TapTechNews July 26th news, according to LatePost, Taotian Group today (July 26th) intensively adjusted the merchant rules, and the most significant changes are three:
The store traffic rules have been significantly changed, clearly taking the 'experience score' as the core basis for traffic distribution;
Relax the 'only refund' for high-experience-score stores;
Taotian will start to charge a basic software service fee at a rate of 0.6% of the confirmed receipt transaction amount of each order.
The report mentioned that charging a basic software service fee is a common practice in the e-commerce industry to cover the cost of platform system construction. An Alibaba insider said that this increase of six thousandths of a rate is mainly used to cover the software service costs of partners such as payment, ISV (Independent Software Vendor), and cloud vendors.
Taotian is the last domestic mainstream e-commerce platform to start charging the basic software service fee. Pinduoduo has been charging 0.6% - 1% of the basic technical service fee to settled merchants since 2020; JD.com and Douyin updated their rules in 2023, both adopting a 0.6% rate standard.
At the end of 2023, Taobao implemented a new dispute handling rule, judging the quality of goods based on big data, giving buyers the opportunity to get a refund without having to prove by themselves that there is a problem with the goods, and without having to return the goods. This change is interpreted as Ali's attempt to learn from Pinduoduo's only-refund policy.
Starting from August 10th, for merchants with a comprehensive experience score greater than or equal to 4.8 points, Taotian will no longer actively intervene through Wangwang to support consumers' only refund after receiving the goods, adjusted to the merchant negotiating with the consumer first.
TapTechNews noted that previously it was reported that Taotian Group held a closed-door meeting for merchants after the end of 618 (at the end of June), with front-line business executives in attendance. Several changes were clearly stated at the meeting and will be officially implemented in the second half of the year.
One of the 'core changes' is that Taobao weakened the absolute low-price strategy. Since last year, the system of allocating search weight according to the 'five-star price power' has been weakened and changed back to allocation according to GMV (TapTechNews note: the full name is Gross Merchandise Volume, the total amount of commodity transactions). In the first half of this year, the five-star price power of many categories has been cancelled one by one.