The first big sale of the year is comparable to "Prime Day", Wish is trying to save itself

Since its listing in 2020, Wish has experienced multiple blows such as a plunge in market value, loss of users and sellers, and a sharp drop in revenue. Domestic cross-border sellers have also left the market one after another after a sharp decline in orders. After the trough, Wish learned from its mistakes and embarked on the road of transformation since last summer, taking corresponding measures to address various problems in order to regain its former glory.

It is learned that from March 30 to April 5, Wish launched Wishmas330, the largest promotional event in the first quarter of 2023, providing sellers with traffic support on and off the site for different categories every day for 7 consecutive days. Wish bluntly stated that this will become an annual event similar to Amazon Prime Day. The purpose of the event is to attract more new users to the platform and bring more sales opportunities to sellers.

In the past few years, Wish's reputation among consumers has been declining due to the serious discrepancy between the products on the platform and the actual products. Some consumers even created a series of emoticons specifically for the shopping experience on Wish, which quickly became popular on social media. Wish cannot deny that the quality of its products is indeed a major failure of its platform.

After embarking on the transformation journey, Wish formed a new leadership team and experienced several changes of leadership. Joe Yan is currently the CEO. Wish not only redesigned the logo and the browsing experience within the app, but also continuously rectified the seller network to improve product quality.

The merchant network has undergone a major overhaul to control product quality from the source

Wish's stock has fallen sharply in the past few years since its parent company ContextLogic went public in December 2020. In fiscal 2022, Wish's revenue was $571 million, a year-on-year decrease of 73%; losses jumped to $288 million, compared with $199 million in 2021.

Vivian Liu, chief financial officer and chief operating officer, stressed that product quality is a big problem, and the problem of product not matching the actual product leads to high return rate and order cancellation rate. Therefore, order and customer retention will be a key focus area for Wish in the future.

To solve this problem, Wish first started with the threshold for sellers to enter the platform. Over the past year and a half, Wish has been reducing the number of merchants on the platform and changing the seller entry mechanism to an invitation system, a move that limits the entry of fraudulent and low-quality sellers.

Secondly, Wish has also launched the Wish Standards store rating feature. The higher the store rating, the higher the exposure and the greater the commission discount. The store rating indicators include user feedback rating, tracking rate, fulfillment speed, and general compliance with Wish policies.

To reduce its reliance on cross-border shipping from China, Wish will also begin to diversify its sourcing, for example, it is selling more products made in Vietnam. To address the problem of counterfeit goods, Wish has also recently begun working with EverC, a software provider that uses artificial intelligence to help marketplaces manage fraud and cyber risks, to help Wish quickly detect and remove counterfeit goods.

Wish has also made improvements in logistics timeliness. In its major markets such as North America and Europe, the delivery time from China has been reduced from three to four weeks to 15 days. Wish plans to expand this service to other markets in the next year.

Overall, Wish has put a lot of effort into improving the user experience. Traffic is the basis of order volume. As Vivian Liu said, all these systematic changes Wish has made in the past year are to rebuild customer trust and get new and old customers to shop on the platform.

Attract new customers + repeat purchases, traffic growth is the key

In fact, since Wish implemented rectification measures, the NPS score representing the platform's reputation has doubled in the past 18 months. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Wish's refund rate fell by 36% and the customer order cancellation rate fell by 58% year-on-year. But Wish still has a lot of work to do to return to the peak period of active users.

Vivian Liu pointed out that in the next 12 to 18 months, Wish will focus on growing organic traffic. Improving customers' first order experience is an important part of this strategy, and guiding repeat purchases through email and SMS campaigns is also a key focus.

In terms of attracting new users, Liu pointed out that performance marketing will still play a role in user acquisition, but influencer and affiliate marketing will be added in the future. In addition, Wish also plans to strengthen search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Currently, the Wish app has more than 1 billion app downloads.

The recently launched "Wishmas330" promotion is also part of Wish's marketing strategy, and more similar activities may be launched in the future. Liu pointed out that Wish brings in new users through such activities and attracts old customers to return to the platform to shop.

Editor✎ Ashley/

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