Businesses rush to the shelf areas with contents.

The traffic ecosystem of e-commerce is undergoing a quiet change in the direction of the flow.

Not long ago, the Double 11 came to an end. Douyin E-commerce disclosed the business operations of merchants and the consumption trends of the public. Data shows that from October 8 to November 11, the transaction volume of more than 33,000 brands doubled year-on-year, and the transaction volume of nearly 17,000 brands increased by more than 500%. More than 2,000 single products had a transaction volume of over 10 million yuan. Behind these figures, it reflects the huge vitality of the consumer market.

At the same time, consumers' shopping needs are becoming increasingly diversified, and different fields are intertwined and integrated, making merchants' operations more flexible. During the major promotion period, the transaction volume driven by the shelf field on the Douyin E-commerce platform continued to increase, accounting for 42% of the total. The transaction volume of the Super Value Purchase increased by 170% year-on-year, indicating that the shelf of Douyin E-commerce and the content mainly based on short videos and live broadcasts are隐隐 showing a tendency of equal importance.

The content field and the shelf field, the interconnection of traffic is creating new incremental business value. When consumers are increasingly accustomed to actively searching and browsing on Douyin E-commerce, the shelf field has gradually become a key position for merchants to increase their business.

In the Field Integration, Towards Long-Term Business Operations

The current consumer market is gradually moving towards a new order, returning to quality and value.

This generation of consumers no longer blindly pursue brands and prices. Their consumption concepts are becoming more mature and rational, and their consumption decisions are becoming more cautious. They not only value the "cost-performance ratio" and pay attention to the actual value of the product, but also pursue the "emotional-cost ratio" and are willing to pay for the emotional value and the recognized brand connotation.

This diversified and personalized consumption trend has driven the e-commerce industry to shift from price competition to value competition. In the new round of reconstruction of the three elements of "people, goods, and field", both "people finding goods" and "goods finding people" are needed, and these two sets of thinking need to be connected.

Two years ago, Douyin E-commerce proposed the concept of "Global Interest E-commerce", clearly stating that it is necessary to vigorously develop shelf e-commerce based on content.

Many merchants who are acutely aware of the trend actively explore new fields to find new increments for their own businesses.

For example, the makeup brand FUNNY ELVES Fangli, based on the new imagination of the shelf, has opened a new chapter of development.

This emerging brand, which was established only 4 years ago, has broken through in the highly competitive beauty makeup track and achieved a brand GMV of over 1 billion last year, with its performance advancing rapidly. Douyin E-commerce is its main channel for in-depth cultivation. Last year, its GMV on Douyin E-commerce increased by more than 200% year-on-year, becoming one of the fastest-growing brands in the makeup field of Douyin E-commerce.

Yang Ju, the founder of Fangli, has been deeply engaged in the cosmetics industry for nearly 20 years and is very acute in judging products and market forms. In terms of products, aiming at the pain points of Asian women's base makeup, Fangli cuts in from the positioning of "New Base Makeup for Asian Skin"; in terms of channels, after settling in Douyin E-commerce in 2021, it quickly mastered the gameplay of creating "explosive products" with "explosive content", and achieved a tenfold increase in monthly sales in just half a year.

By deeply cultivating the Douyin E-commerce channel, Fangli continues to advance and explore the shelf field. Its two core products, the Soft Focus Powder Cake and the Portable Liquid Foundation, achieved a daily transaction volume of 100,000 yuan through the Qianchuan Commodity Card of Douyin E-commerce.

The "precise seeding - commercial sales conversion" link in the beauty makeup category is highly consistent with the underlying logic of Douyin E-commerce's "content entering the mind - shelf undertaking repeat purchases and secondary conversions".

The integration of content and shelf well meets the multiple needs of consumers to see the makeup effect, check the ingredients, and ask about the skin type. Beauty makeup brands achieving the one-stop integration of content and shelf on Douyin E-commerce can not only greatly reduce the "attention loss" of consumers repeatedly jumping to information platforms to query the efficacy and cost performance, but also achieve more explosive products based on the integration of brand and effect.

