Former Alibaba employees have figured out some tricks of Alibaba’s operations!

“When you are most uncomfortable is when you grow”, yeah!

I wrote this article after more than a week of decadence, oh no, a period of reorganization. Despite the help of people from all walks of life, I was still confused about the future. I began to deny myself and question what I had learned from working so hard in a startup company for more than half a year? I am such a pretentious person, so of course the foreplay is very long. Since my friends often dislike my pretentiousness, I specially wrote a preface to explain the background of the story, and I will not elaborate on it here.

Does this article count as useful information ? I don’t know. People standing at different heights see different views. I have only summarized some experiences and lessons at my level and come up with some of my own methodologies. Truth develops in a spiral. Perhaps after a while I will find myself quite naive. But at least I will look forward to who I was then, and be grateful for who I am now. (That’s how I am good at making sense, hehe)

1. What is operation ?

Since I am writing about operational strategies, I should first define them, but I really don’t know. Is “operation” a verb or a noun? Is it a position or a job function? I think everyone describes "operations" differently. Some people will use data indicators to tell you about the business requirements of operations, some say operations are retail, and some will try to distinguish between operations, marketing , and planning. I think this is all one-sided. What I agree with is that operation is management, but this is also a very big word, and management is something that you have to do slowly with your heart and brain. However, there are similar parts in everyone's perception: operations are too big, operations are too detailed, operations can do everything, but operations can do nothing. What does an operation do? It includes coming up with creative ideas, writing copy , selecting products, filling out pages, promoting, tracking progress, and looking at data. If there are not enough designer resources, you have to do it yourself, and if there are not enough front-end resources, you have to cut the pages yourself. But according to the principle of letting professionals do professional things, the operations department can do nothing but raise demands, raise demands, and raise demands.

Therefore, operations are the people who have the most direct contact with and control over the business. If you do well in operations, you can even become the CEO. If you do not do well in operations, you will be just a screw and will be the first to be kicked out. Why does Alibaba operate so well? Alibaba’s core business is e-commerce , and e-commerce relies on operations and research with heart and brain.

So what kind of people are suitable for operations? At my level, I don’t know yet. But I think there are several qualities that are essential to doing a good job in operations (provided that you do it well), such as being meticulous, patient, thoughtful, and having strong subjective initiative. Just imagine, the triviality of operations is the reason why I often go crazy and don’t want to do operations.

2. What have I learned from operations?

1. What I have done

Everyone says that Alibaba's operations department is awesome. I once joked with my colleagues: "What's the big deal about working in Alibaba's operations department? I work in operations at Alibaba's startup company!"

At that time, I was simply arrogant and brainwashed by my boss. I felt that I didn't want to be a cog in a big company and that I could learn, do and know more in a startup company. Because I am in the user operation department, I have not been exposed to much BD, merchant operation or category operation work. If I don’t understand, I have no right to speak, so let me just talk about what I have done.

I am proud to say that I have taken the lead in several projects, and experienced the entire process from scratch to optimization. I am not solely responsible for one section, nor do repetitive work day after day. Instead, I am responsible for the entire channel, from investment promotion, product selection, content, promotion, follow-up of product functions and project progress to data analysis and continuous optimization. I have full initiative.

In a nutshell, I was responsible for planning daily waistband activities at the beginning, and later took over three independent channels in turn, namely quality-oriented content, active new user-oriented, and retention-oriented. In the end, I was responsible for scene content planning.

2. My specific job content

Our supervisor often jokes that we are the brains of the entire business department. Only when we have figured out what to do, how to do it, and formed a plan, can we accurately convey the needs to specific departments, and only then can everyone work together and the project start.

Take an activity as an example, and briefly describe the process:

Step 1: The boss will first determine the KPI with you, including but not limited to the average or peak number of orders per day, average order value, ROI, retention, etc.

Step 2: The first thing to do after getting the KPI is to plan the plan and think about the copy

Step 3: If there are new pages and product requirements, draw a demo logic to associate the product with design and development resources

Step 4: Simultaneously set the rules and goals for investment promotion and share them with colleagues in the industry

Step 5: Usually the owner of the activity also serves as the project manager. The next step is to follow up on the progress, review the quality, and provide feedback until the final acceptance is completed.

Step 6: After the activity is launched, you need to pay real-time attention to various data indicators, including traffic, conversion, and sales, and optimize the corresponding links, such as copywriting, image optimization, product sorting adjustment, and red envelope distribution monitoring.

Step 7: After the event, ensure that normal operations are restored. The next step is to conduct a review and analysis based on the data, identify the advantages and disadvantages, and share the experience for the next event.

For a fixed channel, it is more inclined to product operation . In addition to carrying out work similar to activities at a steady pace, what is more important is daily data analysis . Problems are analyzed from the changes in various indicators, optimization plans are derived, and planned optimization and improvements such as the second and third versions are carried out.

