tasks (listing new products, optimizing titles, and decorating stores) to enjoy the commission-free policy. The event time is from March 1, 2023 to May 31, 2023.

The specific refund ratios are as follows:

1. For domestic products, except for 0.6% of the technical service fee, the rest of the technical service fee will be returned to the merchant;
2. For cross-border products, except for a 1% technical service fee, the rest of the technical service fee will be returned to the merchants.

As long as merchants register within the policy period and complete the designated tasks in each period, they can obtain the "commodity card commission-free qualification" for that month.

Task 1: Release non-duplicate products for sale

Path: Doudian-Product-Product Creation.

Task 2: Adopt product title optimization suggestions

Path: Doudian-Product-Product Creation. When releasing products, the system will provide hot search word recommendations, which merchants can adopt and add. Doudian-Product-Product Diagnosis, enter the product diagnosis page to add hot search words. Doudian-Search-Search Product Diagnosis, enter the page to add hot search words to the product title as required.

Task 3: Shop decoration

As long as the merchant has more than 20 products on sale and in stock, he or she can use the "industry template" with one click to decorate the store and meet the "qualified decoration" standards.

After completing the product card order, merchants can log in to Doudian → Mall → Mall Management or Doudian → Luopan → Product Card to view the estimated commission-free amount. The commission-free amount can be checked after the 20th of the next month through Doudian → Funds → Rebate Center.

In addition to the new commission-free rules for merchandise card orders, Zhang Hao, business manager of Douyin's e-commerce merchant development department, announced eight other benefits at the same time, namely, personal entry, opening a store for free, free business guidance and training, interest-free borrowing for up to 30 days, and 100% premium subsidy for return and exchange freight insurance for up to 7 days.

02 Who can use the traffic of commodity cards?

Who is more likely to eat up the traffic of commodity cards?

The aforementioned practitioner told Kas that there are two major categories of merchants that can benefit from merchandise card dividends.

One is supply chain merchants, with Pinduoduo merchants being the most representative. They have very strong content production capabilities, and the recommendations of Douyin Mall are similar to the recommendations on Pinduoduo’s homepage. Hot products will receive more exposure, and exposure is the prerequisite for conversion;

The other category is undoubtedly the brand merchants active on Douyin , who continuously obtain product traffic recommendations outside of content by creating hot links (hot links), thereby obtaining new GMV increments. Of course, both supply chain merchants and brand merchants are recommended to have the ability to produce quickly to prevent the experience score from being reduced due to explosive orders .

Different from live broadcasts and short videos where orders are placed through content recommendation, purchases brought about by product card orders are the result of users’ active searches. This purchasing model has precise users and high demand, so the corresponding return rate is also lower.

For merchants who have supply capabilities but lack content capabilities, making product cards can also reduce the investment in influencer cooperation and obtain higher sales revenue.

Previously, Kass had predicted that in 2023, Douyin will focus more on small and medium-sized businesses. (Where to find growth in 2023? | Douyin vs. Kuaishou e-commerce)

Small and medium-sized businesses have two values ​​for Douyin:

First, many of these businesses regard Douyin as their only business platform, and are more "loyal" to Douyin and more willing to invest, which can further increase Douyin's advertising revenue after making a profit;

Second, to meet the product consumption needs of multi-level active users on Douyin, when Douyin e-commerce goes deeper, it also needs to use differentiated merchandise to meet the needs of people with differentiated consumption capabilities, and further improve their consumption stickiness and repurchase rate.

This means: 2023 may also be a year that small and medium-sized businesses cannot miss to take advantage of Douyin to achieve super-fast growth. For many businesses, the commission-free policy may be a window of transformation, abandoning their reliance on short videos and live broadcasts and switching to a shelf e-commerce system with relatively lower operating costs, but at the same time, they will face various uncertainties and trends in the future. For businesses that are not good at shelf gameplay, they will face a new round of competition and fighting.

