DianTao APP Product Analysis

Let’s first answer a core question: who does live streaming e-commerce serve and what problems does it solve?

This brings us to the evolution of e-commerce .

1. E-commerce Process

1. Shelf e-commerce

Also known as traditional e-commerce, the underlying logic is that “people looking for goods” is equivalent to the onlineization of traditional offline business.

The advantage of e-commerce over offline shelves is that the shelf display costs of e-commerce are lower and browsing is more efficient (because users can view many stores on the page at the same time), which reduces the information cost of the entire business chain. Coupled with the subsequent electronic payment, the credit transmission cost is reduced, giving rise to e-commerce giants such as Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, JD.com, and Dangdang.

2. Social e-commerce

Based on the dividends brought by the rise of UGC and PUGC communities such as WeChat and Weibo, social e-commerce was born. Its forms include paid membership, community model, group buying, etc. Because consumers and merchants are connected by social relationships, the cost of credit transmission is reduced. Typical representatives include Yunji and Beidian.

3. Content e-commerce

Later, information flow products such as Toutiao, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu emerged, and the efficiency of information distribution was greatly improved. These platforms are called "traffic black holes."

Their ability to absorb traffic is so strong that it brings new traffic dividends. The concept of "planting grass" was born during this period. Merchants first attracted a certain type of users by creating interesting or practical content (posts, articles, videos) and converted these users into buyers. Content e-commerce is based on the interests of users to reach products, and the conversion rate has obvious advantages over traditional e-commerce.

4. Live e-commerce

The upgrade of content e-commerce, the core feature of live streaming e-commerce is "timely interactive feedback", referred to as "cloud stall". Users watch the live streaming of goods based on their trust in the anchor. The anchor persuades users to buy through professional explanations and answering questions. The real-time and online shopping process is the key factor for live streaming e-commerce to maintain a high conversion rate.

The specific advantages of live e-commerce are:

( 1) Reduce the user decision-making process

Imagine a scenario like this: I want to buy a lipstick, but I’m not sure what brand or shade to buy, so I go to Tmall and search for Estee Lauder first.

I choose the lipstick category and look for the lipstick I want among a large number of product descriptions. Sometimes I am not sure if it is what I want, so I need to click to enter the product details page, scroll to the bottom to view more information, or click on the product reviews to see if there are any pitfalls to avoid.

I finally found a satisfactory one, and then searched for Dior and Huaxizi...

After going through this process, it would take at least 2 or 3 hours to find a satisfactory lipstick, and the process is not over after that. I may like several lipsticks, and then I will become very entangled because of factors such as price and brand, and go to other e-commerce platforms to compare prices. The final result is that I spent a whole evening and half a night of time and energy to buy a lipstick that costs 199 yuan.

So what is the difference between this and a tailor like me in primitive society who had to go hunting myself if I wanted to eat meat?

I have to become a micro-expert before I can make decisions.

Now there is a man whose temperament is very similar to my male best friend. He is very knowledgeable about what kind of lipstick is suitable for what kind of people. He is also very enthusiastic and spares no effort to recommend various cost-effective lipsticks to me, and he is also online on time every night.

It might be a very good choice to let him decide what lipstick to buy. Based on his explanation and the live broadcast, I will know whether this lipstick is suitable for me. Maybe I only need ten minutes to decide to buy it (or even faster), and I won’t have any psychological burden when shopping.

Therefore, anchors are essentially outsourcing the consumer decision-making process. They use their own reputation to endorse brands and products, thereby reducing the cost of obtaining information and transferring credit during the shopping process.

(2) Shortened business links

Live streaming allows anchors to skip all the large and small distributors and work directly with brands. The price difference saved in the middle can be passed on to consumers and anchors as part of the profit, and all three parties benefit (only the distributors lose).

At the same time, since the anchors have a good ability to attract consumers, this translates into strong bargaining power in the face of suppliers' inventory-capital turnover needs. If the anchor can understand consumer needs well on the front line, he or she can even implement a reverse customization mechanism of C2M.

