Kuaishou Resumes Links to Taobao and JD.com to Boost Double 11 Traffic

Taobao and JD.com, two of China’s leading e-commerce platforms, have recently announced the resumption of links connecting them with short video platform Kuaishou, mainly aiming at the annual Double 11 Shopping Festival. It remains to be seen whether the changes will last beyond the event.

The return of the links is short-term for now. From October 28 to December 31, Kuaishou’s e-commerce business sector can use product links on Tmall. From October 28 to November 30, JD.com‘s self-operated products’ links will appear on Kuaishou.

Since November of 2021, Kuaishou has tightened links to external products. The platform would no longer support product displays from e-commerce platforms Youzan and Mockuai, but the third-party products sold through Kuaishou’s short videos, personal homepages and store pages were not affected. According to an announcement earlier this year, from March 1, links to JD.com and Taobao products would not be able to appear in several channels on Kuaishou.

During the Double 11 Shopping Festival, all e-commerce platforms need to obtain traffic from external platforms. Kuaishou is resuming cooperation with Tmall and JD.com to increase ad revenue in a short time. Some analysts believe that this move may be aimed at Douyin’s expansion. On September 27, Zhao Fan, head of Douyin’s e-commerce business, introduced that in April this year, the number of users who bought goods on Douyin’s e-commerce platform increased by 63.4% compared with last year, and that the GMV of Douyin e-commerce increased by 2.2 times.

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Kuaishou is facing great commercialization pressure. It can be seen from its financial report that, in 2020 and the first half of 2021, the average daily active users of Kuaishou increased by 14.2% and 17.7% respectively, but the average online marketing service revenue growth of each daily active user slowed down dramatically, from 26.3% to 2.5%.

As the field of livestream e-commerce gradually matures, Kuaishou is no longer satisfied with obtaining orders only through livestreaming rooms. During the Double 11 Shopping Festival this year, the platform launched an entrance to Kuaishou Mall on the homepage of its app. This site’s page layout is similar to Taobao.