Shopping process and analysis of e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall

Due to the differences in platform positioning and user portraits, there are certain differences and changes in the shopping process and interaction design of JD.com, Tmall, and Xiaohongshu, and each platform emphasizes different points.

1. Product Background

1. JD.com

Save more and enjoy quality life.

The essence of JD.com is retail. It builds connections between merchants and users, but does not develop a window for connections between users. It pursues cost, efficiency, and user experience, reduces merchants' operating costs and transaction intermediary fees, and improves the efficiency and experience of buyers and sellers. JD.com is more targeted at users who already have relatively clear shopping needs and have certain requirements for product quality and after-sales service.

JD.com started out as a 3C digital company, focusing on the sales of computers, digital products, communications, and home appliances. It has a wide variety of products and has developed multiple product areas in recent years, not just 3C products.

2. Tmall

Leading a better life trend, ideal life goes to Tmall; Tmall is a comprehensive shopping website and a newly created B2C commercial retail platform of Taobao. It integrates thousands of brands and manufacturers to provide a one-stop solution between merchants and consumers.

Complementing the "all-powerful Taobao" which covers almost all product categories, Tmall mainly gathers brand flagship stores and sellers with good credit.

3. Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu started out as a community. In the beginning, users focused on sharing their overseas shopping experiences in the community. Later, in addition to beauty and personal care, Xiaohongshu began sharing information about sports, tourism, home, travel, hotels, and restaurants, touching on all aspects of consumer experience and lifestyle.

Xiaohongshu has changed the form of manually operated content into machine distribution. Through big data and artificial intelligence, it accurately matches the content in the community to users who are interested in it, thereby improving the user experience.

The uniqueness of Xiaohongshu e-commerce lies in:

• Word-of-mouth marketing: There is no better way to increase conversion rate than word-of-mouth from real users, just like users will definitely read user reviews before buying something on Taobao; Xiaohongshu has a community where real users share word-of-mouth, and the entire community is a huge user word-of-mouth database.
• Product selection based on structured data: Xiaohongshu has accumulated a large amount of consumer word-of-mouth in the community, just like tens of millions of users discovering and sharing good things from all over the world on this platform.

In addition, users' browsing, liking and collecting behaviors will generate a large amount of underlying data; through this data, Xiaohongshu can accurately analyze user needs and ensure that the purchased products are highly recommended by users.

2. User Profile

I believe everyone is familiar with the term user portrait. When designing a product, we should not only design it around user scenarios, but user portrait is also an important factor that needs to be considered.

There is a group of user portraits that have been hotly discussed in recent years, called "Daming, Benben and Xiaoxian".

• Daming: It refers to a very rational group of people who use products with a very clear purpose and leave immediately after use.
• Benben: refers to a group of users who have needs but whose needs are not very clear, and they are easy to accept guidance.
• Xiao Xian: This group of people don’t have specific needs. They just have free time and like to wander around.

1. JD.com serves "Da Ming" users

JD.com started out as a 3C digital product company, and 3C products are generally not cheap, so users who buy 3C products online generally have relatively clear goals and orientations. For example, if I want to buy an iPhone, then when I go to JD.com, I will definitely search for Apple phones, not anything else, and the search results are also very clear.

2. Tmall serves “stupid” users

When girls shop on Tmall and Taobao, it’s just like when boys play games. Users want to buy things, but often they haven’t decided what to buy. Often they enter a store wanting to buy a hat, but end up buying a pair of shoes.

They do want to buy something, but many times they end up buying something they hadn’t thought about in the first place, which results in them buying a lot of products that they hadn’t thought of when they opened the app before.

3. Xiaohongshu serves “short-term” users

When users browse Xiaohongshu, they often don’t have any idea of ​​buying anything in advance, but they are inspired by the content posted by bloggers and are motivated to buy things or brands that they had never thought of buying before.

3. Purchase Path

1. Main details page

After entering the default page of the app, JD.com and Tmall are very similar, divided into search, navigation bar, marketing activities, and recommended products. Xiaohongshu is a community, and you will enter the shopping page only after clicking on the mall page; the shopping page is also mainly based on search, navigation bar, marketing activities, and recommended products.

The first level bottom menu entry is different in that:

• JD.com puts more emphasis on categories and discovery pages;
• Tmall places more emphasis on reviews and membership stores;
• Xiaohongshu emphasizes on promoting content through [Good Things] and guiding users to post content.

2. Shopping Path

After reviewing the shopping processes of JD.com, Tmall, and Xiaohongshu, we found that the three platforms are similar in shopping processes, but there are certain differences in the content displayed in each link.

Jingdong's detailed order is:

PLUS members save*** yuan - promotions - product parameters - address - reviews - store information - recommendations for you - detailed product parameter introduction - product details page - service list - good products in the same store - recommendations: look again and again - add to shopping cart - automatically select the products just added to the shopping cart - checkout - jump to display the lottery, and also display recent activities and recommended products.

The detailed order of Tmall is:

Product 1: Huabei Installment——Product Review——Product Details——Collection/Add to Cart/Buy Now.

Product 2: Juhuasuan - Discount information - Product evaluation - Ask everyone - Recommend for you - Store information - Store event information - Store product recommendations - Product details - Product recommendations: You may also like (there are other store products in the recommendations) - Favorite/Add to cart/Buy now - Checkout - The checkout page displays recent activities and recommended products.

The detailed order of Xiaohongshu is:

Promotion information - Store - Guess what you'd like to see: Other product recommendations - What the little red potatoes say - Reviews - Picture and text details - Related product recommendations (there are products from other stores in the recommendations) - Add to cart/purchase price after coupon - Checkout - The checkout page displays recent activities and recommended products.

Judging from the path and design, JD.com prefers to let users confirm that this is the product they want, add the product to the shopping cart or purchase it directly; Tmall and Xiaohongshu prefer users to browse products and choose freely.

Tmall places more emphasis on communication between sellers and buyers. After an order is completed, Wangwang automatically pops up order information, address information and other information sent by the merchant to the user. JD.com, on the contrary, sets the message interface to be more hidden, weakening the connection between sellers and buyers. After JD payment is completed, WeChat will be automatically linked to send order information notifications and delivery information reminders, making communication on logistics and other information more real-time.

4. Key psychological and behavioral factors

Color psychology: On the purchase page, the Add to Cart, Buy Now, and Flash Sale buttons are designed in red or yellow. The eye-catching colors encourage users to click and place orders.

Fear/scarcity psychology: Marketing activities, coupons, and countdown reminders stimulate users’ fear; at the same time, they create an impression of scarcity, telling users that it will be too late if they don’t place an order.

Peer pressure: refers to people who are similar in basic conditions and identities, and their behavioral decisions will have a great impact on our behavior; this psychological influence on us can be seen everywhere in life; put the user's reputation and evaluation at the front to see what others say, and the positive reviews will encourage users to place orders.

The feeling of getting a good deal: Activities such as member savings, discounts, and coupons make users feel that they are getting a good deal.

The above are some of my personal thoughts. Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions if there are any deficiencies.

Author: Zhou Zhou Xuejie

Source: Zhou Zhou Xuejie