(3) People looking for goods becomes goods looking for people

The prototype of e-commerce live streaming is TV shopping, but the difference is that TV shopping itself is an advertisement, which exists in the gaps between movies and TV dramas, while e-commerce live streaming is the content itself. Due to its immediacy and high interactivity, e-commerce live streaming has extended to more marketing scenarios, such as live streaming of flash sales, on-site bargaining and ordering models, store-style product introductions, outdoor broadcasts at production bases, live broadcasts of expert consultations, on-site teaching by teachers, etc., to meet the characteristics of different categories of goods.

These scenarios provide users with a specific space, where good products are actively presented to consumers by the anchor after strict selection. The high degree of demand matching between goods and people leads to high conversion rate. Whoever has a high conversion rate has a more efficient business model.

Therefore, in general, technological change will change the way information is disseminated, create new traffic dividends, and form new business model trends. This underlying logic will not change.

In this sense, live streaming will be the norm in the short term future, because it effectively reduces the information gap between products and consumers, and the reduction of information gap is in line with the principles of business evolution.

Now that we understand the evolutionary logic of e-commerce, we can start studying the two questions just mentioned.

2. Problem Study

1. Who are the users of live e-commerce?

• Users who want to know more about the product, such as whether it is suitable for them and whether the quality is guaranteed
• Users who want to gain a sense of social presence and relieve loneliness and boredom
• Users who want to get the pleasure of taking advantage

2. What problems does live e-commerce solve?

Transfer consumers' trust in anchors to trust in merchants, and reduce the cost of credit transmission. On the one hand, anchors can quickly gather a group of high-conversion users through professional abilities (infectious hawking, patiently polishing their personalities, etc.); on the other hand, anchors can also screen out high-quality goods through product selection, thus reducing transaction costs and improving the matching degree between people and goods.

Below, we take the leading player in live streaming e-commerce, " Diantao APP", as an example, and analyze this product from macro to micro to see why it came into being and why it attracts so many people to use it.

(1) Age structure of target users

• Data: Among the users of DianTao APP, only 6% are aged 18-25, 43% are aged 26-30, 35% are aged 31-40, and 16% are aged 41 and above;
• Conclusion: From the age structure, it can be seen that DianTao’s users are mainly between 26 and 40 years old. This group is already working, has their own disposable income, and maintains a high degree of acceptance of new things.

(2) Gender ratio of target users

• Data: The male-to-female ratio is 37:63;
• Conclusion: There are obviously more female users.

(3) Geographical distribution of target users

• Data: DianTao users are concentrated in high-tier cities such as Guangzhou, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Sichuan;
• Conclusion: DianTao users are mainly distributed in economically developed and open areas;
• Summary: The main characteristics of DianTao users are: young and middle-aged people aged 26-40, among which women account for a relatively high proportion, living in super first-tier and new first-tier cities, with a high acceptance of new things and relatively considerable economic strength. They are a typical group of people who love shopping.

3. Guidance

1. Product Overview

• Target product: DianTao APP
• Product Type: Live e-commerce platform
• Product slogan: Use DianTao and enjoy your life!
• Highlights: Users can purchase products while watching live broadcasts

2. Introduction to the experience environment

• Time: 2021.9.30
• Version: V2.20.18
• Model: Mi 11 Lite
• System: MIUI 12.5.3
• Network: WIFI

3. Analysis of the live streaming e-commerce industry

(1) Trial period

China’s live streaming e-commerce industry started in 2016 when e-commerce platforms began exploring new business models.

• In March 2016, Mogujie began to develop e-commerce live streaming and built its own e-commerce live streaming mini program;
• In April 2016, Taobao and Tmall started to launch e-commerce live streaming and introduced the Taobao embedded live streaming function. Subsequently, MiYa and JD.com also launched the live streaming function.

(2) Incubation period

• In 2017, content platforms entered the market. Kuaishou started live streaming and Douyin also launched the live streaming function.
• In March 2018, Douyin entered the market and began to launch the live streaming sales function;
• In June 2018, Kuaishou launched “Kuaishou Shop”.

(3) Rapid growth period

• The industry entered a period of rapid growth in 2019;
• In January 2019, Taobao Live APP (DianTao) was launched;
• In April 2019, Kuaishou launched the "Kuaishou Shopping Assistant" mini program; subsequently, traditional e-commerce platforms such as Vipshop, NetEase Kaola, Suning.com, Pinduoduo, and Xiaohongshu launched live streaming functions one after another, and live streaming e-commerce exploded.

