Analysis of JD.com’s flash sales products

Various e-commerce software will have some special sections to recommend some promotional products, such as JD.com's flash sales, Taobao's Juhuasuan, etc.; use countdowns or the number of remaining items to attract users and increase conversion rates; the author of this article has made a detailed analysis of JD.com's category flash sales, let's take a look.

1. Product Background and Objectives

1. Product positioning

JD Flash Sales is one of JD’s vertical marketing channels, with multi-dimensional sales scenarios, such as single product flash sales, category flash sales, and value lists; while category flash sales are a marketing position that combines a single category + multiple categories, with the characteristics of thematic clustering.

Category flash sales provide users with a platform for scenario-based promotions and improved shoppability within the channel; using scenario-based promotions as a starting point, by creating 1+n category multi-dimensional sales scenarios, it increases the user's browsing time and frequency within the channel; it further cultivates users' category awareness, explores content, community and other sharing methods, and achieves user conversion.

2. Product Features

• Aggregate products based on a single category attribute, such as mobile phone category seconds, milk powder category seconds;
• Aggregate products by scene, such as outdoor enthusiasts (sports outdoor shoes and clothing, water and beverages, equipment, etc.);
• Aggregate products by group of people, such as must-haves for hot moms (women's clothing, maternal and child products, etc.).

3. Interface logic

JD’s category flash sales are divided into two sections: “Category Specials” and “Super Value List”; the category drop-down list has about 100 items, and the list has fewer items, with 20-50 items.

Location: JD.com Flash Sale → Category Flash Sale → Product Details Page.

2. Competitive Business Analysis

1. Overall advantages and disadvantages comparison

First of all, as shown in the comprehensive e-commerce ecosystem diagram below, JD.com, as the comprehensive shopping mall with the strongest traffic camp giant, is currently facing e-commerce traffic competition from business rivals such as Taobao, Suning.com, and Pinduoduo.

The following analysis is made with reference to the APP business interfaces of Taobao, Tmall, Suning.com, Pinduoduo, Vipshop, NetEase Yanxuan, No.1 Store, Xiaomi Youpin, and Xiaohongshu.

1) Taobao

• Juhuasuan → Major category tab (only some categories) → Scenario floor (4 basic scenarios/middle categories + 4 lists; about 24 products/each small tab) → Product details page; however, the main interface (each section, interspersed floor) does not have a clear category flash sale channel.
• There are good products → Scene Hall → Content interface → Product details page.

2) Tmall

• Quick Sale: There are only brand special sales, etc., and no category flash sales or similar function columns.
• Juhuasuan (same as Taobao).

3) Suning.com

• Suning flash sale → interspersed floor (office computer special) → special page (20 products in total) → product details page.
• Suning flash sale (home page activity) → mobile phone category venue → product details page.

4) Pinduoduo

• Limited time flash sale → Theme flash sale → Duoduo New Home → Category activity page (6 products/small tab) → Product details page.
• Limited time flash sale → Ten thousand people group → Theme group (about 100 items for ten thousand people office supplies group) → Product details page.
• [Questionable] Limited time flash sale → Interspersed floor (Home Textile Fantasy Day) → Event interface (title shows 'Brand Flash Sale') ×.

5) Vipshop

Vipshop Quick Grab → Annual Category Ranking → Top Goods List → Product Details Page; Facial Mask List, Sunscreen List, Mobile Phone List (the category segmentation is too detailed, each list has about 80 items, highlighting high-quality reviews and user experience sharing).

6) NetEase Yanxuan

Limited time purchase → Special sale/Flash sale → Product details page; Category categories: delicious and nutritious/summer travel (about 100 products in each scene, no tab) – functionality under the usage scenario.

7) Yihaodian

Super single product → Super category (10) → Category flash sale page (about 100 products, the 'sold' progress bar will not be displayed for the latter) → Product details page.

8) Xiaomi Youpin

Xiaomi flash sales: There are brand flash sales, but no categories.

9) Xiaohongshu

Limited time sale: only single item available for flash sale.

Based on this, a two-dimensional model of scene clarity and category span is constructed, as shown in the figure below.

The vertical axis's presence or absence of clear scenarios refers to whether the category modules are classified based on specific scenarios with clear classifications, such as the single scene of "global fine wines" and the aggregate scene of "handsome men's selection", with clear module classifications; at the same time, taking Pinduoduo as an example, high-quality products only display categories around a major theme of a specific time and space.

The horizontal category span refers to the range of focused categories. For example, Vipshop’s quick-grab page focuses on a certain subcategory, such as liquid foundation, and there is no integrated display across major categories; while NetEase’s “Cool Summer” uses function as the standard classification and conducts multi-dimensional promotions of n categories, with a large category span.

In summary, the common advantages and disadvantages of competing products are as follows:

1) Content-based category promotions represented by Taobao Youhaohuo and Vipshop Kuaigou introduce social sharing functions by displaying comments related to usage experience, precisely targeting female users with fashion needs; the main categories promoted are concentrated in beauty and personal care, clothing and underwear, and there are fewer comprehensive scenarios that aggregate N major categories.

