Why does Taobao require us to play games?

After ten years of exploration, the growth of Tmall’s Double Eleven event has gradually slowed down, and it is a fact that the incremental space is getting smaller and smaller.

Taobao started to lead the public to build buildings for the first time since Double Eleven in 2019, leading the building craze. The activity creativity seemed innovative in the environment at that time. Building buildings on Double Eleven frequently became a hot topic, and the public building PK was unstoppable.

It is suspected that it has brought the platform's daily active data and sales to a new level. In 2019, Tmall's Double 11 sales for the whole day were 2684, a year-on-year increase of 59% compared with the transaction volume of 168.2 billion on Tmall Double 11 in 2018. In 2020, Tmall's Double 11 sales for the whole day increased by 38% (372.3 billion).

Please note that what we are looking at here is Tmall’s sales volume on November 11 alone. The numbers cannot represent Taobao’s strength, but the growth rate does show a trend. The slowdown in growth, deterioration in reputation, and loss of fun in gameplay are the initial signs of hidden problems.

1. Upgrade gameplay link

This year's Double Eleven is more like a nesting doll game. As the timeline is extended, the game also upgrades the gameplay link:

1. Petting cats: The red envelopes available for redemption are from October 21st to November 9th. Choose one of the three interests: dancing cat, singer cat, and rap cat, and start your own happy cat-stroking journey. This is a development game where you can browse Taobao products, shops, and invite friends... accumulate cat coins, and use them to exchange for the clothes and hats your cat needs to upgrade your cat's level.
2. Form a team: The red envelopes to be redeemed are available from October 21st to November 9th. Ask your friends to form a team and you can get a team red envelope, which is different from the personal red envelope for raising cats mentioned above. It should be noted that after the cats form a group, visiting the event page every day within the specified time frame can win extra red envelopes for the entire team.
3. The strongest battle: The red envelopes to be redeemed are available from October 27 to October 31/November 2 to November 9. In the popularity war of cat groups, the fastest way to increase popularity is to attract people, especially new people, who will increase the popularity value more.

From an operational perspective, the ultimate goal of big sales and related activities should be to boost revenue. So what is the return on investment for gaming during Double Eleven? Is gamification necessarily an effective means of increasing user growth and revenue?

From the perspective of the platform, making games may start from the following aspects:

1. The new game scenes increase the possibility of additional contact with users. For example, Taobao Life can get non-sale clothing by signing in continuously, which adds a little extra motivation.
2. Game projects can help achieve social relationship migration, thereby promoting the relationship-building channel and allowing offline relationships to be established online more quickly and effectively. To put it bluntly, it can transfer WeChat connections to Taobao, thereby realizing the possibility of social e-commerce conversion;
3. The basis of traffic distribution of super apps is to cultivate user habits. The new version removes the header and strengthens the exposure of other entrances such as word of mouth, health, and Cainiao. The purpose is to transform into a super app that not only sells goods but also sells more content that integrates consumption scenarios.

Cultivating users' browsing and content consumption habits on Taobao and distributing them appropriately to other platforms is undoubtedly an important goal in the next two years. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate a form of content consumption that makes users addicted (of course, I don’t think addiction necessarily requires games).

In summary, in addition to bringing in some people who increase usage for gaming, the rest are to assist the content community and iterate into a more addictive form. At present, it may be content community and gamification experience. The sections of so many games may just be horse racing mechanisms, running out the user's favorite form and content community combination.

For example, Alipay’s tree-planting game has incubated a special relationship chain of stealing energy and working together to plant trees. The platform may want to replicate this methodology that can drive user growth.

At present, the problem faced by Alipay and Taobao is the same: how to make the natural resources of the platform derive into a more efficient form of user linkage. Taobao has a huge amount of e-commerce content, but its method of linking users is relatively simple and passive (discounts and profit sharing). Alipay has successful community project experience, but as a tool platform, its effect in increasing revenue is mediocre.

So what are the product gamification sections that Taobao is working on? Is it cost-effective in terms of resource investment?

From the above sections, it can be seen that the Taobao Life project is the project with the most branches and the richest gameplay among single projects, and it integrates social and shopping scenarios to a certain extent.