Therefore, the live streaming e-commerce industry is still in a period of rapid development and has not yet entered the mature stage, and the industry structure has not yet taken shape.

Current industry players are divided into three echelons:

• The first tier: DianTao;
• The second echelon: Tik Tok, Kuaishou;
• The third tier: JD.com, Pinduoduo, Mogujie, Suning.com, Vipshop, WeChat, Bilibili, etc.

This is the development of live streaming e-commerce from the perspective of industry players, and the other side needs to be viewed from the perspective of consumers.

In 2020, the scale of China's live e-commerce market reached 1.2 trillion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 197.0%. It is expected that the average annual compound growth rate will be 58.3% in the next three years. In 2023, the scale of live e-commerce will exceed 4.9 trillion yuan.

Live streaming e-commerce has already become a trillion-dollar market, and its growth rate will remain considerable during its rapid development period.

4. PEST Analysis

(1) Political

The government’s policies on live e-commerce can be divided into two categories:

One type is favorable policies that have a direct driving effect. During the epidemic in 2020, epidemic prevention and isolation measures affected many import and export trade terminals, and the Chinese economy also suffered a certain impact.

During this period, the booming development of online economy such as live e-commerce has become one of the tools that can effectively stabilize the development of the market economy, such as:

• March 2020, Guangzhou Live E-commerce Development Action Plan (2020-2022);
• In April 2020, the State Council convened a Financial Stability and Development Committee to issue a 15-word working guideline of “stabilizing expectations, expanding total volume, classifying, focusing on extensions, and creating tools”;
• In May 2020, Chongqing issued the Action Plan to Accelerate the Development of Livestreaming Sales;
• In July 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Opinions on Supporting the Healthy Development of New Business Forms and Models, Activating the Consumer Market and Driving the Expansion of Employment."

One type is documents that play a regulatory role, such as:

• In June 2020, the China General Chamber of Commerce issued the "Evaluation Guidelines for the Integrity Service System of Live Video Online Shopping (Draft for Comments)" and the "Shopping Economy Management and Service Standards (Draft for Comments)";
• In July 2020, the China Advertising Association issued the "Code of Conduct for Online Live Streaming Marketing". In the same month, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security officially issued a new occupational announcement, adding Internet marketers and setting up the job type of "live streaming salesperson".

(2) Economic

The upstream, midstream and downstream of live streaming e-commerce are manufacturing industry - e-commerce industry - national consumption level.

• Manufacturing: At the end of 2019, due to the impact of the epidemic, China's industrial value added growth rate began to decline. However, as of July 2020, China's industrial value added year-on-year growth rate returned to the normal range. The recovery of the manufacturing industry indicates that the demand of upstream customers of live e-commerce has begun to recover, and it has also provided sufficient supply for live e-commerce.
• E-commerce industry: China's online retail sales of goods and services reached 10,632 billion yuan in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods amounted to 85.24 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 21.4%, and the online penetration rate reached 20.7%, which shows the good development trend of China's e-commerce industry. As an innovative business model in the e-commerce industry, live streaming e-commerce will also benefit from the huge e-commerce market.
• National consumption level: Affected by the epidemic, China's total retail sales of consumer goods declined significantly in the first quarter of 2020. However, as of August 2020, the total retail sales of consumer goods began to recover to the level of the same period last year. This shows that the downstream consumption capacity of live e-commerce is also increasing, providing a good foundation for the continued development of live e-commerce.

(3) Social

• Consumer base: As of the end of 2020, live e-commerce has developed rapidly and has become the largest live streaming category in online live streaming, with a user base of 388 million, an increase of 123 million from March 2020, accounting for nearly 40% of the total netizens. Users who place orders through live streaming account for 66.2% of users who watch live streaming, which means that nearly two-thirds of users have made purchases after watching live streaming.
• Consumer awareness: As the scale of Internet users in my country continues to expand, consumers' awareness of the interactive, social and entertaining features of live streaming has deepened. In addition, live streaming provides viewers with more favorable prices, more intuitive introductions, and a higher degree of trust. The user group's acceptance of live streaming e-commerce is gradually increasing. The average daily time users spend watching live streaming continues to increase. The proportion of live streaming e-commerce users in the overall Internet users has increased significantly, and more and more people recognize the consumption method of shopping in live streaming rooms.

