Height 166cm, weight 44kg, Douyin anchor Dayu can make every dress fit and look good in front of the camera. She can tell out the must-buy advantages of a dress in time, interact with fans in the studio, and finally work out a hard-cut price.

Outside the camera, the staff counted down five times in unison, "on the link", and at the other end of the network, fans began to place orders.

According to data from third-party agency Chan Mom, the highest sales of the fish, which has only 160000 fans, reached 6.14 million in the past month, the lowest in a single show, with sales of 140000 yuan after only one hour of sowing.

If you only watch the live content, it is difficult to tell the difference between Douyin and Kuaishou Technology's studio.Almost the same live broadcast routine, high-spirited female anchorwoman, angry with the boss's bottom price, super-fast explanation speed, the two platforms achieved the unity of temperament at this moment.

Over the past half a year, Douyin live e-commerce has sounded the whistle of the competition.

On the one hand is the old rival Kuaishou Technology, and the development of live e-commerce business is earlier and more mature, forming groups with goods anchors represented by the "Simba Family", which occupy an absolutely dominant position in all kinds of lists with goods, but Douyin is infiltrating into Kuaishou Technology users and stock users no matter from the point of view of traffic or carrying goods.

The other side is Taobao, live broadcast with the strength of players, but very dependent on external traffic. With the adjustment of Douyin policy, that is, after October 9, the studio no longer allows links to goods from third-party sources, the relationship between the two sides has become more delicate.

A year ago, the Internet Colosseum also made an observation on three platforms:Taobao is ecologically rigid, with the head occupying the majority of traffic, and the rise of the waist and tail beset with difficulties; Kuaishou Technology has an excellent performance in the field of content e-commerce with her own advantages in user and traffic distribution; Douyin moves frequently, but it has not improved much, and the anchors with goods lack "flow" sense of security.

A year later, Douyin live e-commerce is developing faster than expected, and merchants are adapting to changes in the platform and gradually finding a way to survive selling goods on Douyin. Platforms, merchants and MCN institutions are constantly being debugged, and no one is willing to sit back and wait for death.

Who is the beneficiary of the closed loop landing?

Before the news that goods from third-party sources were not allowed to link to the ground, Douyin was also experiencing the chaos of departmental adjustment.

The original Douyin e-commerce belongs to a large "commercialization department". It was not until June this year that a special e-commerce division was set up and spun off from commercialization. According to later news, the e-commerce division will be responsible for the uplink and downstream link work on live broadcast, e-commerce products, operations, platform rules, brand commerce and other content platforms such as Douyin.

A byte employee told the Internet Colosseum, "it turns out that e-commerce (department) is also a key service for Douyin, but whether it is the product design of pure live streaming or the bottom piece of e-commerce C-end, it is still done by the e-commerce side." "

The newly established e-commerce division, as a first-tier business unit alongside Jinri Toutiao, Douyin, gaming, Zero (education and new business) and commercialization, will report to Zhang Nan, CEO of byte Jump China, and Zhang Lidong, chairman of the board. With the establishment of the new department, Douyin will have more say in the e-commerce business.

The first knife of this new department is very clear, cutting off the possibility of third-party merchandise links into the live broadcast room.

The policy has not yet been implemented, but changes have taken place, and businesses have begun to take the initiative to adjust their operational strategies.

Luo Yonghao listed 53 items on the live broadcast on Sept. 5, including 12 items from Taobao and 6 items from JD.com. The rest of the links were directed to small stores, which accounted for nearly 70% of the total. Five months ago, about half of Luo Yonghao's first 23 items came from Taobao.

The flexibility of merchants is greater than expected.

Some agents believe that the size of Douyin e-commerce is not enough to allow merchants to choose one of the two, and the purpose of the brand is to sell goods, even if they are really faced with the situation of choosing one of the two, they will actively adapt to this set of rules.In particular, big brands have the strength to build goods for different sales channels, which is equivalent to "policies above and countermeasures below".

MCN organizations with anchor resources will have other thoughts. Lu Hao, CEO of Kuaimei makeup, said, "VJs have less room to choose from, and merchants are willing to give relatively less price advantage, because Taobao will have some derivative traffic when there is more traffic for a single product. If he is a small Douyin store, he won't get much derivative traffic, so the profit space for merchants will be reduced.」

Lu Hao instead believes that if Douyin and Taobao enter a state of confrontation, the policy may affect some merchants to open stores on Douyin.

Liu Siyang, CEO of short video data platform Star list, has a similar view to Lu Hao, but her consideration is whether merchants can "operate" small stores. "how to invest manpower in the new channel, what kind of result will be produced after the investment, how do I operate, including the price of my new channel and what my original channel looks like, in fact, it is a whole system, not so simple. "

The relationship between Taobao and Douyin has become more ambiguous. Although before the news landed, Sina Technology also revealed that Douyin and Taobao have signed a new round of year frame cooperation, including advertising and e-commerce, the overall scale of the cooperation is higher than that of last year.