So, how can merchants open up sales growth space by obtaining product card traffic? Among the major entrances to product cards, search and mall are currently the most important entrances. For merchants who want to obtain product card traffic and stabilize transactions, it is crucial to improve the mall recommendation and search weight of products.

First of all, before obtaining the recommended traffic from Douyin Mall, you must complete the "pool entry" step to obtain search weight. Without the product link in the pool, you cannot get the free traffic recommendation from the platform.

Entering the pool not only strictly controls the sales volume and price of goods, but also considers the merchant's store experience, distribution situation, etc. Merchants can use the Douyin e-commerce compass to automatically diagnose data and increase the entry rate of goods into the pool .

The platform has clear regulations on the conditions for Doudian products to enter the pool:

1. Historical sales volume＞0;
2. The product information quality must reach 100 points and comply with the Product Information Release Specifications. Product requirements include but are not limited to: the main image/details page must be clear, without vulgar style, image splicing, watermarks, excessive photo editing, etc.;
3. The products are not duplicate products. The products with the highest sales volume are selected into the pool.
4. The overall good score was >85% and the overall bad score was <2.5%;
5. The product status is stable and online, without repeated distribution or frequent listing and delisting (4 or more times in a week);

Second, whether the Douyin product card is exposed and displayed will mainly be evaluated on two indicators: click-through rate and order volume.

According to Kas, in the traffic entrance of "Guess You Like" on Douyin Mall, "Cover Click-through Rate" is the core indicator of all transaction carriers and the focus of brand merchants. However, compared with short videos and live broadcasts, the traffic allocation of product cards will also assess the number of orders, that is, OPM (orders per thousand impressions).

Therefore, merchants should start optimizing operations from this direction. For example, to increase the click-through rate of products, they should set the product cover image and title.

An eye-catching product header image must meet the four elements of "selling points, promotion, endorsement, and scene". At the same time, merchants can also use the "search analysis" function of Douyin e-commerce compass to monitor and adjust the effect in real time.

Generally speaking, titles can cover different types of keywords, such as brand words, product words, category words, efficacy words, scene words, crowd words, etc. Merchants should try to test keywords that can bring more traffic, so as to increase search exposure and generate clicks after being searched by users.

Third, on the basis of optimizing product and store information, merchants can obtain more traffic through search advertising and short videos .

By using creative materials and search terms to place advertisements, merchants can fine-tune the coverage of more consumer groups with purchasing intentions. At the same time, they can use the data tools within By using By using creative materials and search terms to analyze the results of the placement and gradually refine the placement strategy.

After getting paid traffic through advertising, you can also further capture natural traffic by publishing short videos to attract users to actively watch products. In short video operations, merchants can increase the conversion entrance by publishing trailer short videos, or add #topics# and embedded words in the video to increase the click exposure and conversion of "search after watching".

Fourth, make good use of the power of influencers to increase sales and obtain natural traffic . On the basis of optimizing product search, pay attention to product quality/service. In the process of accumulating orders, when the merchant experience score increases, more influencers/group leaders will be willing to bring goods, further accumulating sales, and accelerating the growth of product card traffic. The aforementioned practitioner told Kasi, "If there are many influencers bringing goods, sales will continue to rise, and the system will think that this is a hot link. The mall will provide overflow traffic and homepage exposure to attract more influencers to help you bring goods."

Finally, the showcases of top influencers can also increase the trust endorsement for merchants. If a product can appear in the top three of the showcases of top influencers, it means that it will be searched by more users and seen by the influencer’s homepage at the first time, which means a strong exposure.

At present, the average daily number of active users of Douyin is close to 700 million, which is getting closer and closer to the ceiling. The growth path of content traffic is nearing its end. It is time to tap the existing "stock" of the platform. The shelf scene is a gold mine that cannot be ignored.

The focus of the platform is, of course, the "trend". The commission-free product card is also an opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses. If businesses with supply chain capabilities can seize this trend, they may be able to achieve rapid growth in their business in the short term.

Author: Kas Data

Source: WeChat public account "CaasData (ID: caasdata6)"