(4) Technologcial

The technical environment required for live e-commerce is gradually maturing.

• Hardware upgrade: video and image acquisition hardware
• Algorithm upgrade: face recognition technology, beauty algorithm
• Chip design iteration: Chip processing speed increases
• Improvement of Internet broadband technology: 5G, CDN, cloud computing, etc.
• Infrastructure required for e-commerce live streaming

During the live broadcast, the host introduces products to the audience and gives out coupons. The audience buys products through product links, posts comments and interacts with the host. These are "text" operations that require the message processing capabilities of IM.

The interaction between the anchor and the audience and the price competition between the anchor and other anchors are comprehensive audio and video solutions that require TRTC's real-time audio and video capabilities.

The audience group for a live broadcast selling goods is very large, and the number of concurrent users may exceed one million at peak times, which requires the streaming media distribution capabilities of CDN.

The overall market size of China's video cloud reached US$3.81 billion, a year-on-year increase of 75%, and Tencent Cloud has occupied the first place in the solution market share. The rapid growth of China's cloud video is mainly driven by three major scenarios: online audio and video interactive entertainment, live streaming on e-commerce platforms, and online education.

Bandwidth costs are reduced in both directions, bandwidth charges are reduced, and video processing efficiency is enhanced to reduce bandwidth loss.

Starting from the second half of 2015, the three major operators began to speed up and reduce fees, lowering the threshold for users to use high-traffic applications.

The subsequent explosion of mobile applications such as short videos and live broadcasts created new entrances for traffic growth.

Just as the massive emergence of computer graphics and images made the CPU's processing power insufficient and led to the emergence of GPUs, the computing requirements of massive videos have made CPUs and GPUs no longer efficient in processing videos.

This prompted the advent of VPU. Looking at the history of computer development, the trend from general-purpose computing to special-purpose computing is an unstoppable historical trend.

In summary, live streaming e-commerce not only enjoys favorable policies, but the upstream and downstream industries are also gradually recovering from the epidemic. At the same time, the current market is a very good soil for live streaming e-commerce, and mature technology is gradually making live streaming e-commerce more and more popular.

4. Business Analysis

1. User value analysis

In the field of live streaming e-commerce, there are generally four main participants: consumers, anchors (or MCNs), merchants, and platforms.

Therefore, if the platform wants to achieve rapid development, it must not only provide a stable platform for anchors and merchants, but also provide sufficient traffic exposure and efficient operation tools, and constantly iterate and innovate based on feedback and revenue.

In order to meet this demand, in addition to strengthening the infrastructure of the DianTao platform, the DianTao team also developed a Taobao Live APP specifically for anchors and merchants, which will not be elaborated here.

The platform also needs to ensure that users can spend more time on the platform, either watching live broadcasts, looking for products, or watching short videos out of boredom, in order to generate more profits.

The following is an analysis of the five elements of user experience to explain how DianTao attracts users to stay on the platform to find suitable content and guides users to convert step by step.

2. Commercial value analysis

The core business of DianTao APP is live streaming by anchors and selling goods by merchants.

An important indicator for judging whether a business can develop healthily is its operating income. A common data indicator in the e-commerce field is GMV. E-commerce GMV=UV x UV conversion rate x average order value.

The health of DianTao’s core business can be judged through similar live broadcast GMV: Live broadcast GMV = average UV per show x UV conversion rate x average order value x number of live broadcasts.

The improvement of any of the indicators, such as average UV per game, UV conversion rate, average order value, and number of live broadcasts, will have a positive impact on the growth of overall revenue. Therefore, we will focus on analyzing the means by which Taobao APP improves these four key indicators.

5. Product Analysis

1. Product target users

(1) Age structure

• Data: Among the users of DianTao APP, only 6% are between 18 and 25 years old, 43% are between 26 and 30 years old, 35% are between 31 and 40 years old, and 16% are over 41 years old.
• Conclusion: From the age structure, it can be seen that DianTao’s users are mainly between 26 and 40 years old. This group is already working, has their own disposable income, and maintains a high degree of acceptance of new things.

