Where does the traffic for Douyin e-commerce live streaming come from?

"Why is there no traffic to my live broadcast room? How can I direct traffic to the room?"

To solve this problem, we must first know how the traffic in the live broadcast room is composed, and then how to direct traffic into the live broadcast room.

In the past, we usually divided the live broadcast room traffic into five major components: short video traffic, same-city traffic, attention traffic, square traffic and advertising traffic.

It was not until January that Juleliang officially launched the "E-commerce Compass" function, which for the first time split the live broadcast room traffic into 13 major channels, including: short video recommendations, live broadcast recommendations-recommendation feed flow, live broadcast recommendations-recommendation square, live broadcast recommendations-others, live broadcast recommendations-same city feed flow, personal homepage, follow-up tab, search, bidding advertising, dou+ heating, brand advertising-toplive, brand advertising-others.

Among them, the "live broadcast recommendation" camp is the largest, including: live broadcast recommendation—recommended feed flow; live broadcast recommendation—live broadcast square; live broadcast recommendation—same city feed flow; live broadcast recommendation—others.

From the literal meaning, it actually refers to the specific traffic source channels: the recommended feed flow is the default recommendation page; the live broadcast square is on the square page; the same city feed flow is the same city page; others are recommended traffic from other pages, such as topic pages.

There are two ways for users to enter the live broadcast square. One is to directly click the [Live Broadcast] button in the upper left corner of the default recommendation page. The other is to click on any non-advertising FEED live broadcast recommendation content on the default recommendation page, enter the live broadcast room, and swipe up to display more live broadcast rooms. In the live broadcast square, there will also be two display forms, namely single-column recommendation and double-column recommendation. The single-column recommendation is the live broadcast content itself, while the double-column recommendation displays the live broadcast room cover.

Friends who have logged into the E-commerce Compass may have noticed that, without any advertising, "Live Recommendation—Recommendation Feed Flow" and "Live Recommendation—Recommendation Square" are usually the most important components of the live broadcast room traffic; especially in the e-commerce live broadcast room, in the vast majority of e-commerce vertical live broadcast rooms with stable sales, the traffic brought by the recommendation feed flow is much higher than the traffic brought by the live broadcast square.

So, what exactly is the recommended feed flow, and what is the difference between it and the square traffic we often talk about?

First of all, we need to correct a misconception: recommendation feed does not refer to advertising. Many people mistakenly believe that the recommended feed flow is advertising. This is because in the first half of 2020, when Juleliang launched the advertising product [Bidding Advertising—Feed Direct Live Broadcast Room], the advertising effect was infinitely magnified by people in the e-commerce circle; in fact, in addition to obtaining this kind of traffic through delivery means, this form of using the synchronized screen of the live broadcast room as the information flow in the recommendation page is itself the most important natural traffic component of the e-commerce live broadcast room.

On TikTok, the system recommends content based on user interests. However, the content recommendation logic and content ecology are different in different channels.

The default recommendation page is equivalent to a hodgepodge, which aggregates short videos and live broadcasts, entertainment content, commercial content, news and current affairs content, etc. When making recommendations, the system not only considers the user's interest in watching short videos, but also the user's interest in products and live broadcasts.

The Live Streaming Plaza is only a gathering place for live streaming content. In addition to e-commerce live streaming, the Live Streaming Plaza also includes a large number of show and game live streaming. At the same time, when making recommendations, the system will also refer more to the popularity of the live broadcast room, and the popularity of the live broadcast room is usually composed of indicators such as popularity, interaction, rewards, and attention within the live broadcast room. (You can open TikTok and click the live button in the upper left corner of the recommendation page to see if most of the live broadcast rooms are live broadcast rooms for shows or games.)

Imagine that a vertical e-commerce live broadcast room attracts users who watch live shows through high interaction. Will these people become users who buy your products? If the users who come do not make any purchases and the live broadcast room does not generate sales, then will this live broadcast room still be a qualified e-commerce live broadcast room? Will the system continue to increase volume for you?

Don’t think that the above problem is alarmist. In fact, many e-commerce live broadcast rooms have fallen into this trap. The most typical case is the cold start live broadcast room that attracts traffic through red envelopes, Douyin lucky bags, and even gift giving.

These methods are indeed a good way to attract traffic to the live broadcast room, but the users attracted are usually general live broadcast users, and it is difficult to generate real purchasing behavior. Perhaps the viewing data of the live broadcast will be very good; but you will find that precisely because there is no purchase conversion behavior, the traffic in the live broadcast room will become worse and worse, and even eventually "die" from the square traffic.

So, for e-commerce live broadcast rooms, how can they obtain more “recommended feed flow” traffic?

