TikTok Shop reveals the direction of e-commerce business: professional management and deep cultivation of vertical categories

Recently, TikTok Shop cross-border e-commerce launched an initiative to encourage platform merchants to operate professionally and focus on vertical categories to optimize consumer experience and achieve sustainable business development.

Since the launch of TikTok Shop cross-border e-commerce, it has developed rapidly, and a large number of brands and merchants have found new opportunities and development space in the content e-commerce model. In order to upgrade and optimize the consumer experience, help merchants improve their business layout and enhance their sustainable management capabilities, TikTok Shop officially released relevant recommendations and suggestions.

TikTok Shop believes that professional management capabilities are the basis for delivering a qualified user experience. TikTok Shop encourages merchants to implement detail control in an all-round and multi-angle manner to prepare for the long-term operation of the store. Specifically, TikTok Shop stated that in terms of product control, merchants should effectively select products, supply quality-assured products through quality control, optimize inventory management, and deliver goods in a timely manner; in terms of content promotion, merchants should truly present the selling points of products, avoid excessive packaging and false propaganda, and cause experience gaps; in terms of consumer services, merchants should establish a full-link complete user reach, communication and service in the three sections of pre-sales, sales and after-sales.

In addition, TikTok Shop also recommends that merchants focus on deepening their vertical categories. Due to the huge differences between different industries and categories, and the limited resources and energy of merchants, they should give priority to the full-link operation of vertical categories. Only on this basis can we gain a deep insight into user needs and create more sustainable long-term business value, thereby obtaining a positive cycle and experience accumulation, providing the source of power for future development.

In this regard, a cross-border practitioner said that according to TikTok Shop's personalized recommendations, the clearer the merchant account label, the more accurate the recommended crowd, and the greater the possibility of conversion. This may be one of the main reasons why TikTok Shop recommends merchants to "operate professionally and focus on vertical categories." A merchant who previously operated an independent station department store said that he recently noticed that TikTok's e-commerce governance policy has become stricter, and the official attaches great importance to the negative review rate. As a merchant, you must pay attention to this indicator, and focusing on vertical category operations can help merchants focus and improve their professionalism, thereby improving the store's NRR data performance.

In fact, the core of e-commerce business is still products and services. Only by providing customers with high-quality products can we accumulate word-of-mouth, attract new and old consumers, and achieve sustainable operations. The editor noticed that recently, TikTok Shop has taken a series of measures to optimize consumers' shopping experience, helping merchants improve service quality and control product quality.

Earlier, in response to the phenomenon that a few accounts maliciously recorded and plagiarized the e-commerce content of other merchants and influencers for profit, TikTok Shop updated the rules to "prohibit pirated broadcasts, and launch new rules to protect original content" : from December 21, 2022, it is prohibited to pre-record and re-upload the live broadcast content of other influencers. The penalties for accounts that move content include cancellation of traffic, exposure, platform recommendations, removal of product links and even e-commerce permissions, and the merchants and service providers that violate the rules will be publicly announced. A major problem caused by pirated broadcasts is that the products displayed by merchants in the live broadcast room are not actually sold by themselves. Once consumers place an order and receive products that are not the displayed products, it will be a big blow to the trust and long-term operation of the platform. Prohibiting pirated broadcasts is to ensure "goods for the version" from the foundation.

As for how to control product quality and examine service quality, the current core assessment indicators of TikTok Shop include negative review rate, delayed fulfillment rate, etc.

Among them, the negative review rate is one of the core evaluation indicators, which can be divided into product safety negative reviews, product negative reviews and store negative reviews. It is particularly worth noting that when TikTok Shop evaluates merchants, it focuses on negative reviews caused by business responsibility. Merchants need to pay special attention to negative reviews caused by product safety, quality, etc. Non-business responsibility negative reviews such as logistics negative reviews will not be included.

According to official recommendations, generally speaking, product safety certification can effectively reduce the rate of negative reviews. As for some common negative review issues, they can actually be avoided in advance through refined operations.

For digital 3C products, common problems may include the order model not being consistent with the received model, or consumers not knowing how to use the product but mistakenly believing that the product has a problem, which may lead to negative reviews. For such problems, merchants can carefully check the packaging before delivery and make after-sales plans, guide consumers to strengthen communication, give priority to feedback to merchants, and inform consumers that exchange services are available; in addition, in terms of improving product strength, manufacturers can be coordinated to provide manuals in multiple languages, and instructional videos can be uploaded on the product details page, and a list of items in the package can be listed to facilitate consumers to check whether the parts are complete.

For example, mobile phone accessories products with "light weight, high repurchase rate and high traffic" have always been hot-selling products across borders. The mobile phone accessories store jsove has its own mobile phone case factory and a complete production line team. The supply chain advantage enables the store to update product materials quickly and have a wide range of product models. In addition, in terms of improving consumer shopping experience, in addition to having a standardized factory product quality inspection process to ensure product delivery quality, jsove also attaches great importance to delivery timeliness. Customer service shifts are online for up to 17 hours a day to maintain close contact with consumers.

For example, clothing products are prone to receive negative reviews due to fabric materials that are different from consumer expectations, clothing that bursts, and sizes that do not match. Merchants can upload more fabric comparison pictures and provide local size references for the target country on the details page. In addition, they can also guide consumers on the details page. If they don’t know how to choose a size, they can privately chat with the merchant, or show their own measurement methods and model body data for consumer reference.

The clothing store Modestfashion2022 has its own factories and fixed purchasing factories, which greatly guarantees the richness of its categories and the stability of its supply. On the basis of "having good goods", the merchant also attaches great importance to the consumer shopping experience. Before consumers take pictures of the goods, they provide size suggestions based on consumer information in the live broadcast room to improve the accuracy of orders, and standardize quality inspection work after the order is generated to ensure the accuracy of delivery. Customer service is also arranged to track logistics and comments to answer questions for consumers. "Good products, good content, and good services" helped the merchant create large single products with long life cycles and high repurchase rates, and won breakthrough growth in business.

In general, common negative review problems can actually be solved through the refined operation of merchants. Merchants need to pay enough attention, focus, and actively participate in advance. The "professional operation" initiative released by TikTok Shop this time will be more conducive to merchants to continuously optimize their business models and transform from "extensive operation" to "intensive cultivation" mode. In the future, professional operation may be one of the main development directions of the TikTok Shop e-commerce platform. Adhering to providing consumers with high-quality and guaranteed goods and services and ensuring consumers' shopping experience will be the basic principles that TikTok Shop always adheres to.

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