Analysis of Taobao and Douyin’s live e-commerce competitors

This article focuses on Douyin e-commerce, analyzes it from the perspective of product positioning and logic, and makes a comprehensive comparison from multiple angles with Taobao's live broadcast functions and operational strategies. I hope to explain to everyone the advantages and disadvantages of Taobao and Douyin live broadcast e-commerce, as well as future opportunities and threats, and see how to avoid risks.

Project Background

Due to the impact of the epidemic, offline shopping channels were almost completely closed. However, after logistics resumed, online e-commerce gained another unique development opportunity following SARS. Taobao launched Taobao Live in March 2016. Live streaming e-commerce exploded in 2019, marking the first year of live streaming e-commerce. Douyin became completely popular with the emergence of Li Jiaqi in 2019, and announced its entry into the battlefield in 2020 by signing Luo Yonghao.

This article focuses on Douyin e-commerce, analyzes it from the perspective of product positioning and logic, and makes a comprehensive comparison with Taobao Live's functions and operational strategies from multiple angles, hoping to achieve the following goals.

• Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Douyin e-commerce, as well as the opportunities and threats it will face in future development
• Analyze the advantages of Taobao Live and discuss how to integrate them into your own products for reference and innovation
• Analyze the current shortcomings and disadvantages of Taobao Live and learn from them, and how to avoid risks

Product Positioning

1. Tik Tok Live

Target users: In terms of the user portrait and characteristics of the Douyin platform, 60% of Douyin users have a bachelor's degree or above, mainly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, 90% are under 35 years old, and the gender ratio is 4:6, with women in the majority. Since the beginning of 2020, new "Internet celebrities" represented by Luo Yonghao have sold products covering all aspects of food, clothing, housing and transportation, marking the expansion of target users and the beginning of the live streaming e-commerce market, which gives Douyin an absolute advantage in Taobao Live.

Buyer user demand: Shopping on Douyin is currently an additional feature. Because most users base their purchases on the credibility of the anchor who sells the goods. Rather than based on the subjective needs of users.

The shopping process is as follows: Generally speaking, users' shopping needs are generated passively.

Seller user needs: accurate delivery of live broadcasts (to obtain users with potential needs), convenient product management, store reputation mechanism, sound background management, etc.

2. Taobao Live

User goal: The creation of Taobao Live is based on the entire Taobao Mall. Therefore, Taobao users have the potential to become Taobao Live users with proper guidance.

Buyer user needs: The biggest difference between Taobao Live and Douyin e-commerce is that users themselves have shopping needs, which may be a vague product category or a specific product. Therefore, when users use Taobao Live, they want to know more specifically and specifically about a certain product.

Users' needs are highly targeted introductions and two-way communication. Overall, users' shopping needs are generated proactively.

Seller user needs: Taobao's entire e-commerce backend is a strong support for sellers' needs. It is sufficient for Taobao Live itself to be able to push content reasonably and ensure stable live broadcast quality.

Logical Level

1. Entrance comparison

The live broadcast entrance of Douyin is located in the upper right corner of the recommendation and follow-up interface, and appears as a prominent key entrance. Or you can enter the live broadcast room by clicking on the avatar when browsing the users you follow.

There are two entrances to Taobao Live. One is to select Live in Weitao, and the other is to enter the store and there will be a floating window entrance to the live broadcast room for specific products. In comparison, Douyin puts live broadcast at a more important level.

2. Comparison of live streaming interfaces

The overall layout of the live broadcast rooms is similar for both. From top to bottom, there are live broadcast room information, barrage comment area, input box, and the most important button for the current recommended product list.

Douyin mainly provides four buttons on the main interface: product list, gift list, more options, and close the live broadcast room.

Taobao mainly provides four buttons on the main interface: product list, more options, share, and like.

The two main functions of Douyin’s live broadcast room are: interacting with the host (barrage, rewards) and purchasing products. The two buttons of product list and gift list can be determined according to their functions. The functions of clearing the screen and sharing the live broadcast room are hidden in the secondary menu and can be accessed through the more options button. The first position of the button for closing the live broadcast room provided by TikTok does not conform to usage habits - whether it is the close button in the upper right corner represented by Windows or the close button in the upper left corner represented by macOS.

Secondly, the frequency of use of this button will not be too high (based on the age distribution of the audience in Douyin’s live broadcast room, most people have already developed the habit of swiping right to return). At a time when the influence of Douyin live streaming is relatively small and is seeking a breakthrough, it is obviously unwise to still put the sharing button in the secondary menu. Based on the above analysis, placing a close button in the lower right corner of the main interface is an uneconomical design.

Both use obvious buttons to enter the product list. One thing to note here is the relationship between the current product thumbnail shown in the red box and the product list button. We can clearly see that the background color of the Douyin reward gift icon is consistent with the background color of the product thumbnail bubble, creating an illusion that the bubbles are generated from this icon, thus leading users to make wrong operations. On the contrary, the product thumbnail bubbles on Taobao Live clearly indicate the source of the bubbles, guiding users to perform correct operations.