However, not all businesses have to consider the so-called "opposition". Amoy small and medium-sized businesses and some tail merchants may become the beneficiaries of this policy adjustment. Their flow in Amoy is limited, and their binding relationship with each other is not strong. Once there is a new foothold, the opportunity cost of changing positions is not high.
In the case of higher and higher flow in Amoy, choosing a new content e-commerce platform may be the way out for some small and medium-sized businesses. Lu Hao is also tapping more of the possibilities of these businesses and relaxing the targets of cooperation among anchors.

Sinking the market, the trump card of content e-commerce

Some people, from the beginning, are not affected by closed-loop policies, such as sinking the market, which gives many businesses the opportunity to explore on the platform.

Take the most mature clothing industry as an example. As long as online celebrity shopkeepers in Hangzhou and Guangzhou can successfully operate any account on Kuaishou Technology, Douyin and Taobao, they can quickly draw on the foundation of the local supply chain to become a millions of anchors like "Big Fish."

One fact that needs to be known in advance is that Douyin has rapidly completed the traffic sinking in the past two years, with the number of daily active users exceeding 400 million at the beginning of January 2020, a figure that cannot be achieved by users in first-tier cities alone.

Some second-tier e-commerce players are already adept at using byte sinking traffic to benefit.

One of DataEye's businesses is advertising for second-tier e-commerce.These merchants may not own a formed brand themselves, but they control the products or supply chain resources and ultimately benefit from forming orders through single-page advertising.

A DataEye marketing staff introduced to the Internet Colosseum, "Douyin conversion efficiency is relatively high."

Professional "second-class e-commerce" players, with the help of data institutions, find the "potential popular styles" on the platform, and then carry out the production and advertising of goods, along with the rise and fall and replacement of the popularity of products. they can build different categories of goods without interruption.

The survival space of "second-tier e-commerce" is to sink the market, launching cash on delivery service for some users who do not have the conditions for online payment. The derived problem is that without online supervision, the quality of products will be difficult to control, and it is easy to find it difficult for consumers to safeguard their rights.

There is also a phenomenon of "online celebrities" in second-class e-commerce. The positioning of online celebrities is to bring goods, but they have a delivery skill, that is, they cut live videos into short videos and then put them on the air. "this is cheaper." the effect of absorbing the bill is better. Some online celebrities used a similar method to make a certain lingerie item into a popular Douyin style at the beginning of the year, becoming a traffic black hole, "a single product has relatively reached the stage of monopoly."

The Beijing News previously reported that the second-tier e-commerce brings more than 20 billion yuan of running water to the byte beat every year.

However, after all, second-tier e-commerce is not a sustainable business, especially after the "Douyin grilled shrimp" incident. "this road does not seem to be very relaxed this year, and the models are getting narrower and narrower." according to Lu Hao, Douyin may still prefer merchants to do serious advertisements rather than "feathering wool".

Upgrading Douyin stores and cutting off the third-party chain is actually more conducive to the platform to control the quality of goods, and let these users have a more secure consumption path.

The former employees of the above bytes revealed: "Access to the third party will jump the user away, and the experience is not good. For example, if you buy something in the live broadcast of Pinduoduo or Taobao, it is very smooth, and you can continue to watch the live broadcast and buy other things in the live broadcast room. but just like Lao Luo live, jump Taobao, jump JD.com, in fact, the experience is not very good. In addition, commodities will be out of shape, so it is difficult to control some underground industries and so on.」

Assuming that the outer chain has carried out actions such as title modification, the byte side cannot complete the product audit, which will also affect the user experience. Therefore, the first step of a Douyin shop is to cut off riskier categories such as fresh and alcohol.

Categories with higher security, such as clothing and beauty makeup, can easily be the first beneficiaries of Douyin e-commerce traffic.

Lu Hao is relatively sure that Douyin is the biggest dividend opportunity this year.He believes that one of the biggest differences from live streaming on Taobao is that there is almost no overlap between Douyin's short video Big V and Big V with goods, and Super V may not necessarily give play to the advantage of bringing goods. With the regulation of Douyin's e-commerce policy, MCN and merchants can quickly adapt to a new set of rules and explore ways to create with-goods anchors.

In addition to the stars pushed by the platform such as Luo Yonghao and Chen he, Zhu Guagua has become a benchmark case in the eyes of many MCN: the number of fans is only 2 million, but the popularity of the live studio is stable and has a strong ability to carry goods.

The fewer anchors like Zhu Guagua, the more opportunities for the organization, because she is replicable and surpassable. Prior to this, Kuaishou Technology's live selling routines were generally considered easier to learn and more standardized.