1. Improve the conversion rate in the live broadcast room and increase the life cycle of every user in the live broadcast room

It can be said that the essence of live broadcast room operation is to operate each user based on assessment indicators. If we expand the entire process of a user from seeing the live broadcast room to completing the purchase in the live broadcast room, we will get the following links:

Each link has corresponding assessment indicators:

When a user enters the live broadcast room from the recommendation page, the user is of no value to the live broadcast room until he or she makes an effective stay. As users stay longer and interact more, the value of a single user becomes higher. Different assessment indicators will be included in this process.

• Interaction index: The interaction index reflects the user's interest in the live broadcast content, which in turn affects the popularity of the live broadcast room and the system's recommendations based on the popularity of the live broadcast room. Specifically, it includes: user stay time, fan groups, attention, comments, likes and other behaviors.
• Product indicators: Product indicators reflect the user’s interest in a product, which in turn affects the system’s recommendations based on the product. Product indicators are reflected in: product exposure, product clicks, order generation, and order purchase.
• Order indicator: The order indicator reflects the monetization efficiency of the live broadcast room. The more mature the live broadcast room, the greater the assessment of this indicator. Such as: GMV, UV, GPM (sales per thousand impressions), purchase conversion rate, etc.
• Fans indicator: The fan indicator reflects the fans’ interest in the live broadcast room. The fan indicator is also very important because fans are the group of people who are most likely to see the live broadcast room. Once the fans’ interest in the live broadcast room decreases, it will affect the overall traffic of the live broadcast room. Fan indicators include: percentage of active fans watching the show, fan UV, fan interaction rate, etc.

These indicators are the core of what we need to do to operate in the live broadcast room. Only by operating these indicators well can the live broadcast room achieve positive growth.

For example: Most people who have done Douyin live e-commerce have a vague concept that it is best to set up traffic-generating products and organize some welfare activities in the live broadcast room.

But why do we need to do activities? What kind of activities should be completed to meet the standards? Many business friends don’t quite understand. Therefore, there are problems such as events being held for the sake of events, the hosts not having complete scripts based on the events, and the selection of products for the events being inappropriate. As a result, there is no effect at all, the merchants feel they are losing money, and the hosts can't muster up the enthusiasm. The real value of welfare activities is reflected in the perspective of traffic. Through activities such as flash sales and welfare, the efficiency of obtaining natural referral traffic can be effectively improved. The most fundamental factor in obtaining natural traffic lies in whether the indicators assessed by the system can be effectively improved.

A welfare activity must at least include the following information: rules, prizes, time, and quantity. In the live broadcast room, we need to replace each piece of information with relevant indicators.

• Rules: Comment, Like, Follow, Fan Group
• Prizes: Product exposure, product clicks
• Time: Average user online time
• Quantity: order generation rate, product click rate

Among them, the rules are the interactive indicators we want to improve, the prize explanation is the product indicator we want to improve, and the process of explaining the rules, explaining the prizes and drawing the lottery is to improve the average user online time. If the prizes are attractive and the words are provocative, these indicators will not be difficult to improve. Only when the indicators are improved will the activity be effective, otherwise it will be meaningless.

In addition to activities, the same is true for other links, including every product in the live broadcast room and product-related rhetoric. Traffic-generating products must achieve the purpose of attracting traffic, so it is necessary to strengthen the gameplay and rhetoric related to traffic generation; profitable products will inevitably consume traffic, so a trade-off must be made between traffic and profit.

Second, make short videos. Short videos are the best way to attract traffic to the live broadcast room and leverage more natural recommendation traffic for the live broadcast room.

Moreover, with the launch and popularization of Qianchuan, the importance of short videos has been further enhanced. Friends in the circle may have discovered that there are more and more trailer-type short videos recently, and this is based on this reason. Short videos are a huge challenge that live streaming e-commerce players must overcome.

Summary: Refined operations and short videos within the live broadcast room are the best means for an e-commerce live broadcast room to leverage the “live broadcast recommendation-recommendation feed flow”. The “recommended feed flow” is the main source of traffic for a vertical e-commerce live broadcast room.

In addition to live broadcast recommendation traffic and advertising traffic, the traffic within the live broadcast room is also composed of three channels. They are: follow, search, and same city.

Needless to say, attention is equivalent to fan traffic and is the core competitiveness of all e-commerce live broadcast rooms in the later stage. LTV (fan lifetime value) will become more and more important.

Search is a big bonus in 2021. In addition to the bonus of early search keyword bidding prices, the bonus point of search lies in the impact on the content of the default recommendation page. When a user performs a search in the search tab and returns to the default recommendation page, the system will recommend related videos or live broadcast content based on the user's search keywords.

The last is the same city. Traffic in the same city is more suitable for local merchants or brands with regional distributors. The author once communicated with a clothing brand. In the early stage of its regional live broadcast matrix account, traffic in the same city once accounted for more than 10%, and the purchase conversion rate was far higher than other traffic sources.

Author: Kas Data

Source: caasdata (ID: caasdata6)