In addition, it can be found that the product thumbnail bubble of Taobao Live contains an Add to Cart button, which makes it convenient and quick to add to the shopping cart and increases the probability of user purchase.

Improvement suggestions:

1. Delete the button to close the live broadcast room or put it in the secondary menu.
2. A sharing button is provided on the main interface of the live broadcast room and is prompted in bright colors.
3. The four buttons in the lower right corner are the gift reward button, product list button, more button, and live broadcast room share button.

3. Product List Page Comparison

One of the highlights of Taobao Live is the explanation replay function, which ensures that the content explained by the host can be effectively reused. Tik Tok can consider adding this feature, especially in the rooms of big anchors, when the anchors cannot take care of every user, users can have an option to view it by themselves.

The life cycle of a live broadcast is limited. If its process can be linked to the corresponding product through technical means, the efficiency and life cycle of the live broadcast can be improved to varying degrees. In addition, the cut short videos are a supplement to the entire online shopping process and the short video content of Douyin itself.

4. Product details page comparison

Taobao’s completion rate on product pages is significantly higher than that of Douyin.

1. Douyin lacks the store product search function. (TikTok itself provides very few entrances to stores)
2. The product cover video display is missing. (Non-essential function)
3. There is no obvious entrance to the merchant store on the product interface.
4. Unable to view store ratings.
5. The customer service function is imperfect, and calling it a consultation feels like an attempt to shirk responsibility.
6. It provides the "I want to show off" feature. However, based on the lesson learned from the severe shortage of high-quality reviews on Taobao, I feel that the idea of ​​using videos to show product reviews is not very feasible.

From the core product interface. Douyin e-commerce has the shadow of various e-commerce apps and has a relatively high degree of usability, but it is far behind the old e-commerce platforms in terms of details and the entire e-commerce shopping process.

Highlights: After entering the product page, the top bar of the system is hidden, just like during live broadcast, giving users a concise and clear visual experience, which is a plus for Douyin.

Douyin has a confusing business logic here - when a user wants to browse all the products in the anchor's store from the live broadcast room, the operation is as follows:

Click on the anchor's avatar - click on the homepage - click on the anchor's store - click on the product - click on the details. It takes a total of five clicks to reach the product details page.

It should be noted here that there is no floating window of the live broadcast room when entering this interface, which means that you cannot turn off the live broadcast on this page, and the audio of the live broadcast room will continue to play when you are browsing the product details. (You can’t turn off the sound using the iPhone’s control center.) At this time, if you want to turn off the sound in the host’s live broadcast room, you need to return to the live broadcast room page four times and then exit the live broadcast room. Then a paradox arises - how do you enter the product details page again after exiting the live broadcast room?

Assuming that the user does not want to turn off the sound, then when he wants to browse a different product, he needs to go back twice before returning to the showcase page.

Improvement suggestions:

1. In the live broadcast room, click on the host’s avatar and a product showcase button will pop up. Click it to enter directly.
2. Delete the transition page between the showcase and the product details page, and place the "I want to show it off" button directly in the lower right corner of each product thumbnail in the showcase.
3. When entering the product showcase page for the first time, a live broadcast room floating window will pop up automatically, and a close button will be provided (the live broadcast information will be stopped after closing). After closing, a button to restore the live broadcast room floating window will be provided on the showcase page. If the user returns to the showcase page from the details page, it will no longer pop up.

5. Unpaid order interface comparison

When an order is generated but not paid, Douyin's order management function is hidden too deeply. You need to click Me - Settings icon in the upper right corner - More settings - Orders, which takes four clicks to access, compared to Taobao which only requires two operations.

A similar problem is the shopping cart function, the icon is still hidden too deep.

In addition, after deleting an order, you need to manually pull down to refresh the list to update it, and the update will fail from time to time, and the deleted order will still exist.

The left picture shows the message that will be prompted when deleting an order that has been deleted, and the right picture shows the page after pulling down to refresh according to the prompt message.

6. Slide left to compare the live broadcast room pages

Douyin Live and Taobao e-commerce adopt different logics on the left-swiping page of the live broadcast room. One is to recommend more anchors, and the other is to recommend more products of the current anchor and the intimacy information between the user and the live broadcast room.

This also reflects two fundamentally different shopping models - live streaming sales led by Douyin and traditional e-commerce represented by Taobao Live.

For Douyin, at the current stage, the quality and appeal of the anchor are far more important than the product itself, and e-commerce is just one way for the anchor to monetize his influence. If this path doesn't work, the anchor can choose other ways to monetize, so the quality of the anchor is the core of Douyin's e-commerce. Taobao's anchors are more like a foil for the products, while product quality and price are the core of competition among stores.

7. More options

In terms of more options, Douyin provides the function of sharing the live broadcast room and the unique popular function. Douyin puts the clear screen in this secondary menu.

