Weitao, Weibo, and WeChat: How do mobile e-commerce companies operate the “three micros”?

Recently, everyone has been discussing the intention and significance of Alibaba's investment in Weibo and the launch of Weitao, as well as the profound impact that WeChat may have on e-commerce. This issue of mobile commerce starts with the topic of my recent speech at Alibaba's NCC.

My theme is "Mobile e-commerce looks beautiful". Just like the case of large retailers I introduced earlier and the future of mobile e-commerce I described, everyone sees a beautiful future, but it does not mean that we can get there tomorrow. Rome was not built in a day. We have to look up and see the road, but also keep our heads down. We should not forget the goal when we set out, and we should go back to the starting point to think.

What is the origin of our mobile e-commerce? What is the problem you are struggling to solve every day? To increase sales! Why are you interested in mobile e-commerce? Because it can help you increase sales! Where does the increased mobile sales come from? There are only two places: new users and old users.

The ability to attract new customers through mobile terminals is very limited, especially for pure e-commerce. This has been analyzed in the previous column (see "Pure e-commerce mobile promotion and operation" for details), and it is mentioned that we should focus more on operations and serving old users on the mobile terminal.

The input-output ratio of serving and operating old users well through mobile terminals and making them generate more orders on mobile terminals will be much higher than attracting new customers on mobile terminals. Focusing on the characteristics of mobile terminals, making the best use of their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses, how to serve and operate old users well is what we should focus on at the moment.

Weitao, a simple and fast user experience

My experience with Weitao was very interesting. Obviously, I am not the target user of Weitao. My first reaction after hearing about Weitao was to search for "Weitao" in the Apple Store. Sure enough, I found the Weitao App released by Taobao. After logging into the account, I found that it was not what I thought. After being puzzled, I found that this Weitao was just a coincidence with the name, and it was not the Weitao that everyone was talking about.

By the way, I hate websites and apps that force people to log in before using them. They will lose a large number of new users.

I had to search for the keyword "Weitao" on Weibo to find it. It turns out that the entrance to Weitao is within Taobao. It is not an independent app, or even an app, but an HTML5 website. This is also very interesting.

I said a year ago that apps actually have many inherent problems compared to the basic elements of the Internet - web sites. App content cannot be indexed and searched by search engines, app content cannot be directly opened by hyperlinks, apps need to be downloaded and installed, and app version updates are very troublesome. These are the problems of early C/S (client-server) system software. Later, the C/S system was basically eliminated by the B/S (browser-server) system.

Apps are actually very similar to the old C/S systems, which prospered because of the huge traffic entrance and good experience of the Apple Store. As mobile browsers better support HTML5, Apps may eventually become the same as the client programs on computers today, with only games and some tool applications, and other applications will exist on the desktop in the form of web apps.

Another reason why Weitao first launched the HTML5 version is that HTML5 development products can be iterated very quickly. A version can be updated in a few days. When a new version is released, users do not need to upgrade and download new installation files. The latest version will be automatically accessed next time it is opened. Imagine if Weitao is an App program, each upgrade will take at least several weeks to a month. What's worse is that the App on the user's mobile phone needs to be upgraded to use the new version. For product managers, the upgrade rate of the new version is a very important indicator. This is why Weibo has been criticized for upgrading the client and still posting a Weibo by default. Product managers are desperately trying to increase the upgrade rate. Users who have not upgraded are like lost users to them. There is no such problem with HTML5, especially for a new product. There are many uncertain factors. The product may need to be adjusted, optimized and updated at any time. Weitao currently does not have any functions that must be supported by the App, so HTML5 is very advantageous at this time. It is very suitable for the concept verification and rapid iteration of a new product launched on the market. All new products and new attempts of our own product Kancart are now HTML5 web Apps to verify the concept first.