It is not only Fangli, a brand, and not only the beauty makeup track that revitalizes the global traffic with a global perspective.

Flowers, plants, and greenery, following popular categories such as beauty makeup, seem somewhat niche and have the attributes of non-standard products and non-essential needs. Based on the dual-scene drive of content and shelf, the businesses of many merchants have regained new vitality.

Xu Songbin, who started a business selling green plants in his hometown Zhangzhou, settled in Douyin E-commerce early. The brand he founded, "Chuangxiang Oasis", through setting up live broadcasts and making short videos, the beauty of green plants can be intuitively displayed on the screen, thereby digging out potential interest groups and bringing considerable order volume to his own business.

However, the category of green plants with non-standard and fragile attributes is after all special. It not only needs to solve the problem of sales, but also has to face the challenges of industrial supply chain remodeling and standardization construction. A steady upgrade is not achieved overnight.

Xu Songbin acutely察觉到 that the shelf scene may be a new breakthrough point. After laying a good foundation of content and building a reputation, green plant products can obtain a stable sales channel in the shelf field, adding more certainty to the business.

"People generally think that Douyin E-commerce is suitable for making explosive products, and the core reason is only in the live broadcasts and short videos. In fact, they underestimate the role of the shelf scene," Xu Songbin said.

He mentioned that compared with the investment in live broadcasts and short videos, the investment and operation cost of the shelf scene of Douyin E-commerce is low. Seizing the opportunity and effectively using the natural traffic of the platform, sales can grow steadily and continuously. At the same time, due to the strong synergy between content and shelf in Douyin E-commerce, it is even easier to make an explosive product with the shelf.

Leveraging Forces, Intensive Cultivation and Precipitating Tactics

By bonding the content and shelf fields and allowing smooth traffic flow, many merchants have gradually precipitated a unique business methodology. While doing a good job in content, they intensively cultivate and operate around shelf scenarios such as Douyin Mall, search, and stores, and connect the links.

Search is recognized as the pre-action of consumption decisions. Since Douyin itself is a huge consumption decision-making field, the search traffic is very accurate and has a great impact on conversion.

Some mature e-commerce players have moved the search operation methodology of shelf e-commerce that they have long been familiar with to Douyin E-commerce. They directly start to optimize the keywords in the product titles and descriptions to improve the search exposure rate.

For example, the clothing brand Semir, with the help of the product functions of Douyin E-commerce, continuously optimizes the titles of the listed products, achieving a double increase in search volume and sales, and a 30% increase in the GMV of search commodity cards.

In shelf scenarios such as the mall, the most important content carrier is the product graphic and text. The entry threshold and migration cost for merchants are relatively low, and long-term maintenance and dynamic adjustment are required.

Chen Peilian, the founder of the green plant e-commerce brand Huazhita, said that in the process of operating the Douyin shelf, she regards the accumulation and maintenance of links as the top priority, continuously optimizing and maintaining those links with good sales, to ensure that they obtain stable traffic and conversion effects on the shelf e-commerce platform.

She and her husband started a business together and have been deeply engaged in the green plant industry for many years, accumulating a strong supply chain advantage. In the same year of settling in Douyin E-commerce, as soon as Huazhita saw the opportunity to open the shelf on the platform, it immediately entered the market.

"The shelf e-commerce of Douyin has many particularly outstanding benefits. For example, the traffic of entrances such as Super Value Purchase and Flash Sale is very large. Through participating in activities, we can quickly increase the exposure and sales of the store," Chen Peilian said.

She mentioned that compared with traditional e-commerce, the operation direction of the Douyin E-commerce shelf field is clear and the entrances are relatively concentrated, allowing merchants to focus more on the product and service itself. Moreover, the operation team of Douyin E-commerce also provides very professional guidance.

In addition to actively participating in platform activities, many merchants also fully leverage the precise shelf promotion tools of Douyin E-commerce, such as commodity cards and Qianchuan advertisements, to timely optimize product recommendations and marketing strategies and improve sales efficiency.

