How can ordinary people do cross-border e-commerce? How to participate?

There are actually quite a lot of merchants doing cross-border e-commerce now. If you want to do cross-border e-commerce, you must determine the direction. How can ordinary people do cross-border e-commerce? I believe that many merchants have questions, which will be introduced to you in the following content.

1. Platform Selection

There are many cross-border e-commerce platforms, each with its own characteristics and advantages. Choosing the right platform is a good start.

1. Amazon

Amazon is considered a "grandfather" level cross-border e-commerce platform. Founded in 1995, it is the largest online e-commerce company in the United States and one of the earliest companies operating e-commerce on the Internet.

The Amazon platform has a wide variety of product types, including clothing, shoes, bags, books and supplies, digital 3C, personal care, maternal and child products... Merchants choose to enter a variety of categories.

Currently, Amazon has 18 sites around the world, 13 of which are open to Chinese sellers. It is a platform with great room for development.

2. Shopee

Founded in Singapore in 2015, Shopee is the fastest growing e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and the preferred platform for selling Chinese products to Southeast Asia.

The platform covers a wide variety of products, including household products, skin care and beauty, clothing, shoes and bags, electronic consumer products, etc., and the corresponding market consumption capacity is quite considerable.

3. AliExpress

AliExpress is a domestic cross-border e-commerce platform established by Alibaba in 2010. The platform targets overseas consumers.

The products cover 30 first-level industry categories including clothing and accessories, digital 3C, household items, and beauty accessories.

Compared with the first two platforms, AliExpress is easier to operate and has fewer platform rules and restrictions, so newbies can consider it carefully.

2. Join the platform

Different platforms have different entry requirements and steps, and even the entry requirements for different sites on the same platform are different, such as Amazon.

However, a business license (corporate or self-employed) is generally required.

3. User Positioning

In the process of e-commerce operation, user positioning is an indispensable link, and user positioning can be used to identify the core audience.

After the store has been open for a period of time, you can do a data analysis on visitors, users who have purchased, users who have added items to cart, and users who have purchased multiple times. For example, you can conduct a systematic analysis of users from six aspects: basic attributes, purchasing power, behavioral characteristics, social circles, psychological characteristics, and interests and hobbies. You can categorize users based on the data and identify the core audience.

4. Product Selection

After finding the core audience, the selection of products to be put on the shelves should be more precise.

1. First of all, you can look for the goods you need on some reliable domestic wholesale platforms, such as 1688, World Factory, and Voluntary Procurement.

2. Then, the price of the goods can be determined by comprehensively considering the purchase cost, freight cost, marketing cost and how much profit you want to make, so that the pricing of the goods will not be too outrageous.

3. Finally, illegal goods must not be sold, and the quality of the goods must be guaranteed. The development mechanism of e-commerce platforms is now very complete, and the supervision in this regard is relatively strict. Once discovered, there is a risk of account closure.

5. Store Operation

There are many aspects involved in operation, but first of all, store optimization is needed, including store decoration, store style, picture beautification and so on.

Then, it is necessary to formulate the most appropriate sales plan based on the actual situation to increase customer purchase rate.

During this period, you should promptly understand the platform's relevant marketing activities and make good use of these activities to drive traffic to your own store, thereby increasing conversion rates.

6. Logistics and transportation

Cross-border e-commerce orders have the characteristics of large regional span, multiple batches and instability. Therefore, merchants generally adopt four modes: international express, postal parcels, dedicated lines and overseas warehouses.

International express delivery is fast, but the cost is high;

Postal parcels have a wide coverage, but the delivery time is slow;

The timeliness and transportation cost of the dedicated line will be higher than that of postal parcels, but lower than that of international express delivery;

Overseas warehouses store goods in logistics warehouses in the destination country in advance. After buyers place an order, the goods are shipped directly from the overseas warehouse. The transportation cost and timeliness of this model are very high, but the construction cost and operating cost are also high.

If you want to engage in cross-border e-commerce, you must choose a suitable platform. After we have chosen the right platform, we also need to promote it. The competition nowadays can be said to be becoming more and more fierce. It is not an easy task to do well.

Recommended reading:

Is cross-border e-commerce easy to do on eBay? What information do I need to open a store on eBay?

How long does it take for a novice to make a profit from cross-border e-commerce? How to do it?

What are the strategies and methods for cross-border e-commerce product selection?