Taobao Live provides an interesting option here: live broadcast. The starting point of this function is to imitate the one-on-one explanation of the waiter during offline shopping. You can also see this function on TV shopping - call the hotline for consultation. However, I think Taobao has not thought this function through. In a live broadcast room with a small number of people, such one-on-one consultation is fine, but if it is a live broadcast room with tens of thousands of users, the efficiency of using this method would be too low.

The difference in the thinking of the two e-commerce companies can be reflected again through the method of clearing the screen. Gifts and rewards are part of the income of Douyin's live broadcast room, and it is also a very core part. While the clearing screen function improves the experience of normal users, it also reduces the user's impulse to interact with the anchor and reward him, which is not conducive to the platform and the anchor himself. What Taobao considers is how users can clearly feel the characteristics of the products, so the clear screen function is a practical function that can be achieved by clicking the screen.

8. Share live broadcast room

In comparison, the password link shared by Taobao has a larger area, is more convenient for users to select and copy all, has emoticons to guide users, cash sharing activities and 100% winning prompts, making it easier for users to download and share.

Summarize

Taobao is a representative of a company that has moved from e-commerce operation to e-commerce content operation, while Douyin is gradually developing from content operation to content e-commerce operation. Ultimately, it is about exploring how to achieve commercial value while providing excellent customer value and creating products that can bring value to society.

This means that if Douyin wants to truly make breakthroughs and achievements in e-commerce, it must break away from the operating model of relying on internet celebrities to bring goods. Internet celebrities or people who bring goods are just the tip of the iceberg in the entire live streaming e-commerce. Good products, favorable prices, scientific supply chain management and control, bargaining power, etc. are the foundation of excellent e-commerce.

Learning from history, we can find that live e-commerce can be regarded as the PLUS version of early TV shopping - it provides two-way communication modes such as barrage and live broadcast. The failure of TV shopping ultimately comes down to the mismatch between price and product quality, and the failure to form a truly effective positive feedback mechanism. These are very worthy of reference for Douyin.

In general, it is necessary to form a virtuous interaction between high-quality anchors and high-quality products, transforming the anchor's advantages into high-quality products and good reputation advantages, thereby transforming the e-commerce function from a dependent relationship to an independent function, and then to the mutual support between the two, realizing the transition from short-term monetization to long-term operation. This is the only way for Douyin e-commerce to achieve sustainable development.

Through the above analysis, the idea of ​​Douyin's e-commerce at this stage is still centered on the anchor, using the anchor's influence to drive user consumption. From the analysis of the entire shopping process, it can be seen that Douyin's e-commerce has a high degree of availability in terms of function, but there are deficiencies and omissions in each link. The key points are:

1. The concept of the store is not obvious. Everything revolves around a single commodity. The lack of store entrance and ratings is not conducive to users transferring their trust in the anchor to trust in the product. This kind of fixed anchor and changing product mechanism does not make it easy for users to build trust in the product.
2. The UI interaction logic is relatively confusing . Incorrect icon positions and color schemes produce incorrect guidance, and the hiding of shopping carts and order management interfaces is not conducive to users' normal management of orders. In addition, there is no pause method for live broadcasts on Douyin and Taobao. In addition, Douyin will continue to play the sound of the live broadcast room in the background. I don’t know if this is a bug or a feature.
3. Lack of more accurate product introduction services . We can learn from Taobao Live and add a function to replay explanations, so that users can accurately watch the explanation of a specific product. In addition, we can draw on the idea of ​​the connection function to create a more accurate customer service.
4. Scoring mechanism . Douyin has a base of users with higher quality than other e-commerce platforms. Correctly guiding users to generate high-quality ratings is an effective means for Douyin e-commerce to surpass other e-commerce platforms, because high-quality ratings bring high-quality products, and conversely, high-quality products can also strengthen the ratings themselves. This positive cycle is an important foundation for Douyin e-commerce to establish a good reputation.

From these performance or structural issues, we can see that as a latecomer in live streaming e-commerce, Douyin completely follows the ideas of traditional e-commerce in the entire e-commerce interface, and has basically reached the stage of "I have what others have". However, I have the following suggestions on how to achieve overtaking at the scope and strategy level and how to avoid the traps of live streaming sales:

1. Create a separate e-commerce brand. By establishing itself as an independent brand, not only can it still obtain the traffic dividend belonging to Douyin, but on the other hand, it can also strengthen its own e-commerce attributes. By walking on two legs of live streaming e-commerce and traditional e-commerce, it can go further and have a higher ability to resist risks.
2. Strengthen product differentiation. This difference can be manifested in: product quality, excellent after-sales service, special or co-branded products, and sufficiently eye-catching prices. Carrying goods itself is just a means of adding icing on the cake and a short-lived success. Sufficiently significant characteristics and the excellent reputation brought about by the characteristics are the path to sustainable development. High-quality domestic products + brand collaboration can be the path for future development.
3. Help agricultural development. Follow the trend of the times and create a sales platform for standardized and high-quality agricultural products.

Author: Crosstalk Queen Yu Qian

Source: Crosstalk Queen Yu Qian