After entering Weitao from Taobao and experiencing Weitao products, my thoughts are as follows:

1. The significance of Weitao is to generate new traffic and avoid the traffic being concentrated on the Taobao portal and search, but to rely on real content and products to impress consumers. Let the traffic be more reasonably diverted to truly valuable and high-quality goods. The essence of consumer consumption is to get products that can bring him a better experience, rather than products that cost more advertising fees. So essentially, this path is very correct.

2. Provide consumers with personalized content, or content that consumers are interested in. In an environment where mobile phones have small screens and user time is fragmented, personalized content is very important. The first stage is to generate personalized content based on the user's own subscription. Just like the significance of mobile that I have always said, the mobile phone uses its "three senses" (sight, hearing, and geographic location) to sense the user's current interests and match the corresponding content online (based on the personalization of the interest at the time) to the user.

3. In addition, Weitao is in direct competition with other Taobao shopping guide websites. Because of this, we have recently seen relevant reports saying that Taobao shopping guide websites are vigorously expanding to other platforms to reduce their dependence on the Taobao platform, and they put a lot of ads when Weitao was first released, hoping to seize the time to open a safe distance as soon as possible. This shows that the reason why Taobao launched Weitao is that the shopping guide model is completely established, and the location of this model is closer to consumers, which is very important.

Weibo, a personalized content platform

After talking about Weitao, let's talk about Alibaba's investment in Sina Weibo, which has also attracted a lot of attention. Although Weibo has not been as popular as WeChat recently, it is still a major channel for me to quickly obtain information, and it can let me know the latest information in various fields in a very short time.

Compared to WeChat, to be honest, I prefer to get information through Weibo, mainly because it is fast and convenient. Weibo is inherently a media attribute, while WeChat is inherently a social attribute, which is determined by the company's genes.

Weitao is very much like a consumer vertical segment of Weibo.

Weibo is a large media platform suitable for quickly obtaining personalized content in various fields on mobile devices. This is one of the reasons why Alibaba invested in it. Another immediate benefit is that Taobao ads have begun to be placed on Weibo. Reading your cookies, displaying the Taobao products you have recently browsed, reminding you to visit again and prompting you to place an order, this is also a kind of precision advertising, sensing your interests based on your browser cookie browsing history, and then presenting the corresponding products to you. It is equivalent to directing the traffic that flows out of Taobao back to Taobao again.

Weitao and Weibo have similar functions for e-commerce, but Weitao is closer to e-commerce.

We attribute them all to the experience of old users. Through careful operations, we provide old users with simple, fast and personalized content that interests them respectively, generating traffic and sales from their fragmented time.

WeChat, providing personal service

Finally, let’s talk about WeChat, which was very popular a while ago. I mainly attribute WeChat to the service care of old users. WeChat’s information push mechanism makes it difficult for you to conduct direct marketing. Users are very disgusted with push-type marketing. Once you fail to meet customer needs several times, you will be deleted and unfollowed.

WeChat is positioned as a social communication. Although it has a huge number of users, you still cannot violate the design concept of this product and use it for marketing activities. Therefore, the most suitable thing for WeChat is to provide service and care for old users. Think about it, just like your mobile phone number, you hate spam messages, but if the goods you bought are shipped, and the courier notifies you when it arrives at your home via text message, you will feel very good. If you are not satisfied with the product after unpacking, isn’t it convenient to return it by taking a photo with your mobile phone? If the product has not arrived yet, you can check the order status by sending a message, isn’t it convenient? If you don’t know how to use the product after receiving it, take a photo and the customer service will tell you how to operate it on the phone, isn’t it convenient? Another thing is to assist in promotional activities and notify customers in advance. This is the most suitable place for WeChat to exert its strength in the e-commerce field, providing consumers with close services.

WeChat’s main attribute is still socializing with friends. Just like QQ back then, although the number of users was huge and almost every Chinese had one, Tencent did not make much money from QQ itself in the end. It finally made a lot of money by selling online games to QQ users. It may be the same with WeChat. So the first thing WeChat launched was the HTML5 mobile web game function. After all, this is a reliable way to make a lot of money that has been verified by Tencent.

VIA: World Online Merchants Author: Zhou Xiang