(2) Gender ratio

• Data: The male to female ratio is 37:63.
• Conclusion: There are obviously more female users.

(3) Geographical distribution

• Data: DianTao users are concentrated in high-tier cities such as Guangzhou, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Sichuan.
• Conclusion: DianTao users are mainly distributed in economically developed and relatively open regions.
• Summary: The main characteristics of DianTao users are: young and middle-aged people aged 26-40, among which women account for a relatively high proportion, living in super first-tier and new first-tier cities, with a high acceptance of new things and relatively considerable economic strength. They are a typical group of people who love shopping.

2. Product Goals

In order to meet the needs of young people aged 20-40 who are seeking an ideal life and want to buy their favorite products, DianTao APP, as a live broadcast e-commerce platform, allows young people to learn more about products by watching live broadcasts, helping them make appropriate consumption decisions.

Unlike Douyin e-commerce and Kuaishou e-commerce, where product quality and shopping processes are unstable, Diantao has product explanations by professional anchors, strong brand endorsement, and a natural e-commerce operating system backed by Taobao.

3. Business Model

4. Conclusion

(1) Who is DianTao for?

DianTao's target group is young and middle-aged people aged 26-40, most of whom are girls. They live and work in first-tier cities, have considerable personal disposable income, and will go online when they have vague shopping needs.

(2) What should DianTao do?

The product goal of DianTao is to provide a shopping platform for young and middle-aged people in first-tier cities who love shopping and pursue an ideal life through shopping. They can fully understand the products by watching the host's professional product selection and online explanations, which helps them make consumption decisions faster and buy satisfactory products.

(3) How does DianTao make money?

DianTao’s business model is relatively clear at present. Like mainstream e-commerce platforms, it mainly charges merchants fees based on the transaction volume of goods. Additional revenue also includes providing advertising space and taking commissions from live broadcast rewards. If it explores short videos in depth in the future, more revenue methods will be derived.

6. Core functions of the product

1. Core Functions

(1) Consumers search for live broadcasts, watch live broadcasts, and buy things

• Live broadcast room display: For consumers, DianTao needs to provide as many live broadcast room entrances as possible, so the live broadcast room needs to design access paths based on the goals of different users, which includes recommendation systems, search systems and classification label systems.
• Interaction in the live broadcast room: The vast majority of DianTao’s revenue conversion occurs in the live broadcast room. Therefore, in addition to the live broadcast function, it also requires interaction between fans and anchors. The purpose of the interaction is to achieve better conversion.
• Shopping in the live broadcast room: Fans need to be able to shop conveniently in the live broadcast room, so a shopping system needs to be embedded in the live broadcast room, including shelves and coupons.
• After-sales service: order system and logistics system.

(2) Consumers watch short videos, find similar products, and then buy things

• Short video recommendation: Most of Diantao’s traffic comes from Taobao apps. As traffic costs gradually increase, Diantao needs to build its own content to retain old users and attract new users. Consumers will not watch live broadcasts 24 hours a day because there are many conditions required to watch live broadcasts. There must be a stable and fast network; there must be a relatively complete time period; and your favorite anchors must be online (generally big anchors are online during the prime time of 9 p.m.). Therefore, the solution that minimizes the cost for users in content consumption is short videos. They are fragmented, have low network requirements, are rich in content, and most importantly, can also achieve a conversion effect. In addition to short video playback, there are also social functions such as likes, comments, sharing, and collections.
• Find the same product: The principle of short video conversion is to attract users through high-quality content, immerse users in the scene constructed by the content, implant product information in the scene, and stimulate users' purchasing interest. However, there are many short videos. If each short video is associated with a product, the efficiency will be too low.
• Therefore, the system needs to automatically identify the item information in the short video and recommend potential products to users, so image recognition function is needed.
• Buying things: Short videos are associated with products, so a shopping system is still needed.

2. Key pages

(1) Find the live broadcast room (home page)

Live broadcast room recommendation - recommending suitable live broadcast rooms based on user preferences through information flow, prompting users to click and convert into live broadcast room users. This is the most efficient way for live broadcast rooms to reach users, because the live broadcast room provides a place for users to immerse themselves in shopping.

