Auto: Making a sexy business out of a sexy model

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Beijing Time December 11 night, the domestic professional automotive information website "Auto" (Nyse:athm) officially landed in the New York exchange.

From Auto's prospectus and Roadshow's PPT, the company's revenue, operational strength are quite excellent. 2013 years ago three quarter, auto revenue 830.5 million yuan, net profit of 333.5 million Yuan Yuan. In the operation, Auto more intrepid, road show ppt display, auto daily average UV570 million (PC side), mobile end is 2.4 million; in the long browsing time, auto occupy the user to visit the car website Long 46%, is the second 4 times times; The average user's page stay in auto is 15.2 minutes, 3 times times the second! The brand recognition degree reaches 75%, in the Chinese similar website highest.

For other data: Previous years ' revenue, profitability, operating costs, and so on, not all of them. We still want to deconstruct the auto from the angle of the pattern.

Auto's model, whether past or present, is really not "sexy". In this year's IPO of several internet companies, I think should and 58 with the city as a category. That is, it all looks normal. It's not a high-tech, model or a deep moat. And the city than 58, auto to "light" some, do not need a huge "sweep street" team. This, the number of employees from two companies can be seen: Auto only 1300 employees, and 58 in the city has more than 5,000 employees, of whom more than 3,000 are sales.

The reason why the Auto mode is not "sexy" is because the model is very simple. At first, Auto was a vertical community. Mainly rely on EGC (edit generated content), which new car on line, auto editor of these cars to do a review, List a lot of data. For the people who want to buy a car for reference.

The business model is simple, there are no barriers, and there is no significant return on revenue. The most is bigger, accept some brand advertising.

But the business model is not static. With the changes in the industry, the original open business model, will continue to be extended. In today's auto profit model, advertising remains the biggest source of revenue. 2013 years ago the three quarter of advertising revenue of 617.9 million yuan, accounting for the total revenue of 74%.

and relying on advertising revenue, is often the media platform to do things. For example, Sina, Sohu and other four major portals, income mainly by advertising. But for auto, it's not too expensive to tell stories on Wall Street on a purely media platform. (Advertising has a ceiling). Therefore, auto at the end of the prospectus also mentions the electric quotient's imagination space. For the future, I think auto in the two block business there is more space for imagination:

Automobile Electric Dealer

From the media platform to the trading platform, is almost a common feature of excellent vertical web sites. For example, search house to enter new house group buying business. Auto is no exception.

In this year's two-11 car-buying festival, a day to complete more than 2 billion yuan turnover. The reason why a day can produce such a large explosive force, and auto of electrical business practices have a great relationship. Before the user buys a car, will go directly to the 4S shop to look at, bullish and sales staff to bargain. In auto 11 activities, auto first for consumers and dealers "game", the price down (in the case of dealers profitable). This will save consumers a lot of game costs.

Auto serves as a platform for the entire automotive electrical business to enable more efficient trading between buyers and sellers. Consumers want prices to be minimized, and dealers want to sell more cars at once. and auto Advantage is that there are users, a huge amount of users. Through the car section, you can put online users "import" Offline 4S shop. That is: the so-called internet selling cars.

Auto's electric business, is still in the initial stage-the internet on the "people" to the line under the 4S shop. There are still a lot of imaginary space in the future, such as automobile finance, second-hand car electric dealer and so on.

Automotive Service Market

"You can comment on us as a car class," he said. "In a recent interview with the author, Auto CEO Qingeo This analogy car service market."

The so-called car service market, refers to the car after the sale of various services. Including car users have been maintenance industry and so on. 2011, China's auto market output value of about 200 billion yuan. Huge service market, and China's catering industry has a lot of similar places: large industry, store small, low brand concentration, information and low degree of transparency. When the owner wants to find service store, because the information is opaque, it is difficult to make reasonable decision. After the automobile service market reviews the website, will be auto another business model in the future.

For auto, entering the automotive service market has natural genes and advantages: Understand the Internet, with users. Through eight years of accumulation, also formed a higher brand awareness and Word-of-mouth. The future can be through the form of reviews, thousands of car maintenance, repair stores converged to the line, so that users "see clearly." As for the profit model, you can refer to the existing public comments. such as coupons, group buying, bidding rankings and so on.

Auto's development process, is in a not sexy model, made a sexy business (revenue, profit). In the process, the business model has also changed.

The auto model must disappoint those "observers" in today's era of business models. For such a "simple" model, to find the core of the mystery, I think it is back to the team, back to operation. "We will always be user-oriented, user needs, we'll do." Auto CEO Qingeo told reporters that in the care of the needs of users, auto has not changed.

Auto, if used in a word, I would like to say: not sexy mode, do not hinder the making of sexy business.