Take the commodity card as an example. This small card that displays product information in the shelf scene has the characteristics of low threshold and easy operation, and is suitable for all merchants, especially small and medium-sized merchants. After the merchants set it up, they have the opportunity to be displayed in more than ten channels such as mall recommendations and searches without live broadcasts and short videos, reaching a large number of target users.

Even a seemingly small tool incision, if used properly, can leverage a huge growth space.

For example, some people have transformed from e-commerce experts. After testing the waters with short videos and live broadcasts, they turned to commodity cards and achieved an achievement of GMV reaching 10 million in nearly a month. Douyin E-commerce has successively introduced a series of support policies, including commission-free support for commodity cards. In 2023, this support saved more than 3.6 million merchants 6 billion yuan in commissions, driving a 149% increase in the number of commodity card orders and GMV of merchants.

The content and shelf of Douyin E-commerce are not in a situation of one growing while the other declines or operating independently. The traffic is integrated and flowing inside, and the two go hand in hand.

After the content field brings immediate and "pulsed" traffic to the shelf field, the shelf field provides standardized display of goods, completes the consumption path of consumers who are quietly planted with grass and silently place orders, bringing stable and continuous repeat purchases and daily sales of old customers, smoothing the business fluctuations that may occur under the original short video and content logic. Business operations become predictable and certain.

In turn, the data and feedback accumulated in the shelf field also help merchants promptly capture market demands and reserve strength for developing new explosive products.

With high-quality content, high-quality products, and a complete business path, merchants' operations truly move towards the integration of brand and effect.

Ecosystem Evolution, Cultivating the "Rainforest" of the Industry

Looking closely at the Douyin shelf field, its underlying logic and circulation ideas have the uniqueness of the platform.

The interaction path between consumers and brands on Douyin is to search while brushing, plant grass while watching. When seeing interesting content, it inspires the next search action. When browsing the search results page, it seamlessly transitions to the shelf scene mainly composed of the mall, thereby triggering the purchase decision.

Thus, from the starting point of traffic, which is content, to the end of traffic, which is the mall, planting grass directly leads to business, and the cycle is shortened.

Therefore, strictly speaking, the Douyin shelf is not simply search-driven consumption, but a content-based shelf e-commerce under the activation effect of content.

With "global" and "interest" as the anchors, Douyin E-commerce combines the content field, the shelf field, and the marketing field. Along this direction, a "rainforest"-style business ecosystem has grown on Douyin E-commerce. Rich and diverse mid-waist带货authors, brands in various categories, and small and medium-sized stores in industrial belts with regional characteristics, individuals and merchants of various sizes and with their own advantages, have obtained the equal opportunity to be seen.

For example, Xiangxing Group, which emerged from Fuqing, Fujian, mainly engages in export trade and OEM for big brands. This old brand, which was born in 1992, gradually lost its former glory in the new era, and its online store was once shut down.

By chance, due to a video of "The Beijing Olympic backpack is not easily damaged", the producer Xiangxing Group became popular and came back to life in the Douyin live broadcast room, achieving a 700,000-fan increase in 3 days and tens of millions of sales in 2 months.

Xiangxing Group seized the opportunity to interact closely with consumers through high-frequency and long-duration live broadcasts, undertake the "tremendous" traffic that instantly pours in, and at the same time attach importance to the construction of the shelf for curious consumers to intuitively browse and find product information.

In the live broadcast room of Xiangxing luggage, the highest traffic, more than 50%, comes from users actively searching and entering, and the search transaction proportion reaches 50%. The linkage effect of content and shelf is fully presented in this closed loop.

Industrial belt merchants with manufacturing but no brand are seen again, and the top brands that seek innovation and change have also obtained new dividends under the blessing of the global ecosystem of Douyin E-commerce.

The home appliance brand Hisense has long been meticulously laying out the shelf scenarios composed of "mall + search + store".