Therefore, the homepage does not need to focus on immersion but on distribution efficiency, so a double-column waterfall style is adopted. Each card represents a live broadcast room entrance. The information provided by the entrance can help users decide whether to enter the live broadcast room. The information includes:

• Number of live viewers: Some users are easily influenced by popularity, and you can use the herd effect to attract these users.
• Live broadcast room cover: It is usually a static picture. If it is a well-known anchor, a close-up photo of the anchor will be placed to increase affinity and attract fans of the anchor. If it is a brand’s own broadcast, product photos will be placed to attract users who need the product. If the user flips around and stops at a certain place, the live broadcast room cover on the page will take turns to change to the content currently playing in the live broadcast room, and will be replaced by the next one every few seconds until the last one on the page is finished.
• Live broadcast room avatar: If it is a live broadcast room of the anchor, the anchor’s avatar is generally chosen; if it is a brand’s live broadcast room, the brand logo is generally chosen; both are used to help improve recognition.
• Live broadcast room name: If it is the live broadcast room of the anchor, the anchor’s IP name is generally chosen; if it is the live broadcast room of a brand, the brand name or store name is generally chosen.
• Live room introduction: It is usually refined to quickly convey the core theme of the live room to assist users in identification.

Live broadcast room classification - Live broadcast rooms are divided into different categories through classification navigation, helping users with a certain shopping range to quickly locate the live broadcast room they want (such as mother and baby). The classification navigation represents the demand from high to low from left to right, namely recommendations, clothing, beauty and skin care, jewelry, food, mother and baby... etc. It can be seen that Diantao mainly serves the female group.

Live broadcast room search - For users who have clear shopping goals, they can use the search channel to quickly reach the target anchor or product.

Follow List - When users have a strong stickiness to the anchor, the anchor's online status will become the most important reason for users to use DianTao. Many users will wait for their favorite anchors to start broadcasting at a fixed time at night. For these high-quality users, the follow list can be used to quickly reach them.

(2) Live broadcast page

Live broadcast screen - the main content of the live broadcast for users.

Analysis: In order to provide an immersive experience, full-screen mode is adopted.

Interactive display area - an area for fans to interact with the anchor.

Analysis: The goal of watching live broadcasts is shopping-oriented, but it is essentially social. Therefore, interactive displays give users a strong sense of social participation and allow users to understand the ideas of other fans. It is also a channel for interacting with the anchor.

Shopping guide area - provides users with an entry point for purchase conversion during the live broadcast.

Analysis: There are two ways for users to make purchases: passive display, where the content displayed is the product that the host is currently explaining; and active clicking on the shopping bag, which is similar to the concept of a shopping cart. Users can place the products they want to buy in a unified manner, thus completing the shopping habit of buying while viewing.

Interactive operation area - a functional area where users can participate, comment, reward, like, etc.

Analysis: A considerable number of live e-commerce users have social needs. Interaction with the anchor can help these users relieve loneliness, find a sense of personal existence, and thus achieve better conversion.

Live broadcast room introduction - tells users the information about the host they are watching now.

Analysis: Continuing the tradition of the PC side, a page usually has navigation information to tell the user's current location, and the live broadcast room introduction can let users clearly know where they are now.

Promotional Activities——Various activity entrances appear in a suspended form and are gathered in one area.

Analysis: On the one hand, it encourages users to make shopping decisions, and on the other hand, it promotes the conversion of internal traffic. The live broadcast room is a large traffic entrance, and the conversion rate of the activity is relatively high.

Fans Ranking - Fans with the highest contribution to the anchor will be listed in order.

Analysis: The rankings define a competition mechanism among fans, using user vanity to encourage fans to tip anchors, thereby maximizing fans’ total investment in anchors.

Notice board - the host notifies all viewers in the live broadcast room.

Analysis: The bulletin board is an efficient channel for anchors to convey information to fans. It uses special banners in the live broadcast room, which are prominently located and visible to all users.