Advantages:

• Put comments in front to increase page dwell time and stimulate the desire to understand → convert;
• There are fewer items, so shopping fatigue is less likely to occur.
• The product price is low and moderate, and the purchase decision cost is low.

shortcoming:

• The scenarios are limited and cannot cover multi-dimensional functional requirements.
• The target user coverage is relatively small.

2) Theme category promotions represented by Taobao Juhuasuan and Pinduoduo theme groups build scenarios by establishing specific time and space promotion activities clustered by functions (without exclusive sections, such as summer home), covering scenarios to cater to the growth needs in a specific time and space range.

Advantages:

• The main focus is on selling single products in seconds and making the products active, which can attract a large amount of traffic.
• It targets a wide range of users and covers a wide range of product categories.

Disadvantages: A small number of special scenario requirements cannot be clearly recommended to users.

3) Special category promotions represented by Suning.com and Pinduoduo’s 10,000-person group promotions build special promotions around clear functions and sub-category labels, and use group buying, “6 yuan for a mobile phone” and other promotional activities to stimulate conversions.

Advantages:

• There are various ways to play, and users have a sense of gain.
• The decision-making cost is moderate, the main focus is on price war, and there are always super low-priced products in special events to stimulate shopping conversions.

Disadvantages:

• Failed to continuously cultivate users’ category awareness and focused on short-term growth.
• Users are not very loyal to the column (most of them are there to pick up bargains).

4) Aggregate category promotions represented by JD.com’s category flash sales and No.1 store’s super categories, in addition to content social functions, can fully cover functional attributes + scene aggregation + user stratification functions.

Advantages:

• Independent category awareness, simulating the look and feel of a real store.
• As a daily column, improve the visitability of the flash sale channel.

Disadvantages:

• The promotion is not strong, which reduces users' desire to buy.
• The purchase decision cost of the main product categories is high, and there is a lack of gameplay incentives.
• It requires high professionalism in product promotion and is prone to negative feedback (the stage is well built, but the actors are terrible, and users feel cheated).

In summary, JD.com's category flash sales are products with relatively high category awareness and clear scene construction in the field of category flash sales promotions; however, in terms of gameplay design, activity integration, product selection considerations, social communication and other aspects, it has failed to continue to extend and make key breakthroughs, resulting in a useless situation of "tasteless to eat, a pity to throw away".

Sorting out the characteristics of second-tier competitive products in the category based on the user's mind

3. Current Pain Points

Here we can briefly summarize the value of JD.com’s category flash sales to different roles:

• For users: This channel can reduce users’ search costs and create a package of clusters in the form of a list;
• For merchants: Due to the large SKU pool, low-moving products can be exposed, promoting inventory consumption and business cycle; with the help of BI, the target users can be accurately delivered to improve the conversion rate;
• For the platform: Also because of the large sku pool, it has a greater driving force for the growth of traffic and total sales; marketing on the activity page also helps to continuously enhance the competitiveness of the category.

However, the above ideal value positioning has certain problems in actual scenarios. Here are two major aspects:

1) Failure to fully address user pain points:

Distorted comparative information: such as unclear interest points, inaccurate parameter descriptions, etc.; at the same time, there are problems with the isolation of product categories, such as small tabs for the same special event, repeated categories, secondary tabs that are irrelevant to the theme, and consecutive appearance of different skus for the same spu, etc.

Taking 3C products as an example, the hardware configuration information of the products is not detailed and accurate enough.

• The computer has a 2070 and a 2070maxq graphics card that cannot be distinguished;
• The whole machine area is recommended, but the whole machine has long been a pitfall, and people who know the business will not recommend people around them to buy it;
• The hardware parameters are not clear enough, such as the number of CPU cores and threads, the number of memory channels and frequencies, the screen color gamut, etc.

The above important nodes are likely to cause target users to feel distrust and lose their desire to stay.

High decision-making cost: The unit prices of the three electrical product categories with higher sales are generally high; users cannot quickly locate the price range.

Another reason why users browse but do not buy is that the discounts are not big, and the main categories themselves are non-fast-moving consumer goods and have high original prices. (Refer to competitor Suning.com, which uses promotional offers and other activities to attract traffic.) At the same time, whether users browse long enough and how often they browse requires data support to explore their motivations.

2) Failure to meet user needs

• Visual high consistency (sliding list), fatigue;
• Lacking internal and external linkages and other diversion outlets, users have “nowhere to go”.

Lack of social attributes: Some users with professional knowledge and sufficient resources have a strong desire to compare parameters, evaluate, and share comments; however, the current tags for category flash sales are unprofessional and there is a lack of sharing channels, which greatly reduces the playability and the possibility of word-of-mouth spread.

4. Optimization plan

The realization of user value is not simply achieved through the interaction between "people and goods" and order conversion, but consumers have realized the transformation from "giving you what you want" to "what you should buy" from the products on the e-commerce platform, forming an interaction between "people-goods-scene".

First, the platform products push personalized content based on personalized attributes and BI sorting mechanisms, and guide the corresponding target users into consumption scenarios (category scenarios) with concentrated traffic and group values; conversion is achieved through the actual experience of the atmosphere and the cost-effectiveness of the products.

Author: Lieutenant Pork Chop

Source: Pork Chop Ensign