What are the cross-border e-commerce platforms? How to choose a platform?

Merchants who want to do business overseas now usually look for cross-border e-commerce platforms. However, there are many overseas platforms and many people are unfamiliar with them. What are these platforms? Below, we will introduce them. If you are a merchant who wants to open a store, you may wish to take a look at the introduction in this issue and then consider it.

How to choose a platform?

There are many cross-border e-commerce platforms, the mainstream ones are Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress. The mainstream markets are North America and Europe. Relatively speaking, these sites are the most mature and of course the competition is relatively fierce. The Middle East and India are still blue oceans. If you don’t want to make profits quickly, you can try these markets first, work hard, and make steady progress. As the scale expands, you will also grow along with it.

Of course, if you think you have a good level, Europe and the United States are still profitable. The most important thing is to learn. Without accumulation, you will encounter some unnecessary troubles and even fall into a pit.

Cross-border e-commerce has developed at an astonishing speed in recent years. The main platforms include eBay, Amazon, Wish and AliExpress. There are also some rapidly developing ones, such as Lazada and Shopee.

eBay: An old cross-border platform with sites in the United States, Europe and other regions. Most of the low-priced products on it are controlled by large sellers, and there are none for small transparent people, so it is not very suitable for novices.

AliExpress: It is a platform under Alibaba. It spends a lot of money to attract traffic from outside the platform, and the threshold is also high. There are many rules, including deposit, commission, handling fee, shipping fee, etc., and most of the traffic on the platform is distributed to large stores, which is not friendly to newbies.

Wish: It is relatively easy to get started. Compared with other platforms, its main feature is to allow easy purchase and operation. However, it is precisely because of the easy operation that the competition is very fierce. Therefore, it is not easy for those that seem easy to get started to break through.

If you want to make money, you can only take the boutique route, but this route requires a large investment and a long cycle, which are not affordable for novices. However, those who have the ability, time and capital can try it.

Amazon: It is the world's largest cross-border platform, with the largest number of active customers, high average order value, and no need to pay a deposit, etc. The platform's rules are strict and fair. As long as the product is good, there is no need to worry about sales. The platform will provide a certain amount of traffic support for newly listed products to increase the order rate, which is suitable for novices.

However, to open a store on these platforms, merchants still need to do more research and find suitable methods.

In fact, there are really many cross-border platforms nowadays, such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, etc., as well as Lazada and Shopee that have developed in recent years. Of course, each platform has its advantages, and merchants should choose a suitable platform based on their actual situation so that they can set up their stores quickly.