Apart from the difference in traffic distribution mechanism, the similarity between Douyin live e-commerce and Kuaishou Technology live e-commerce has become greater and greater.

From the user level, they all have a large number of sinking users and enjoy the logistics infrastructure and electronic payment infrastructure built by the traditional e-commerce platform. From the attribute level, both content e-commerce belongs to the upgrade on the basis of traditional e-commerce and meets the needs of users.

The most important point is that Taobao verified the success of live streaming with goods, and the new influx of MCN and merchants urgently need to find the next platform to find living space.

Sinking is an important prerequisite to help the platform achieve a closed loop: new users will form new consumption habits on the content platform.

The "private domain" of Douyin, the law of algorithm

The byte e-commerce business department was set up nearly a year later than Kuaishou Technology. Prior to this, the development of Douyin e-commerce has been relatively stagnant, and the most puzzling thing for anchors is that they can't let fans really become their own "private domain traffic".

"Private domain traffic" is actually a popular concept accompanied by content e-commerce. Kuaishou Technology gives 70% of the traffic to long-tail content, and when a single video traffic reaches a certain level, it will be manually intervened. The product design emphasizes interaction and makes it easier for anchors to leave their own fans.

This is a more friendly flow distribution mechanism for creators, and a richer content ecology can be formed within the platform.

On the contrary, Douyin has been labeled as "fans are worthless" because of the rise of strong content operations, lack of user and social stickiness, and lack of "content ecology" on hand.

However, today's institutions and businesses seem to have found a way to obtain a "private domain". When the platform relies on content for strong operation, institutions also need to rely on content for strong operation on the platform.

Big fish or Zhu Guagua are not head anchors with too many fans. Big fish has only 160000 fans, but the number of people in the studio can be maintained at about 2000.

"the core of Douyin is still an algorithm platform, so the requirement of stable carrying volume is that you should have stable data and account quality, so that you can get stable algorithms. Lu Hao's experience is that, for example, for live streaming accounts, the first is to focus on the retention of all kinds of new fans, and the second is that most people now do it while putting in, so they need to have a stable delivery ability. the third is that the fans brought by live streaming will be more sticky than short videos, and they may also repurchase. "

Inside Kuaimei makeup, a large account that already has a fan base can choose to broadcast only two or three times a week, but if it is a newly trained account, it will also experience the growth process of "Taobao Little Anchor" and broadcast live as frequently as possible for a long time. Daily broadcasting is a basic requirement, which is also a process to help accounts accumulate credit.

Douyin as a content platform, there is a bottom line is very clear, that is, will not easily let video with goods affect the user experience.As early as a year ago, an organization fumbled out a simple rule and relied on short videos to drain to live streaming rooms. Once a short video became popular, the anchor could start broadcasting immediately.
This is different from the way Taobao used to design for off-site traffic, you have to pull more trading volume, Taobao will reward you more intra-site traffic, resulting in a positive cycle, your trading volume will go up further.

How to reach users and attract users into the studio is a question that anchors and institutions need to think about.

There are some rules that can be quickly discovered. For example, once a user has the habit of entering a live room, the probability of the VJ's short video content and live broadcast advertising in the user information stream will increase as soon as the broadcasting time comes.

Although the official recommendation mechanism for e-commerce live streaming is not clear, there are some policies to promote the development of e-commerce business: in April 2018, the e-commerce advertising delivery system "Luban" connected with Douyin; in August 2019, DOU+ launched the e-commerce function; and in May 2020, Douyin announced plans to invest 1.5 billion traffic to support the enterprise account.

The tilt of policy is the space for development.

Getting "private domain" traffic in Douyin is actually a work to constantly understand the live streaming recommendation mechanism of Douyin e-commerce. The recommendation mechanism of Taobao LVB is the number of views and trading volume, so there will be a situation that the strong is stronger and the weak is weaker. So if Douyin copy Taobao, it is difficult to avoid this problem.

The latest news is that Taobao Live is about to launch a reward. Originally only focused on Taobao live streaming with goods, we may also start to think about the new recommendation mechanism, how to help mid-waist anchors break the situation, and how to enhance the attractiveness of Taobao live rooms to users.

Kuaishou Technology 8.0 also has an important change, the large screen "selection" has replaced the "local" position, taking more care of the user's experience, information flow advertising may usher in a new opportunity.

The platforms are learning from each other to make up for their deficiencies, but each has its own set of unshakeable benchmarks. Douyin may become more "Kuaishou Technology", "Kuaishou Technology" may also become more "Douyin", and the various institutions sandwiched in the middle can only adapt to these changes.

Disorderly competition in adventure

Weibo Corp, another content platform, had tried to run its own e-commerce long before Douyin decided to do a closed loop. But Weibo Corp failed, e-commerce business is too heavy, gross profit is low, adhere to pure self-management can only lose money. Later, Weibo Corp, taking BABA's investment, directed e-commerce traffic to Taobao to earn commissions and advertising fees.