Since I don't know much about Taobao's development investment in this area, I have no way to estimate the manpower investment in the entire project. Although I can't see the investment, I can take a preliminary look at the effect. From the discussion about "Taobao Life" in Baidu Tieba, it seems that the users are generally low-end, and most of them are full-time mothers, post-00s and other casual players.

This shows that gamification is attractive to these idle players, and Taobao Life should have good operational results (otherwise it would not have continued to invest in developing and adding new scenarios). But are the influx of game sections such as FarmVille and Candy Crush necessary?

These games are not innovative in terms of face-changing, costume-changing, and card drawing, and they are also very stiff in demonstrating the value of the product. Instead, they make users feel bored by simply putting together games.

2. How can the game be fun?

1. Gamification is about creating internal triggers

What is product gamification? Gamification refers to the application of game elements and game design techniques to non-game scenarios, using gamification mechanisms to create fun to better achieve goals. In other words, by using games, we empower non-gamified scenarios or products, allowing users to have more fun in the process of using the products and create greater product value.

According to the addiction model theory, there needs to be a "trigger" for users to become addicted. Internal triggers are a subconscious cognition that a product establishes in the user's heart and emotional level, and are the most powerful bond between the product and the user.

Based on the game’s “Octagonal Behavior Incentive Model”, in product design, a variety of means can be used to continuously motivate users to participate in the game (see the next article for details). After users enter the game, whether it is the incentive system, gameplay, or visual design, it can better trigger the user's emotional experience points.

Theoretically, this link is smooth, forming internal triggers through gamification - reducing user churn - increasing conversions - and deeply activating users. When a space is more than just a platform representing the point where many relationship chains occur, the more competitive this space will be in affecting users.

But getting back to the basics, will users who participate in the game and plant trees every day really increase their average order value? Touch has not yet found a way to make users pay without thinking even when they don’t need it. What’s more, shopping mostly depends on the product, and is generally an active buying decision.

2. Reproduce from user experience

The main force of Baba Rural and Alipay Chicken Farming: users in third- and fourth-tier cities who have time to play games to kill time may not have strong purchasing power. Users in first- and second-tier cities are busy creating value to upgrade their life experience, while for users in third- and fourth-tier cities, the Internet is more of a tool to consume emotions and save living costs.

So my argument is that Taobao spent so many resources on Baba Farm, Gold Coin Town, and the Double Eleven building campaign because they had misunderstood users and gave them unnecessary expectations.

You keep trying to seize users' patience and consume their social resources. How long can users support you? In the long run, even if the user's memory is short, it cannot withstand repeated refreshes of cognition.

The reason why Double Eleven is Double Eleven is that the actual discounts are what users care about most. The main purpose of e-commerce platforms should undoubtedly be to focus on how to improve consumer experience and consumption efficiency. Pinduoduo's rise is due to the discovery of Taobao's arrogance. The steady and cautious efforts of Dewu and JD.com are deconstructing the mental labels of "trend" and "official quality" among online shoppers.

Currently, Taobao's content e-commerce moat only includes Category C women's clothing and niche brand segmentation channels. From the perspective of innovative market projects, Princess and the Pea, which focuses on shopping in Japan, and Haitao No. 1, which focuses on connecting and aggregating overseas e-commerce platforms, have both targeted the niche brand segmentation track to try to divide the deep needs of users.

If a new and novel shopping platform emerges that can attract female target users, leading to large-scale migration and transfer of women's clothing e-commerce sellers, what cards will Taobao have?

3. Exploration of the platform

The purpose of Taobao is to create a unique e-commerce marketing organizational capability. To put it bluntly, it is to make consumers spend as much money as possible through marketing means. Even if you are a young person from a small town with a monthly online shopping budget of only 200 yuan, you will be addicted to Baba Orchard and come to pick some fruits every month. Then what? Will he find that there are also PDD’s daily necessities for 9.9 with free shipping?

For those who are keen on e-commerce consumption on this day, the habit has gradually been formed. Even if there is no activity stimulation, these users will pay attention to the Double Eleven event. Therefore, Tmall does not need to spend too much cost on these users.

The purpose of using gamification strategy is to attract more consumers with growth potential (users who have not been educated by online shopping experience before). At the same time, we should also find ways to develop more competitive advantages in consumer experience in order to widen the gap with other companies.