In summary, my work includes the following:

A. Content output:

As a copywriter, you have to be able to be an artistic youth and a funny guy, you have to be able to do a grand promotional style, and occasionally write dirty jokes. Content can be roughly divided into four types:

First, the marketing-oriented banners, push notifications, and SMS copywriting focus on attracting users to click;

The second is the shopping guide copy that is more recommendation-oriented, which deeply explores the characteristics of products or service providers, and improves conversion through content packaging and promotion;

The third is rule-explaining content. The rules of the activity, relevant standards, and product function descriptions need to be simple and direct for users to understand;

Fourth, there are scene-related soft articles, which use stories, jokes, topics, shopping scenes, etc. to arouse user interest and awaken user needs.

B. Resource control:

Activities and channels are all resource positions. Resources are limited, so competition will arise. Resource management requires establishing rules, otherwise someone will ask what the criteria for obtaining resource positions are and why he can get them but I can't. This involves the horizontal division of industries and categories, and the vertical stratification of merchants into the head, middle and tail. To be more specific, it also includes the adjustment and optimization of the order of products on the same page.

C. Data Analysis:

Since I am mainly responsible for independent channels, my work content is more inclined towards product operations and I pay great attention to data analysis. The main indicators I analyze are clicks, conversions, and orders, with an emphasis on the funnel-shaped conversion loss at each level, analyzing the causes and making further optimizations in operational methods and product functions. It also includes weekly and monthly reports to analyze trend changes over an entire period.

Data analysis is really important. From which angles should we analyze? What indicators are needed? How to compare and analyze different indicators horizontally and vertically? What do the changes in data represent? What are the reasons behind them? What improvement measures can be taken? From knowing nothing at all to gradually developing a set of thinking methods, I think data analysis is one of the biggest gains I have made since I started working in operations. Data is an objective standard for evaluating results and an important means to assist scientific decision-making. Operators who cannot perform data analysis are blind.

D. Communication:

When working in operations, I often feel that I am very busy today but nothing seems to have been accomplished. Most of the time I am arguing, oh no, debating and discussing. As the demand side, you need to communicate with product, design, and development colleagues to ensure that the demand is not distorted and the final effect is achieved. As a resource provider, we need to communicate with industry merchants to clarify rules and standards.

E.Miscellaneous matters:

The reason why operations are trivial is that in addition to arranging the above-mentioned tasks, you also have to review products, make pictures, edit pages, operate the marketing backend manually, and even purchase and ship goods.

These are what operations have to do. The areas I cover are a little broader. If you look at it in detail, it actually includes three positions: content operations, event operations, and product operations. I will summarize the focus of these positions.

3. Core indicators and related relationships

I mentioned the importance of data analysis earlier. In fact, when I first joined the company, I didn’t even know what PV and UV were. But now I understand several core performance indicators related to operations: traffic (PV, UV), conversion, retention, and repurchase.

Look at the not-so-complicated diagram below. After all, I have studied management information systems, so I used a flowchart to sort out the functional relationships between the indicators, influencing factors and corresponding responsible departments. (About the idea, not absolute, and perhaps not correct)

The marketing or channel department is responsible for traffic diversion. The user positioning and diversion methods in the diversion process will affect the quality of the traffic. Introducing higher quality and larger quantities of traffic at a certain cost is the focus of the marketing and channel departments.

After the traffic reaches the client, it involves further distribution and conversion. What are the PV and UV of each entrance? What is the conversion rate ? Conversions are usually divided into browse/click conversions and purchase conversions, usually described by conversion rate or churn rate, with traffic gradually losing in an inverted triangle. The main factors affecting browsing/click conversion include shopping guide path and content. The quality of the shopping guide path involves whether the product process design is reasonable and consistent with the user experience. The content here is a general term, including the click copy and pictures of the entrance, the copy description and picture quality of the details page, which are all things that the corresponding operations need to control.

The next step is purchase conversion. The main influencing factors are the quality of the product itself and the marketing packaging. Purchase conversion is also broken down into order placement and payment steps. Based on the churn rate, check which link needs to be optimized and find out the influencing factors and assign them to operations staff.

There are even more factors that influence user repurchase, including whether the marketing strategy is used properly, whether there are corresponding functional guides on the product, and whether the product itself is impressive enough to make users buy it again.

Another key indicator is retention, which refers to how many new users can stay and become old users, and how long can old users remain active. The quality of the traffic itself, the positioning and design of the entire APP, and the content presented in each step of the operation will all be factors that affect retention. Conversion and purchase situations can also indirectly reflect retention. Only when an APP does a good job of retention can it operate steadily and for a long time.

In summary, once the traffic enters the client, it will be diverted. What we need to look at is the traffic loss at each click entrance and each operation path, including the purchase conversion of users placing orders and making payments. The other two important indicators are repurchase and retention. These two are comprehensive indicators that involve complex and diverse factors, but they are also key indicators to measure the success of operations.