(3) Discovery page (the home page reaches users through recommended live broadcast rooms, and discovery is not recommendation but aggregation of users through strong operational activities or rankings)

DianTao Best Sellers List - DianTao Best Sellers List is displayed to users based on the platform’s own sales rules and belongs to the best-selling area.

Analysis: The core function of DianTao is shopping in the live broadcast room, while the best-selling area is centered on the products rather than the live broadcast room, completing the secondary utilization of the anchor’s recommendations, fully promoting product purchase conversions, and making up for the customer loss caused by the time limitation of the live broadcast.

The anchor is broadcasting live - the platform also screens the content for users based on certain rules, with products as the core.

Analysis: Mainstream users search on DianTao along the path of live broadcast room - product, and can also access products through the path of product - live broadcast room. This effect is achieved during live broadcasts by anchors.

Anchor Good Product Talk - content aggregation area, using one theme to link multiple products to improve the efficiency of traffic utilization.

Analysis: Content aggregation can make full use of platform traffic conversion, aggregate users who are interested in products on a certain theme here, and increase the exposure of each product under this theme.

Activity strong operation position - the details area of ​​the operation activity.

Analysis: It will usually be posted when a big promotion comes, and will be posted on both the homepage and the discovery module to ensure that the event receives the most traffic.

Search——Search for products, users, and live broadcast rooms.

Analysis: There is also a search on the homepage, but because the homepage is mainly recommended and has many functions, the search is weakened. Since the discovery module has few functions, the priority of the search box can be restored.

7. Product Iteration Path Analysis

In order to deeply explore the version iteration rhythm of DianTao APP and explore the product iteration ideas, the author analyzed the DianTao APP from V 1.0 to V 2.22.18, and only selected some key version iteration nodes for analysis.

1. 2019-02-13 V 1.0

2019-02-13 V 1.0, the first version was released to achieve cold start.

2. 2019-09-05 V 1.4.0

2019-09-05 V 1.4.0. At this time, the product structure of DianTao is very simple and clear, with only one homepage. The homepage distributes information based on the classification system, and the format has been used to this day. The follow page, as a channel to increase user stickiness to the anchor, is placed in the first category, and the default is selected. At this time, if the user does not follow many anchors, the traffic of the follow page is actually wasted. The personal center is made in the simplest form, and the entrance is very weak. The broadcast room format has been basically determined, and it is not much different from the latest DianTao, but some promotional activities were added later.

2020-09-16 V 1.8.4

3. 2020-09-16 V 1.8.4

2020-09-16 V 1.8.4, at this time, the DianTao product has reached a mature form and added a short video module.

Analysis: DianTao hopes to build its own content community and establish traffic barriers; set up a separate module parallel to recommendation; strengthen the connection between fans and anchors; add bottom tabs and discovery modules; make full use of the operation of internal traffic to increase the revenue contribution of individual users; add message center modules, personal center, and Yuanbao center; and start building a user system.

2020-10-12 V 1.8.26

4. 2020-10-12 V 1.8.26

2020-10-12 V 1.8.26, added some small Kill-Time features.

Analysis: Kill-Time functions are generally used to attract users with relatively low time costs, such as "Candy Crush Saga" and "Walking to Make Money", to increase user stickiness. This way, users stay on the platform longer and their potential consumption will increase accordingly. The value created by retained users is generally higher than that of new users, which is very important for Taobao Live, where the cost of acquiring customers is getting higher and higher (this trick is common in many tool products. Tool products are anxious about retaining users and need to use some functions to help them pass the time to attract more users to stay on the platform, such as Quark and Pinduoduo).

2020-01-07 V 1.9.2

5. 2020-01-07 V 1.9.2

2020-01-07 V 1.9.2, the Kill-Time function entrance is placed in the Personal Center.

Analysis: It is probably because it is difficult to form traffic exchange with the best-selling list by placing it in the discovery module. After all, the two target slightly different groups of people, so Kill-Time is placed in the personal module.

2020-01-20 V 2.0.0

6. 2020-01-20 V 2.0.0

2020-01-20 V 2.0.0 was officially renamed DianTao, and the slogan was changed to "Use DianTao, you will enjoy life".

