Douyin e-commerce standardized product selection guide (recommended collection)

If you want to do well in Douyin live streaming sales , products are the core, but most people do not pay attention to the importance of goods. Instead, they rack their brains to pursue various gameplays and routines, and ultimately die miserably due to supply chain problems.

You must know that no matter how many operational methods there are, they are just means to help products connect to users. Product is 1, marketing is 0, and the essence of e-commerce is goods!

Product selection is the foundation of operations and runs through the entire operation. Product selection is the key and also a difficult problem.

How can we select and organize products based on the characteristics of the Douyin platform, data and user needs, so that the products can generate their own traffic and conversions?

Today, let’s talk in detail about the topic of product selection.

Different e-commerce ecosystems have different logics for product selection. Douyin interest e-commerce and shelf e-commerce are completely different e-commerce models.

If you are transforming from traditional e-commerce (Taobao, JD.com, and JD.com) to the new track of Douyin e-commerce, the first thing you need to do is to change your mindset. Traditional e-commerce is about solving demand (people looking for goods), while Douyin e-commerce is about creating demand (goods looking for people). The consumption attributes and nature of the two are different.

For example:

Taojingduo is just like our real-life trade mall, with shops everywhere. No matter how you shop here, you will only see goods. As long as you enter a shop, the merchants will give you their beautifully made product pictures (main pictures, detail pages, short videos) for you to choose from.

Douyin is a super large market. As soon as you enter, you will hear all kinds of sounds, including people selling goods, singing, quarreling, and performing acrobatics. While you are walking around, you suddenly find the product you need, so you place an order.

Therefore, there are essential differences between the corresponding people, goods and places. You can understand this by looking at the comparison in this picture.

In traditional e-commerce, users have clear consumer needs and face specific pain points to be solved. They search for solutions, and the products meet their needs, and finally complete the purchase.

In the case of interest-based e-commerce, users are not originally aware of their own consumption needs, but are stimulated by the content. Goods are equal to content, and the connection with users is achieved through recommendation algorithms, which belongs to discovery-based consumption.

Through the above, we can conclude that the product attributes of Douyin e-commerce have these characteristics:

1. Unplanned consumption. Users originally did not discover their own consumption needs, but as they browsed, their needs were stimulated. For example, in categories such as clothing, daily necessities, and food, the needs exist for a long time, and as long as someone sees them, they will realize that they are needed.

2. Impulsive consumption. Users’ shopping on Douyin is impulse buying, so it is best if the products are easy to display (special selling points or highlights, visual perception of product value) and have high cost-effectiveness (the difference between the price received in the live broadcast room today and the consumer’s psychological expectations).

3. Focus on hot-selling products. Douyin is an e-commerce ecosystem dominated by hot-selling products. For an excellent live broadcast with goods, more than 80% of the GMV is contributed by 20% of the hot-selling products. Learning how to create hot-selling products is equivalent to mastering the lever to leverage traffic and sales.

Therefore, when we are selecting products for Douyin e-commerce, we need to follow the above points and never move the product selection ideas of traditional e-commerce platforms to Douyin. This will definitely not work.

So how should we choose products?

Before talking about specific product selection ideas, we need to first understand the classification of Douyin e-commerce products, as well as the types and functions of each product.

1. Product classification

In Douyin e-commerce, products are generally divided into welfare products, hot-selling products, main promotion products & profit products, a la carte products & regular products, and anchor products. Let’s talk about them one by one.

1) Welfare funds

Welfare products can also be called traffic-generating products. They are generally products that will be recommended within three seconds. Note that this product must be related to the category you sell, and the target audience is the same group of people. However, the specific product cannot be the main category product, but can be a related product. For example, the welfare products for selling light luxury women's clothing are sunglasses, scarves and other related products.

2) Draw traffic to popular products

Generally, the hot-selling items are the best products in the category. They are sold at cost price which is far lower than the market price. They are extremely cost-effective. We usually make no profit or very little profit on them. It is best to sell them as a bundle with the main items. The main function of this type of product is to help us screen out the wool party, increase the performance density, and improve the UV value. Let’s use this light luxury women’s clothing as an example.

3) Main Model & Profit Model

The main promoted model can also be called the profit model. It has super high cost-effectiveness, high click-through conversion rate, and selling price lower than the overall market price or has other gifts and other benefits. This type of product mainly helps us contribute profits, that is, make money, and at the same time helps the live broadcast room to label the precise shopping population.

4) A la carte & regular

For regular models, they are only put on the shelves without explanation or with little explanation. The product click-through rate is high. Its main function is to enrich consumers' choices and test models. It also helps us improve the overall conversion rate, sales, and UV value of the live broadcast.

5) Anchor Fund

The anchor model is the star model of the category. The average order value of this type of product is relatively high and is generally rarely sold. The main purpose of listing it on the shelves is to highlight the cost-effectiveness of the main model and other models, allowing users to have a comparison effect.

2. Product selection principles

Players doing e-commerce on Douyin can be mainly classified into two types: 1. Merchants or brands with sources of goods; 2. Players without sources of goods who use the selected alliance.

Merchants with supply advantages generally promote their own products, and will go looking for products for welfare and traffic; players without supply sources rely more on the ability to select and assemble products.

Let’s first look at a few principles that need to be followed when selecting products.

