BAT is struggling to survive. Who says shopping guides have no vitality?

On May 15, Taobao made a new move. Alimama issued a notice on the adjustment of the promotion rules for rebate-type Taobao customers. The promotion rules mainly target the promotion rules for rebate-type Taobao customers. The rebate shopping guide websites are in a state of panic again. Let's take a look at the rules of Taobao this time.

First, Taobao customers are not allowed to provide users with search services for Taobao platform product links, store links, store names, and shopkeeper Wangwang names through rebate channels.

Second, if the rebate channels involve Alibaba Group-related brands, such as Taobao rebates, Tmall rebates, etc., they must be linked to Alimama’s official promotion channel or activity page (such as Love Taobao), and must not build or promote unofficial pages related to shopping such as Taobao, Tmall, Juhuasuan, etc. (including but not limited to shopping channels, mall channels, etc.) in any form.

At the same time, from June 1, 2014, Juhuasuan will no longer support the promotion of Taobao Affiliates with rebates, and will no longer support the commissions generated from the sales of goods or services that have participated in Juhuasuan promotions and have been opened. In other words, sellers do not need to pay the aforementioned commissions to Taobao Affiliates, and Taobao Affiliates may not require sellers to pay the aforementioned commissions.

At that time, Taobao sellers will not be able to directly promote their Taobao products on other third-party rebate and shopping guide websites. They will have to link to Taobao’s own shopping sharing platform. This will be a fatal mistake.

Taobao and 51 Fanli, rebate websites that were once popular among online shoppers, are having a hard time after the Taobao ban and are actively seeking ways to transform. At the same time, there are endless discussions about Taobao and shopping guide websites such as Meilishuo, Mogujie, and Zhe800. After the ban, all parties in the shopping guide website industry chain have been greatly affected. Some websites have survived, but more followers may have died.

How are shopping guide websites doing after Taobao’s ban?

Essentially, shopping guide platforms such as Meilishuo, Mogujie, Zhe800, and Huihui Shopping will face a ban from the first day, because they are dependent on the towering tree of Taobao. As the old saying goes, it is good to take shelter under a big tree, and leaning on a big tree can really help you develop and accumulate quickly. On the other hand, if the shopping guide platforms that lean on a big tree develop fast enough and grow to a certain scale, they will inevitably affect the branches and leaves of the big tree. This is a problem that cannot be avoided.

In 2013, the traffic of Meilishuo continued to decline, and its Alexa global ranking dropped rapidly from more than 1,000 to more than 6,000, and its corresponding revenue also declined rapidly. Shopping guide websites such as Mogujie, Zhe800, and Huihui were also severely damaged, and some even went out of business. The surviving shopping guide websites can be divided into two categories: one is content-oriented shopping guide websites such as Meilishuo and Mogujie, which offer very favorable product prices; the other is price-oriented shopping guide platforms such as Zhe800 and Huihui Shopping. Two different models, two different ways of playing.

Meilishuo and Mogujie, two industry leaders, are not only strengthening the construction of shopping guide content, but are also rapidly building their own e-commerce platforms. They select some high-quality merchants from the merchants they have cooperated with, help them open stores on the platform, and give them sufficient discounts. On the other hand, the prepared team has developed a complete commercial advertising system before, which can help Taobao sellers who cooperate with them to directly place advertisements on Meilishuo, thus getting rid of their complete dependence on Taobao.

Another type of shopping guide website, such as Zhe800 and Huihui, is to keep the price low to the end, give full play to the price-oriented advantages, and strengthen some details according to the characteristics of the platform. For example, Zhe800 offers the lowest price on the entire network, and is also the first platform in the industry to propose the concept of free shipping for 9.9 yuan, and the pace cannot be stopped at all. According to Yu Tuo's observation, the products on Zhe800 are now uniformly redirected to Taobao's own shopping sharing platform AiTaobao, which adds an extra step to the shopping process and increases the purchase cost for users.

Existence is reasonable. Even facing the closure of Taobao, shopping guide platforms can still survive not by relying on anything else but their users, that is, the upstream chain of the shopping guide websites.

Why do users choose to stay?

Users can also be roughly divided into two types. One is those who pursue products, are somewhat picky, and have a demand for discounts. The other is completely driven by price, and will go wherever is cheaper, and they do not have enough loyalty to the brand platform. For the first type of users, Meilishuo and Mogujie can meet their needs. Meilishuo and Mogujie can match different product combinations according to seasons, hot spots and topics, and can choose the products they like while meeting social needs. For users who completely pursue low prices, price-oriented discounts such as 800 can satisfy them. It is the lowest price on the entire network, and it also provides free shipping. In addition, there is another interesting thing: all products are manually bargained. What is manual bargaining? Let's say that the 800 platform team initially selects merchants, and then negotiates with them until the lowest price on the entire network is reached. Manual bargaining itself is a product quality screening, which can be regarded as reducing the user's selection cost. Let's think about it. If we are pursuing low prices, why don't users search directly on Taobao? On the one hand, in Taobao's massive product library, users may not be able to search for the lowest price products themselves; on the other hand, they may not dare to buy the lowest price. The shopping guide website's manual selection of products initially selects relatively reliable products, and finally lets the user choose which one to buy.

With the development of the Internet, netizens have become very savvy. If you want them to stay, the most essential thing is to meet their needs. Make users happy, and then users will let you make money and live a comfortable life.

Future Prospects of Shopping Guide Platforms

The content-oriented Meilishuo model is working hard to build its own e-commerce platform and commercial advertising system. Currently, Meilishuo and others are also learning from Taobao, introducing merchants and imitating Taobao's credit system. To put it bluntly, they are recreating Taobao. China's current e-commerce environment is better than Taobao's early days, but also worse than Taobao's early days. The good thing is that there are more online shopping users and they have more spending power. The bad thing is that Internet users are now more picky, lazy, and more pursuing user experience. Taobao was not built in a day. Meilishuo and Mogujie still have a long way to go, including merchants, user experience, and payment links. Alipay covers the largest number of online shopping users in China, and it belongs to Taobao. Meilishuo, Mogujie, etc. are currently mainly connected to third-party payment, including online banking payment. As everyone knows, the user activity of third-party payment other than Alipay is still a little bit worse, and the user experience of online banking payment is poor enough. However, this is also a helpless solution. Just look at WeChat payment, after all, Tencent has invested money.

Another price-oriented 800-yuan discount model is a little simpler to implement. It is to find the lowest price and sell products wherever there are products. In the future, it may also connect to products from Meilishuo and Mogujie. The simpler the work, the more difficult it is to establish its own roots. Price-oriented shopping guide websites always have to rely on e-commerce shopping platforms. Today it is Taobao, and tomorrow it may be Meilishuo and Mogujie.

In general, it is good for the shopping guide websites that survive in the gap between BAT. No matter which model they choose, they can survive and at least have a certain number of loyal users. At the same time, they still have a long way to go.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.