For example: With the supply speed this year, new brands incubated by Tmall (Santonban, Perfect Diary, Yuanqi Forest, etc.) are continuously providing blood transfusions to sales.

To sum up, it’s not that the operation team has not seen the drawbacks of the Double Eleven game and Baba Farm and other projects, but this is a combined plan. Gamification is used to cultivate user attention and maximize the value of each UV to allow them to browse more content (although users may not like it). Only after the community content is successfully developed, users will have the opportunity to be truly touched.

This also returns to the core aspect of gamification. Not only that, Taobao also made these adjustments on Double Eleven.

1) Adjust marketing and advertising strategies

Use advertising channels to reach more people and fully tap into those who were not interested in the Double Eleven event before. Therefore, the principle of delivery is: long duration and great intensity, repeatedly stimulating the user's mind according to the needs of all groups.

This year, the amount of advertising spent on Taobao has increased significantly, leaving only PDD and JD.com behind. Compared to this, JD.com and PDD seem relatively indifferent in their advertising spending.

2) Activities to upgrade social fission

From building buildings to building trains to Star Show Meow, Taobao's core activities have undergone several significant changes.

Building a building is a primary activity of recruiting people and forming a small-scale competition within the terminal. The rule is that machines match two people for PK. The activity is based on the huge traffic of Taobao. The disadvantage is that the game is too krypton gold and does not bring much benefit to consumers. It is a one-time activity.

Building a train has added some tasks to browse on the basis of building a building. It should be that it has learned from the experience of building a building and provided users with some ways to participate in the competition without consumption. However, the essence is still to consume users' time, and the actual amount of money received after sharing the hundreds of billions of red envelopes is relatively small.

The rules of Star Show Cat are more complicated and full of tricks. On the whole, it refers to the cultivation game where you raise a cat and then send it to earn popularity and finally get a red envelope. The direct effect of the whole chain is not as good as not buying it and getting 100% of the profit. Comparing the changes over the past few years, perhaps the internal team believes that upgrading the game duration and path is the way to upgrade the activity.

3) Added new KOL red envelope instructions

This method can improve the efficiency of KOL's delivery. Brands can see the number of red envelopes issued by each person, as well as the number of red envelopes received and purchased, thereby improving external marketing ROI.

3. Consider a few questions

1. Are the benefits brought to users by playing games on shopping platforms worthwhile?

It depends on the user's time value. If he has this time to move bricks, the money he can earn will be more than the cashback he gets. Therefore, if there are retired elderly people at home, they can do the tasks and then sell them, which can be regarded as a risk-free side job (the cost is that looking at the phone for a long time will threaten your health).

2. Is the gamification activity mechanism really a perpetual motion machine for user growth?

A single gamification experience on a shopping platform does not have a very obvious growth effect because users do not have obvious touches in the game. Only by improving the browsing experience in the game, such as improving the accuracy of the task so that the task is not too difficult, can there be a possibility of increasing consumption.

As shown in the picture, the tasks at the Double 12 main venue will change every day, and the tasks will be customized based on the current purchases and searches. Other companies here are not as advanced as before and have not yet taken the step of big data recommendation tasks, but gamification will not be a perpetual motion machine for user growth on e-commerce platforms.

3. If one day users get tired of gamification activities, where will the strategic high ground for user growth be?

For e-commerce platforms, gamification is to combine with content communities to cultivate users' addiction to consuming content and then purchasing items. In the theoretical part of marketing, there is a methodology for quick decision-making. The public often goes directly to the corresponding e-commerce website (in the shopping scenario) to buy high-priced, low-frequency, and high-desire consumer goods.

For low-priced, high-frequency, and low-desire consumer goods, purchasing decisions can often be triggered when content is consumed (in non-shopping scenarios). Therefore, the growth benefits brought by gamification will begin to emerge after the content community is improved, and only then can we see whether the user growth high ground has been taken.

Putting aside the possibility of gamification, the direction that will bring growth to the product in the future should still be technological breakthroughs and the integration of new demands, such as segmenting Taobao's collection lists, allowing users to DIY personalized collection lists, and encouraging users to share lists by analogy with playlists. It can also help establish more segmented labels for products, thereby improving big data recommendations.

This is the first time to analyze user growth strategy. If you have any ideas, please leave a message to discuss~

Author: lcf13kkxx

Source: lcf13kkxx