Analysis: The new name removes the word "live broadcast" and the new slogan emphasizes "life", indicating that DianTao is ready to dig deeper into content traffic (Baidu App later changed its slogan from "Baidu it, you will know" to "Baidu it, life will be better").

As traffic becomes increasingly fragmented and it becomes increasingly difficult for Taobao to acquire traffic, the drawbacks of Taobao's own traffic-generating capabilities are becoming increasingly apparent. Therefore, contentization is the key for Taobao to balance its customer acquisition costs.

2020-08-31 V 2.17.18

7. 2020-08-31 V 2.17.18

2020-08-31 V 2.17.18, the discovery module adds the anchor’s good things to say.

Analysis: Live streaming e-commerce is still e-commerce in essence, and as e-commerce, it tends to maximize ARPU and LTV. Not every user who enters Diantao will watch live streaming. Some want to browse around, some want to watch short videos or play games for leisure. Providing different modules or channels to meet the needs of different users can maximize the flow of users among the modules while retaining them on the platform.

The anchor Haowushuo aggregates products with the same theme together, ensuring that users can see more products at one time and that more products are exposed.

2020-10-12 V 2.23.18

8. 2020-10-12 V 2.23.18

2020-10-12 V 2.23.18, added the Vaughan module, divided into Plaza and Discover Goods.

The Wangshi module brings together previous rankings, anchors’ product reviews and some new user gameplay to form a combination that fully meets users’ entertainment needs on Diantao.

At the same time, the square uses the method of points + 0.01 yuan to attract users to participate. The author believes that there are three considerations here:

1. The point system is used to redeem goods in the hope that users will complete more tasks in the Yuanbao Center and enhance user stickiness.
2. After accumulating enough points, you must pay a small amount of 0.01 yuan to redeem the goods. This should be to cultivate the user's payment habit. After all, users who have payment behavior are generally easier to convert than non-consumer users (when Yuanfudao was trying to seize the preschool children's market, it also adopted the 9.9 yuan purchase trial class, which was to cultivate parents' habit of paying for online education). Of course, it is also possible that they hope to penetrate the lower-tier markets. 0.01 yuan can allow users to bind their payment methods with the least psychological burden, thus attracting WeChat payment users.
3. The goods involved in the exchange are all small-value items (such as hair accessories, canvas bags, etc.), which can help some merchants with publicity, attract traffic and then monetize through other products.

Different from the previous short video module on the homepage, Discover Good Things is also a short video, but it is oriented towards bringing goods to customers, and there will be product links under each video.

Such videos sharing good things have already existed on Douyin before, but the number was not large overall. DianTao made them into vertical categories, which is more in line with its own user consumption attributes and positioning.

9. Conclusion

DianTao's iterative thinking revolves around three aspects:

1. Improve user retention and online time, increase the priority of the follow page, and enhance the stickiness between fans and anchors; add Kill-Time function or Yuanbao Center to increase the average UV per game;
2. Maximize traffic utilization efficiency and add a discovery module. The best-selling list is to make full use of products to reach users and overcome the timeliness limitation of live broadcasts. The anchor's good things say that they are content aggregation to improve LTV.
3. Live broadcast conversion rate, add various promotional activities in the live broadcast room, constantly try new ways of playing, increase live broadcast conversion, and increase average order value.

8. Experience Results

DianTao provides a platform where merchants can sell goods through live broadcasts by anchors, which promotes transaction conversions, improves merchants' inventory turnover efficiency, and increases brand awareness. Anchors can earn slot fees and commissions, the platform can get a commission, and consumers can more easily understand products and make consumption decisions.

The main source of traffic for DianTao is Taobao apps. However, as traffic costs become increasingly higher, DianTao must improve the internal traffic efficiency and user retention of traffic and try to increase the value of retained users. Therefore, the platform has added features such as making money by walking and Yuanbao Center to attract people in the sinking market.

The upgrade of Taobao live broadcast to Diantao marks the contentization of Diantao's e-commerce, aiming to get rid of the disadvantages of the narrow channel for Diantao's traffic acquisition, leave old users through content, and attract new users. At the same time, Diantao is also trying to use short videos to implant products to promote immersive conversion of users and cooperate with live e-commerce to form a combination of content + e-commerce.

Author: WIPO

Source: WIPO