What does a cross-border e-commerce independent website mean? What are the advantages?

Some merchants have been operating e-commerce and the results are pretty good. Then they want to expand their business and prepare to do cross-border e-commerce. In the process of understanding, they found that there are several models of cross-border e-commerce and are very interested in independent stations. So what does this cross-border e-commerce independent station mean?

An independent website originally refers to an independent website, including an independent server, an independent website program and a separate website domain name. A cross-border e-commerce independent website is an official website with sales functions for foreign users that merchants build through a website building system or build by themselves, which is what we often call a "self-built website".

In layman's terms, merchants who sell products through international e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, AliExpress, Wish, and eBay are considered cross-border platform sellers. When merchants sell products to foreign users through third-party SAAS website building tools or their own websites, they are considered cross-border independent website sellers.

Most of the early independent websites were in the distribution mode, such as chinavasion, Deal extreme and LightInTheBox in Shenzhen. At that time, the inexpensive and high-quality Chinese products and the huge Internet dividends provided a good breeding foundation for these independent website merchants. Around 10 years ago, independent websites gradually became segmented and vertically focused on a certain field, such as sammydress, shein, and soulfeel, grasping the user's psychology and making precise delivery. Up to now, most of them have developed into the brand independent website model that we are familiar with, turning their own products into brand operations, using promotion channels such as Facebook and Google to attract traffic, and establishing a long-term customer base, such as Anker, DJ, and Dyson.

There is a popular saying in our independent website circle: 30% depends on operation, 70% depends on product selection. From this, we can see the importance of product selection for the independent website you are facing in the market. Most people think that the biggest difficulty is operation and traffic, on the contrary, the biggest difficulty of independent website is product selection. Choosing the right product is equal to half of the success, on the contrary, no matter how strong your operation ability is, it will be of no use.

Therefore, the selection of products for independent stations should adhere to the principle that non-powerful sellers should avoid selling red ocean products as much as possible (powerful and hardcore sellers please ignore this). Such as: maternal and child products, 3C electronics, clothes, shoes, bags, etc. Choosing such products to build an independent station is undoubtedly equivalent to a hellish start, which is more difficult than building a platform! Why do you say that? Such products have long been rampant on the platform and can be seen everywhere. Choosing red ocean products to sell on independent stations has no advantages at all. Sellers need to invest a lot of money in advertising promotion, top operation team operation, and extremely optimized supply chain. The key point: most foreign customers who buy such products will only buy them from cross-border third-party authoritative platforms. Therefore, independent stations selling such products are only suitable for powerful companies (shaping their own brands), factories (own products), and top sellers.

This is why many foreign trade people say: independent sites are very difficult and not suitable for novice sellers at all! In fact, independent sites are not as difficult as ascending to heaven, but many people don’t know that they have chosen the hell difficulty to start. How can it be difficult to operate?

So how to choose products?

Small and medium-sized sellers should choose to start with blue ocean products or marginal products or counterfeit products based on their own resources. Here is an analysis of the two:

1. Blue ocean category products. This type of product has a small audience and low competition. Big sellers don’t care about it or only a few people are selling it. But it doesn’t mean that it can’t be sold. If unpopular products are well made, they can also make a name for themselves. However, after such products are well made, they are easily copied by the market and will become red ocean products again in a short period of time. Sellers need to quickly seize the opportunity

2. Imitation brand products. This kind of highly profitable gray industry has long been commonplace in China and is closely related to us. From heavyweight companies such as Zotye Auto (imitation Porsche) and Tencent (always imitating and never surpassed), to small companies such as Putian shoes and Huaqiangbei mobile phones, almost all walks of life cannot escape the shadow of imitation! This kind of product is prohibited from being sold on third-party platforms. There is a market abroad and foreigners have demand. The profit of an order of imitation brand watches and bags is basically controlled at 1000+. Therefore, as long as you have channels, methods, and resources, and can solve the technical difficulties in the imitation brand industry, the success rate of choosing this kind of product to operate an independent website is undoubtedly the highest, without a doubt.

The above two categories of products have high customer acceptance and little competition, so the success rate of operating independent websites is naturally much higher. In particular, marginal and counterfeit products have their own traffic attributes. Therefore, if these two types of products are well made, they can also survive in the increasingly competitive cross-border era and complete a personal comeback.

Summary of product selection: Small and medium-sized sellers should select products from the blue ocean category and the counterfeit brand category when selecting products for their independent sites! The correct product selection direction is to select products that are rarely or not available on the sales platform!

If you want to operate independent columns well, you need to do a good job of attracting traffic. There are many ways, such as Facebook ads, Google ADWORDS, KOL, information flow, SEO, etc., but different traffic sources have different qualities.

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