Xiaohongshu has a similar stage. In 2014, Xiaohongshu entered the field of cross-border e-commerce and even chose the self-built logistics mode. However, the construction of the supply chain is not complete, since the completion of the high cost, less SKU, Little Red Book Mall has not improved much.

It wasn't until the end of 2018 that it focused its business back on content operations. Subsequently, the development of content e-commerce became reasonable, but Xiao Hongshu chose a closed loop from the very beginning, contrary to Douyin's practice. It was only in August this year that the live studio of Xiao Hongshu began to test the "link to Taobao".

Whether it is Weibo Corp or Little Red Book, has explained the difficulty of building a mall, byte earlier rest assured to buy the mall, is also an unsuccessful test of the water.

Qi Muzi, chief operating officer of data analysis platform Shucha Cha, believes that the environmental conditions for the establishment of Douyin stores and rest assured purchases are different: "Douyin is a video social platform with entertainment attributes, compared with Jinri Toutiao, Little Red Book and Weibo Corp." there is an impact at the facial features level, if you participate in it, not only yourself, but all the friends of the surrounding links will participate. Douyin is at the juncture of changing acquaintances to unfamiliar social contacts. Shopping in entertainment is a more reasonable way for users to spend. "

Douyin did not target proprietary e-commerce in the first place.

In early 2018, after Douyin was blocked by Wechat, it began to cooperate with Taobao to launch an online shopping cart to support the jump to Taobao. Throughout 2018 and even by the end of 2019, the main carrier of Douyin e-commerce was short videos. Li Jiaqi became the head anchor of Taobao Live through Douyin traffic.

Douyin e-commerce traffic realization characteristics, one is to help merchants to carry out brand exposure, the other is "big Taoge", self-built mall in the past is only a potential possibility.

But BABA has always been on guard against this over-powerful partner.

Taobao charged Douyin at least 30 per cent of its fees in the first half of 2019. I don't know whether this measure has curbed the development of Douyin e-commerce or stimulated the acceleration of Douyin's self-built e-commerce. For Douyin, if you want to increase the revenue from e-commerce, you can only find a way to get rid of the shackles of BABA.
In the case of self-built immature, most of the e-commerce traffic will fall on Taobao.China Merchants survey found that 60 per cent of Kuaishou Technology's GMV was drained to Taobao and 10 per cent to likes. Although Douyin has no specific data reference, the proportion of drainage to external stations may be higher without platform intervention.

Throughout 2019, Douyin has been working on infrastructure, such as Douyin to connect with JD.com, koalas, Vipshop Holdings Limited e-commerce, support for celebrities to bring goods, the launch of Mini Program e-commerce, online product search function, and so on. Although MCN has explored with goods on Douyin, most of the results are not bright.

It is generally believed in the industry that the infrastructure of Douyin e-commerce is still not mature enough, especially the after-sales and customer service links need to be improved, and this year's Singles' Day is not far away.

Therefore, if you make a comparison with Kuaishou Technology, you will find that the time when Douyin chooses to cut off the chain outside the studio comes too quickly. Kuaishou Technology, who has similar environmental conditions, is also training his own "self-built shop", but the way he chooses is to charge a higher commission (50% of the promotion commission) for third-party links, which is the biggest difference between Douyin and Kuaishou Technology.

Generally speaking, Kuaishou Technology first has the form of wild business, and then the platform intervenes. In the words of the organization, wait for you to do it, then "provide services" to MCN or the anchor. Douyin, on the other hand, the platform is more proactive and top-level design capabilities, their approach is often for the platform to formulate all the rules, within the circle of existing traffic pools, welcome MCN to adapt and develop.

BABA should have been on guard against Douyin.

"many experts have long understood that Douyin has to be a shaking store, so BABA must also be able to see the movements of competitive products. And Douyin shop has been relatively perfect, the development of various functions has kept up. Qimuzi believes that it is wise to cut off the brand's dependence on the outside chain now, which will make the brand put its mind on the operation of the store.

Coupled with the newly acquired payment license, byte has never been willing to hand over the opportunity to make money to others.

The data can better show the intensity of the war. According to media reports, Douyin's 2020 e-commerce GMV target is 200 billion, Kuaishou Technology 250 billion, Taobao Live 500 billion. In fact, the goals of the latter two have gone through a process of being forced to "improve their goals".

From a larger dimension, social e-commerce (Kuaishou Technology) and content e-commerce (Douyin) are profoundly affecting consumers' shopping decisions, which are irresistible trends. Platform e-commerce (Taobao) can only compete with it, but can not be completely eliminated.

Under today's trend, Taobao and Douyin are destined to compete more than cooperate. When the construction of Douyin stores is more mature, the time for Douyin short videos to cut off the three-party e-commerce chain may not be far away.

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