A brief discussion on Douyin e-commerce in 2023

As a huge growth point for Internet e-commerce in 2023, how will Douyin e-commerce develop? Is it worth looking forward to? This article analyzes and compares the advantages and disadvantages of Douyin e-commerce from multiple perspectives such as private domain, customers, and traffic. I hope it will be helpful to you who are interested in live streaming e-commerce.

01

One of the growth points of Douyin e-commerce this year will definitely be Douyin Mall, that is, shelf e-commerce. As a platform, Douyin can no longer concentrate all e-commerce conversions on live streaming.

First of all, the platform needs to take into account both content and sales, otherwise the user experience will be out of touch; secondly, focusing entirely on live streaming e-commerce can easily lead to bad money driving out good money. After all, many bloggers are very good at live streaming routines, but their products and services are not very good; in addition, the mall is the largest private domain for merchants, which is more conducive to the long-term and effective operation of users, rather than having unstable traffic only after the broadcast.

To put it bluntly, pure interest e-commerce based on live streaming is a "goods find people" model. As user habits and interests gradually develop, the effect of the "goods find people" model will definitely weaken, and user behavior will change from passive to active. At this time, it is necessary to start the second growth curve of the "people find goods" model. Shelf e-commerce has long been verified by the Internet as the first choice.

02

In the past, Douyin mainly relied on interest-based e-commerce, where users would make purchases when they were interested in watching short videos or live broadcasts. However, this was not stable. In addition, people’s curiosity about this kind of interest-based e-commerce was gradually fading, and the long-term bombardment of various live broadcast rooms had also made users disgusted and numb.

Therefore, Douyin must go all out to increase the progress of global interest e-commerce, not only to expand effective traffic, but also to improve the stability of traffic.

For example, the comprehensive development of shelf e-commerce mentioned above is one of the directions; another is to cultivate users' search habits and increase search scenarios to directly reach the mall, which is search e-commerce; another is to increase support for short video seeding, which is seeding e-commerce, etc. It is a bit like a combination of Douyin + Taobao + Xiaohongshu.

Obviously, the era of relying solely on live streaming to generate traffic is slowly coming to an end. Live streaming traffic will gradually stabilize, and will be replaced by merchants' refined operations and traffic acceptance. At this time, the advantages of old e-commerce people will be highlighted, and the three-dimensional operation of short video + mall + live streaming will become a better business model, and merchants need to have the comprehensive operational capabilities of "short video + store operation + self-broadcasting + search optimization + expert distribution + event promotion + private domain operation".

03

Continuing from the previous point, on the one hand, global interest e-commerce will definitely be a new trend; on the other hand, no matter how the platform is upgraded and how it helps merchants to operate, one thing is beyond doubt: the competition for traffic has become extremely fierce, and the cost of traffic has also risen sharply. The crude model of making money by investing in traffic as before will definitely not stand the test of time. What should we do?

You will find that once the platform traffic dividend period is over, the entire operational idea becomes clearer, and it returns to the underlying logic of the funnel model we used in the past to play with traffic.

You can no longer simply harvest traffic (opportunity groups), but need to operate in a refined manner, use the basic thinking of the AARRR user growth model to manage the O-5A groups, optimize each user touchpoint, improve each step of group conversion, and do a good job of carrying out each link of traffic. In addition to traffic, you should promote what should be promoted, endorse what should be endorsed, tell stories what should be told, and plant what should be planted.

The key is the people who plant the grass. Only if you plant well can you harvest well. Everything is for planting grass, and everything is for harvesting grass.

04

Douyin has always emphasized the public domain, private domain, and business domain. The three domains are connected and invincible. Its current public domain traffic and business domain traffic are indeed very strong, and everyone can see it.

But as far as private domain operations are concerned, I personally think that the WeChat ecosystem is better.

Although Douyin has been helping businesses to operate in private domains through corporate accounts and has been launching new private domain operation tools, the fan stickiness of most businesses is very weak, and the fans are still on the platform, making it difficult to form long-term operations. The formation of private domains still relies more on the merchants' own values, tone, live broadcast content, etc. to retain a group of loyal fans.

The WeChat ecosystem is different. Currently, the official accounts, video accounts, service accounts, enterprise accounts, mini-programs, and WeChat groups are interconnected. The platform's public domain traffic can be easily converted into private domain traffic for merchants, forming the best model for private domain operations. In this regard, it will be difficult for the Douyin ecosystem to surpass it in a short period of time. It is no wonder that countless Douyin merchants are trying to attract users to the WeChat ecosystem. After all, users are more secure in their own hands.

05

All of the leading Internet platforms will experience a period of wild explosive growth, with chaotic policies and rules, and extremely low-cost traffic dividends. Correspondingly, merchants will also play in a wild and crude way, frantically harvesting traffic, and new brands that take the opportunity to become popular will emerge in endlessly.

As the platform develops into a stable or even declining period, various policies and platform rules will become increasingly perfect, merchants will gradually shift to refined operations, traffic dividends will decline, user habits will remain basically stable, and everyone will start to compete on internal strength.

At this time, you will find that many businesses that were once popular are short-lived, good money starts to drive out bad money, and there are fewer and fewer new brands that become popular based on platforms every year. This is the case with Weibo, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin.

The wheel of history always repeats itself in a surprising way. For Douyin e-commerce people, especially new brands that have just started e-commerce in the era of short videos, instead of following the platform's steps every day and constantly learning new models and new tools, it is better to look back and see what the underlying logic of traditional e-commerce is, what the underlying logic of traffic conversion is, what the underlying logic of user management is, and how those former Internet celebrity brands have completed refined operations...

06

Douyin wants to live long and live well, merchants want to sell goods and make money, and users want to have a good experience. Douyin can only live long if users are happy; Douyin can only live well if merchants make money; Douyin can only live long if merchants make more money; if merchants do whatever it takes to make money, users will be unhappy; if users are unhappy, Douyin will not live long... How to find a balance between these three?

The key lies in content and product strength, and the core breakthrough is still content. It starts with content, thrives with content, and dies with content. Content is the fundamental aspect that runs through the platform, users, and merchants. Douyin knows this. It likes content, good content, different content, and innovative content... So it needs to rectify and innovate, so that good content can survive and merchants who provide good content can live well. For Douyin, content includes not only short video content, but also live broadcast content and product content (product diversity and quality).

Good content brings public domain, good content brings business domain, and good content also brings private domain. Platforms don’t like homogeneous products, and they don’t like homogeneous live broadcast platforms even more. In 2023, Douyin will inevitably be a variety of content, especially the attempt of new live broadcast mode. Please remember that Douyin is first a content platform, then a marketing platform, and finally a promotion channel.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: WeChat public account: "Mumu Laozei (ID: mumuseo)"