4. Analytical thinking

Efficient operations require organization, stringing together the scattered and trivial tasks into a logical thread, which just helps me organize the logical structure of my thinking.

For example, in a certain event, my KPI is that the order volume of the operating channel reaches X times the previous level. Then the factors affecting the orders are traffic and conversion. The amount of traffic brought in by the event is actually fixed, so on the one hand, what I need to do is to find out in detail what other channels can increase the traffic of the channel, such as self-media platforms , seller communications, etc. The core of other work is to improve conversions, click conversions and purchase conversions. So I thought about what I could do from the perspectives of users, merchants, products, and marketing methods.

First of all, how to get more users into the channel, what functions can be used to guide them, and also based on previous order data, how to plan product categories and quantities, and what marketing methods can be used to provide purchase conversions. Once these strategies are clarified, they are integrated into a set of plans, which of course also involves budget control and cost control. I won’t go into too much detail regarding work, but this is roughly the idea. After the event, I exceeded my KPI. Through data analysis, I summarized the key factors for the event’s success during the review and will continue to use them in the next event. I also discovered existing problems and will improve them next time.

The experience I gained here is that when discovering problems and executing goals, ask more questions like "What?" and "Why?" because the supervisor said that efficient work is 70% thinking and 30% execution. But don’t be too entangled like me, haha.

3. Those real insights

Alibaba-affiliated companies have inherited Alibaba’s culture, and I was fortunate enough to experience it firsthand. There are many classic words in Alibaba’s culture, such as importance, owner awareness, embracing change... and many more that I can’t remember at the moment. Ali’s culture is a wolf-like culture. There are some parts that I could not accept and digest when I first entered the society, but the following are my most real and sincere feelings.

1. Don’t worry, just do it

I am a thinking type of person. I will not hesitate before I have sorted out my thoughts before doing anything. However, in this culture where "speed is everything", I suffer a lot, but I also grow naturally. You should think before doing things, but don't get hung up on the choices. If you really can't figure it out, don't worry about it. Just do it first and try it. Maybe you will get an idea.

2. Stand at a certain height and have a pattern

"You are in charge of product operations. What are you operating? The entire APP. You have to think from the perspective of a CEO." This was a joke my supervisor told me, hahahaha. Although I am a small soldier and do not have a very high position or a broad vision, I have seen a lot and it is indeed true that the higher you stand, the more you think and the more comprehensive you can consider. If you bury your head and only do your own thing, you will often lose your way and not know what is right or wrong. Just like when driving, the instructor says to look at the farthest place.

3. It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what you do

In fact, everyone has a lot of interesting ideas, but they will encounter many difficulties in actually realizing them, or many people simply don’t do it. When I first started working, I thought hand-drawn paintings were particularly beautiful and wanted to do a special topic on them. At the time, people laughed at me for having low taste, so I didn’t do it. Later, one of my classmates did this and the effect was amazing, so it became the largest category. So, if you think of it but don’t do it, it’s not yours!

4. Be bold and tough

Many of my classmates are like me. They have been good girls and good students since childhood. In fact, they have a poor ability to withstand setbacks. However, on the Internet or in the whole society, it is normal to be frustrated and quarrelsome. Here I have argued with developers, confronted product managers, had many discussions with operations managers, and even talked back to my boss. I have a lot of achievements, hahaha! Of course it was useless and I cried many times. I felt the worst after every argument because I always thought too much. Later, I gradually calmed down. It was all for work. It was just because of work, but from a different perspective. So you need to have a big heart, be tough, and speak nicely.

Follow-up

I wrote about 5,000 words for this article, which is a review of myself over the past six months. I didn’t know I could write so much until I finished it. As usual, I still have to say a few pretentious words, hahaha, after all, I'm going for a literary style.

For more than half a year, I had my first formal job. The normal working hours were 996, and I often worked overtime until eleven or twelve o'clock. My colleagues left one by one. God knows how I persisted, but I persisted. But now, I'm gone. Who knows whether it's good or bad? But I can't stop. I am standing at the crossroads again and I have to move forward.

“When you are most uncomfortable is when you grow”, yeah!

This article is original and the views may be a bit shallow. It is purely personal feeling. I also refer to and draw on the ideas of several practical articles of Alibaba predecessors. The person I want to thank most here is my supervisor. Without her tireless teaching, I would not have grown.

Finally, I want to say that I am here to find a job. If you have any good positions, please recommend them to me. Hahahaha…

Author: Qian Linghui (QQ: 1005530854), nickname: Ruolin, a 2016 graduate with a major in e-commerce, has worked as a reporter, a debater, and a project manager, and is a woman who thinks she has a promising future. Through campus recruitment, I joined the User Operations Department of an Alibaba-affiliated startup on Singles’ Day 2015. I officially started in July 2016 and left in August, which took a total of 9 months.