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I have been exposed to foreign trade B2C for several months without realizing it. From the pure Internet in the past, I have gradually come into indirect contact with offline supply chain, logistics, warehouse and other knowledge. I suddenly found that e-commerce is not such a simple thing. Traditional and Both online players have to strategize in order to win a battle thousands of miles away. Here is a summary of the various foreign trade e-commerce knowledge that I have come into contact with in the past few months:
1. Website building process
Needless to say, I have actually heard of Zen Cart and Magento a long time ago, but I found that in addition to these two, there are 23 platforms to choose from, which is really a frog in the well. In addition, WordPress can actually be turned into an online store, which only requires an online store template + eshop plug-in. You might as well give it a try. There are many payment methods that eshop can support, but this plug-in does not accept Alipay, so it was developed by foreigners.
2. Website certification
Whether domestic or foreign, certification is a powerful factor that persuades visitors to purchase. Like BBB, McAfee Secure, Verisign Trusted, Upfront, Shopwiki, Authorize.net, bizirate, etc., BBB certification is very strict. If a user once complained about your malicious website, you would not be able to pass the certification. For more certification details, see Na Shaowei’s article on Ten Certifications to Enhance the Trust of English Websites. In fact, many of these certifications require payment, such as McAfee Secure. But it is worth paying. These factors affect your conversion rate, so many friends put pictures up even if they have not passed the certification, in order to make others think that this website is credible.
3. Payment methods and fraud
Everyone knows about Paypal, but not so many people may know about Google checkout. Moreover, Authorize.net is actually a payment method, and it can also be regarded as a symbol of the credibility of the website. In the United States, a high proportion of payments are made through Authorize.net, so without this certification, the loss of users is immeasurable. In addition, there are many payment systems in Europe and the United States, such as Payson, iDeal Lite, eProcessing Network, webtopay, and ogone. Oh, by the way, in addition to the payment system, of course the credit card payment ratio is also not low, VISA and Mastercard.
Credit card and PP fraud are relatively common, especially for virtual products. Some friends were defrauded of tens of thousands of dollars in one day, and there are also Paypal restrictions that may even block your account. Therefore, when doing physical transactions, you should be particularly careful when you see that the billing address and shipping address are different.
4. Third-party e-commerce platform
I think we will immediately think of eBay. In addition, Amazon and Buy may be more powerful platforms and often bring higher sales. However, in order to register a store on Amazon and Buy, it must be a company that is a U.S. citizen, and the review is expected to be more stringent. So, if you have a friend in the United States, let him think of a way to get one, it would be cool. I almost forgot, there is also Aliexpress, Ali’s small wholesale foreign trade platform. I heard from the boss of a foreign trade company in Shenzhen that this platform is expected to surpass Ebay in the next 3 to 5 years. I don’t think so? Isn’t this a wholesale business? But imagine, this platform itself is a wholesale and retail platform.
5. Some of Google’s merchant applications
Google merchant, Google base, Google checkout, there are more and more things to learn, and everyone is slowly understanding them.
6. Supply chain, logistics, express delivery, customs
Study the demand in the United States, explore new product lines in China, purchase goods, find suppliers online, compare quality and price, and negotiate. Whether you press the supplier's price or whether the supplier doesn't even look at you depends on how many goods you can get. This is often the case. In the beginning, if you get dozens or hundreds of goods a month, others won't even look at you. , when you get tens of thousands of goods a month, the supplier will beg you in turn. The society is very realistic, just do what you want. As for logistics, whether it is shipped by sea or by air, it depends on the attributes and seasonality of the product. It is said that shipping time through the United States is calculated in months. As for customs, I don’t understand this. Can anyone teach me.
7. Chinese supply
Where to go to get goods in China? ? ? For electronic and digital products, you can go to Shenzhen for basic accessories, Fujian for imitation brand products, and Yiwu for small commodities. Where else can you go? In addition to Fujian, I have been to Shenzhen and Yiwu. Yiwu Small Commodity City is really not an ordinary B. The Yiwu Fair has now become one of the major commodity fairs in China. I heard that you must attend the Canton Fair and Yiwu Fair in China. Yes, everyone must go and see it if you have the chance.
8.SEO, PPC, Email marketing, branding, social marketing
It seems that these three are the most mainstream marketing methods at present. The competition for Adwords in the US market is extremely fierce. Now you will die if you rely solely on bidding. Yahoo can do it and the ROI is good. Also, is SEO a free thing? Who has been misleading everyone? Everyone knows where the money is spent. Although the conversion rate of email marketing is not high, the cost is not high either. Assistance is a good marketing supplement. Brand marketing is very important. Often people are willing to buy hundreds of products from your website because of your brand influence and reputation. The rate of return depends on your reputation, so even if the brand looks It's too empty to directly bring ready-made money, but it must be done, through methods? Spend money, or use social marketing, and remember that Facebook is Americans’ favorite social media, not Twitter. If you can accumulate N million friends or followers, that would be great.
9. Cost control, pricing, backorder
I'm still confused about cost control and pricing. How to set the right price is because you have to take into account employee wages, company rent, utility bills, free shipping, and the company's profits. At the same time, when it comes to backorder (return) issues, piles of problems are placed in front of you, which is almost overwhelming, so you can understand the mood of entrepreneurs. I guess there are many issues that I haven't considered yet.
What else? It seems that this is all for now, I will add more sometimes. E-commerce itself is inextricably linked to traditional commerce. It does not mean that you only need to know a little bit about online marketing, but just know a little bit about the Internet. The real offline and online correlation issues need to be considered. E-commerce is really not that simple.
Article source: http://www.moneyding.cn/post/1232.html