How Rakuten, Japan's biggest electric company, uses regional cues to lure users into shopping

This article is for the Economic Observer newspaper "net Business" monthly special contribution, part of the content also thanks to Japanese talent henryma assistance

Although there are many Internet services through excellent product planning and design to win, but in the E-commerce market, operating capacity is undoubtedly the key to success. Therefore, as the electric business people, many times it is spent on how to use some shopping clues and marketing tools to effectively guide users to order and repeat access.

Take the organization of the shopping clue for example, in addition to the common use of goods and classes for the dimension to operate, but also to operate the human dimension, for example, especially for the new users of the new site to pull activities or for the previous single old user retention topics, or for the office of the White Collar mm and graduating college students and so on can also use the time and events of the dimension to operate, such as spring and autumn, some holidays and current social events such as popular (such as QQ Mall Life Special Edition). It is because the operation of e-commerce sites from so many different latitude to think, if you want to draw a diagram on the wall to describe and plan the operation strategy of a large electric dealer's website, it is estimated that the whole wall can be painted full.

As Japan's largest e-commerce company, the name Lotte because recently announced in China and Baidu to establish joint venture E-commerce companies to enhance the visibility of the news, before I was just specifically for Rakuten did some in-depth analysis. This time along the topic of e-commerce operations to see how the Lotte Market to use the region as a clue to the operation of the chain.

At the end of 2008, Lotte launched the "まち Le (Machi-raku)" Regional operations website, to try to establish a local theme operation zone through the mode of cooperation with the government departments and local groups of 47 prefectures in Japan, mainly from local native products, Activity travel related information and local celebrity endorsement in these three directions to organize. From the point of view of users ' shopping, because of the abundant content provided by Rakuten's regional operation website, it is easy to create the impulse of shopping in the process of browsing.

Local native Products

Because the local native products in general have a lot of stories behind the product, many can be natural to be used for operational activities of the material, such as the name of the origin and some historical allusions (in the past is the royal tribute or with the history of a Celebrity association, etc.). The following 5 recommended text chains in the home page screenshot of the Rakuten Operations website are (in square brackets, Japanese names):

"Hegeshan" has tian mi orange ripe! Free Shipping + 10 times times the "Sls" letter Xuan (Japanese Warring States period celebrities) love the Sls Township native products Super Delicious ★ National B-Class food large collection "Chiba" TV show introduced used to the wine excellent chicken wing dumplings

Figure I: Lotte Regional Operation website Home

Travel and local activities related information

When the user clicks on a specific area of the home page (take the movie "not Sincere don't disturb" and let a lot of people initiation tourism idea of Japan Hokkaido as an example), Lotte's Regional operations website will introduce some famous local features through vivid maps, because many people are very impulsive when traveling. If can through this Hokkaido aggregation page lets the user produce certain degree "is traveling" the feeling to achieve the operation goal. And since Rakuten is also one of the leading Japanese online tourism industry, it is easy to fit in the right location with travel-related information and order the link to the ticket hotel.

Figure II: The Hokkaido featured map provided by the Rakuten's Regional operations website

Locally born celebrity Endorsement

As the saying goes, "the villagers see the villagers, two tears", if the user is considering the purchase of local native products can see a just born in the local celebrity endorsement, I believe the attraction will be stronger. It is in this way, the Lotte Regional operating site in the region for the operation of the clues at the same time also with a number of locally born celebrities (such as entertainers or sports stars, etc.), so that the operating material is richer, Because these celebrities are naturally the source of the topic and discussion (China is rarely seen in the marketing of the birthplace of celebrities to do the selling point, there is a certain cultural differences).

Figure III: Using celebrities to increase popularity for Rakuten's regional operations website

For example, in the second row of figure three, the Miko Tokoma of the captain of the Good Morning Girls group, who was once a famous Japanese singer, was launched to publicize his hometown Hokkaido. In addition to the use of Miko Tokoma expensive signs to introduce some of her favorite local specialties, but also by selling in the Lotte Market at the same time the sale of her own new book, "Own marriage."

Figure IV: The use of born in Hokkaido 滝 Sichuan City singer Miko Tokoma expensive to promote local specialties

Thinking of organizing operation Clue by using region

If the e-commerce is organized according to the dimension of class purpose, often encounter a dilemma is the need to provide a very rich in each category of goods for users to choose to better attract users to order, and the use of the non-class dimension, such as geographical to organize operations clues is a chance to win the side of the way, This is especially important for small businesses. Because this is the way to organize user shopping clues, many shopping needs are directly led by the merchant, rather than the user to visit the site before there is a certain shopping goals. In addition, the native product itself has enough characteristics, so many times the user will not think about your store inside the overall number of goods is rich enough.

But also to see, because the Japanese consumers of the pursuit of quality of life is one of the production of agricultural products are very persistent, that the local soil, water quality and other natural environment will have a significant impact on food. For example, the same beef, produced in different places of taste is different, and even therefore suitable for different ways of eating. At the same time, because the overall logistics system in Japan is very developed, even if it is from a small area of fresh products can be in a relatively short period of time to distribution to Tokyo, these big cities, so from the big environment in Japan to do electric business regional operation has a good foundation.

If you want to attract users to buy some of the Internet may have been the first to hear the native products, and their own online shop is not large, how to establish a user of the merchant's "sense of peace" is very important, On the Rakuten site, a method of letting the photo of the benchmark store and the goods it sells be released together, When the user clicks the past, he can often see the store's diary for the goods it sells (I've also summed up similar experiences in another article, which is based on the experience of a successful seller in Japan's Rakuten market). For example, a Lotte seller who sells fresh "earth eggs" will keep some of the details of his own farm on the store log every day, including what feed the chickens feed, how the weather and so on, I believe that see this page of each potential buyer will be raised from the shop here to buy the probability of soil eggs.

Figure V: Make the user feel more reliable by attaching the real photos of the shop-length

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