1) The product itself

Appearance: In Douyin e-commerce, products are mainly displayed in the form of short videos and live broadcasts, so try to choose products that have unique selling points, do not require explanation costs, and can be understood at a glance.

Quality: This is very important. High-quality products will bring higher store and product scores, and high ratings can attract more natural traffic. On the contrary, too low ratings will limit traffic.

Life cycle: New products are given priority. They are at the initial stage of their life cycle and have a greater chance of becoming a hit.

Reasonable pricing: Understand the price trend of the category and make more reasonable pricing based on the purchasing power of the target group and your own positioning.

2) Merchant & manufacturer strength

Delivery capability: The best delivery speed is to send out within 24 hours after ordering, and priority will be given to products with spot goods. Otherwise, it is very likely that you will sell out a product and the back-end supply chain will not be able to keep up, and your account will be ruined...

After-sales capabilities: 7 days no-reason return and exchange, freight insurance, worry-free shopping, etc. are all plus points, as well as some special categories such as ceramics or glass products, whether there is compensation for damage, etc. In addition, the speed of after-sales processing should also be paid attention to.

Quality control: From raw material control, production and processing, product manufacturing, finished product testing to finished product warehousing, as well as after-sales quality tracking and resolution, including the entire process, including a complete quality control and management chain.

3) Market demand

Seasonal products: Choose seasonal products according to seasonal changes. For example, in the department store category, when autumn and winter come, the demand for thermos flasks, hot water bottles and other similar products will increase significantly.

Hot products: Determine demand based on products that have been popularized by similar anchors. For example, if a product that has just been popularized by a big anchor or celebrity happens to be in the same category as yours, you can consider choosing it.

Make good use of tools: Learn to use data analysis tools such as Chanmama and Feigua to gain insight into market demand.

There are many ways to select products, but not all of them are applicable. You still need to find a suitable product selection method based on your own resource advantages.

1. Own channels

If you are transitioning from traditional e-commerce, you can choose from the popular products tested in your own Taobao and Jing stores. You can also expand more new products based on the sales data in your Douyin store.

If your supply chain is strong enough and can quickly track products, it is not recommended to look for products on the list, because the products on the list have been popular for some time. It is best to look at real-time data and explore potential hot products. Specifically, use tools such as Chanmama and Feigua. Take Chanmama as an example.

The first type: Hot-selling video detector, which can select videos that have just become popular within 1 hour. Generally, the hot-selling videos correspond to specific products. They have just started to become popular and have the trend of continuing to become popular in the future. If the supply chain capability is strong, the products can be quickly followed.

The second way is to look at the real-time sales list, select the category you sell, and sort it by sales in the past two hours, which can help you discover many potential hot-selling products.

2. Finding goods without a source

1) Benchmarking experts - follow the expert's showcase - top 10 products in sales

For example, if you are in the snack category, you can go to the showcase of your benchmark account, choose sales priority, contact customer service for the first 10 products, and go to the business WeChat to discuss cooperation. There will usually be someone specifically responsible for business.

2) Chanmama-Product Selection Library-Category

Use the Chan Mama tool (other tools are also OK), select the product - product library - select the category, for example, if you are doing maternal and child category:

Select the sales volume in the past 7 days to sort and see which products have been popular in the past week. If you find a product that suits you, contact the manufacturer to send samples immediately. This is because the products that have been popular in the past week mean that there are not many people who promote them, and the product has not been over-developed, so it is possible that it will continue to be popular.

3) Merchants or manufacturers recommend new products

For long-term cooperative merchants or manufacturers, new products will generally be released regularly. At this time, we can ask the manufacturers to recommend and see if they are suitable for our live broadcast room. If they are suitable, they can also be included in the product selection list. I won’t go into details about this, just continue to accumulate your supply chain resources.

4) Hot products found in video information stream

When our account has an interest tag, the information we see in the information flow will be from the same industry. At this time, if you are selling snacks, then when you open Douyin, you will basically see similar information, so it is easy to see some hot products, which can be included in your product selection list.

5) Products that are frequently asked by fans in the live broadcast room

When we are live streaming, students in charge of product selection can focus on some products that fans frequently ask about in the public screen area, and include them in the product selection list. For example, this department store live broadcast room.

When you have discovered some potential products, you can also use Big Data to search for keywords and view data to verify search needs. For example, the search index for "snow pan" has recently reached more than 1,000.

Finally, let’s talk about how to test products:

When you have screened out some potential products, which one has the potential to become a hit still needs data to verify. Commonly used product testing methods include short video testing and live broadcast room testing.

Product testing method in live video broadcast room. Find the selected products to be tested. For example, if there are 9 products, make multiple sets of short videos based on different sales tactics and different display scenarios and publish them simultaneously. Then select 100 experts to promote 9 videos at will, check the playback volume and data, and evenly distribute the explanation time in the live broadcast room.

Then check the click-through rate and conversion rate of the products, eliminate 3 each time, and rotate 3 new ones every day. If the number of views for a hundred yuan exceeds 10,000, or the click-through rate of the product is higher than 20%, then increase the effort to promote it.

Chain testing method. During the live broadcast, several alternative products are put on the shelves simultaneously. Without explaining these products, their natural click and conversion data are observed in the background. When the natural conversion of an alternative product is good, you can temporarily arrange for an anchor to explain this product to further test its conversion effect.

Okay, that’s all for today’s sharing on product selection.

Author: A Tao and Chu Xin

Source: A Tao and Chu Xin