is the internet shopping guide a good business?

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

The theme of the article "Why the United States did not appear beautiful" from the business culture, Amazon and Taobao organization of goods model, as well as the Chinese and American consumer shopping demand export, these three aspects of the domestic wave shopping guide to create a hot environment. But has not answered "in the Domestic network shopping guide is not a good business." At first I thought the relationship with Taobao or the future of the electricity business is gathered or dispersed, such things, influence even decided to guide the development of the community, now found more important is actually their own ability to retain users.

First, eat Taobao meal

Taobao was split into three separate subsidiaries in June 2011. Independent out of a Amoy nets, take over Taobao and Taobao promotion Alliance business, Taobao station advertising business is also said to be from a Amoy to network services. For the Open shop free Taobao, the station through-train advertising and a variety of advertising, it is the most direct and the largest source of revenue. But because the cat mall whether from the home page or search box, there is no independent from Taobao, I still put the two together called Taobao.

Taobao's position in the field of electricity, like Baidu in the search field, these two companies like two traffic black hole, guide and absorb huge user traffic. Qihoo 360 into the search field, by means of the browser and other channels of energy in a few days rushed to more than 20% of the market share, so that more people see, the domestic internet is a traffic poured down to the business.

Taobao early years, has been in the long tail of small and medium-sized sites put a large number of ads, there are many webmaster think it is those who can not on the table on the small site raised Taobao. After that, Taobao launched Taobao Guest, and set up a promotion alliance. Hundreds of thousands of Taobao customers and ads in the AD league hosting Taobao ads, such as small webmaster, like a network of the ocean in a light navigation lights, will flow into the Taobao page, help Taobao to build a huge business empire.

And the beautiful said and Mushroom Street is two super large Taobao guest. They break the boundaries of shops, allow users to be directly surrounded by products, and show that they are more comfortable or more efficient at discovering goods through social attention, theme sharing, and better expressive picture streaming. In the data, the higher conversion rate. Chen, CEO of Mushroom Street, once shared a set of data: the conversion rate for Taobao is 8% to 10%. is much higher than the average of 4% of the network advertising conversion rate.

Taobao needs Taobao guest, but it does not want a single Taobao customers master so much traffic, it means that the risk of shop loss, so Taobao itself also joined to the shopping guide Community competition, launched a Amoy discovery and the stubborn rabbit Taobao, last month, the UV500 million more than beauty said and Mushroom Street.

In addition, Mushroom street and beautiful said the user size and conversion rate data, proved that the shopping guide community on the value of users and shops, so many entrepreneurs are also invested in the Community shopping site of the entrepreneurial army, including Taobao's turnover of staff members of the team, such as we reported that want to go to the net.

These shopping guide website, most of them will be flow-oriented Taobao platform. There have been attempts to import traffic into other platforms, but the conversion rate of the Taobao platform seems to be the most attractive.

Ii. Value of the community

Shopping Guide The current batch of start-up companies, not to repeat the competition to copy the Red Sea stage, they are mainly busy cutting the market, to seize the subdivision areas, such as women's category, furniture, cosmetics and children's products shopping guide, or positioning in the design category of the shopping guide.

Taobao Apparel sales According to 300 billion estimates, shopping guide divided into 5% of sales, if all sales from the shopping guide (this is impossible) apparel shopping market size is 15 billion yuan. Although the actual sales from the community is only part of the shopping guide, but this data will be with the rapid development of the electric business growth.

1 Taobao November 2012 announced the completion of the annual sales of 1 trillion, in accordance with the 2011 Taobao apparel category accounted for 30% or so, is 300 billion, women's clothing also accounted for around 50% estimated, women's sales this year has been completed 150 billion. However, according to @ Li Chengdong estimates, given the return, data moisture and December sales, Taobao's total sales this year may be 800 billion, women's clothing 120 billion yuan.

2 According to the industry estimates, Mushroom Street and beautiful said together probably can take up Taobao women's category flow of 5%. Mushroom Street Chen April 2012 share a data: Day lead Taobao deal 60,000 single, according to Taobao Alliance average 80 yuan per single calculation, to Taobao to bring the monthly sales of 150 million. Assuming the conversion rate of 8% unchanged, Taobao customers are divided into more than the column (5% or so), according to the daily average of mushroom street UV can be divided into income.

This is not a big, also not small market. However, the shopping guide community in addition to shopping guide, will also emphasize their "community" value. For example, the location of Mushroom Street is a social shopping guide community, through the algorithm to help users better find, emphasizing the community to share content is out of interest of individual users. The beauty of the said is to position themselves as a help for women to find beauty, share a beautiful place.

If you insist from the flow point of view, the value of the community is to precipitate users, can save the flow of purchase costs. Now beautiful said and Mushroom Street have tens other registered users, daily UV 3 million or so, they 2012 the second quarter of the income is probably more than tens of millions of yuan, but so far neither of them announced money.

Shopping Guide community to take the flow of Taobao and get income, shopping guide Community marketing costs can be seen as its own flow purchase costs, but also burned the large categories of income. In the growth of a community can absorb the flow of the platform before the shopping guide site can only be from microblogging, QQ space, search engine and tens of thousands of small and medium-sized Web site to introduce traffic. Promotion costs are high, may be the company in the market, the need to constantly attract new users to join, another reason is to guide the community's old user retention rate and active rate is too low, user access needs to constantly import traffic.

In my understanding of the situation, the domestic two large shopping guide communities are facing the user retention and low activity. Although almost all the communities are very few active users to produce content, most of the silent user consumption content, but the shopping guide community with watercress, QQ space, microblogging and other communities compared to the user relationship precipitation down to much more difficult. For example, you might pay attention to a person or even become a friend because you often share your favorite clothes, but the probability of this happening is much smaller than when you meet a new friend on Weibo or watercress.

So in my opinion, shopping guide community to precipitate the user's ability, decide whether it can make a better business. In addition, the mobile internet will also give shopping guide more opportunities, on the one hand on the small screen users need to easily find goods, on the other hand, mobile internet traffic costs relatively low. PC Internet traffic costs have been high enough to be no longer suitable for new start-up companies to survive, the flow of access is divided up, desktop clients (browsers, security software, communication software, etc.), search engines, news portals, social networking sites have been controlled by the Giants. (Atu@36kr.com @ Ah tu eat fat)