Platform or independent station? More and more foreign traders are beginning to face this choice.
As early as 2017, the third-party e-commerce service organization Feedvisor has discovered that nearly 40% of Amazon sellers also sell their own products on their own independent sites, and nearly 30% of their users Decided to further expand the scale of the independent station. It is true that many cross-border sellers have begun to turn their attention to independent websites in the face of the end of the platform's bonus period and increasingly strict platform rules. At the same time, the maturity and popularity of third-party SAAS website building tools/platforms such as foreign Shopify and domestic Shopplazza have also reduced the technical threshold and operating costs of website building to a certain extent. Behind the popularity of independent websites, there is also the promotion of traffic giants such as Facebook and Google. They prefer to distribute traffic to countless small and medium-sized independent sites instead of falling into the black holes of eBay and Amazon.
As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning. It is difficult to successfully break through the numerous cross-border e-commerce companies by relying solely on the steely will of workers. It is equally important to choose a suitable platform as the starting point for going overseas. There is no intrinsic difference between platform parties and independent sites, they just have their own advantages and disadvantages. Today, the editor will analyze the respective characteristics of the platform and independent stations to help everyone find the channel that is most suitable for them.
Platform side:
Advantages
1. It has high traffic and high conversion rate
Taking the most popular Amazon as the platform side For example, their website attracts an average of 183 million users per month, which can effectively help users solve traffic drainage problems. At the same time, users who visit the platform also have clear purchase intentions, and the traffic conversion rate is high.
2. Brand reputation
Large platforms like eBay and Amazon can easily gain the trust of users by virtue of their long-standing reputation and reputation.
3. Low threshold
The above points 1 and 2 provide users with a lower entry threshold and make it easy to get started. At the same time, there are also a large number of successful stores as cases, and you can learn from their operating methods to improve your own stores.
Disadvantages
1. Severe homogeneity
Whether it is domestic Taobao or foreign Amazon, the entry threshold has dropped visibly to the naked eye. This has led to vicious price competition and the influx of a large number of homogeneous products. If a product or brand does not have obvious advantages, it is easy to be drowned in the vast amount of information about similar products.
2. Platform rules and restrictions
Large e-commerce platforms have their own rules and restrictions. For sellers, these are risky uncontrollable factors. The eve of Black Friday like now is often the peak period of lockdown. A more typical problem is store anti-correlation. In the previous article, the editor explained this problem in detail. Friends who are interested can click in to learn more.
Independent website:
1. Build a brand and capture private domain traffic
Have complete autonomy in website construction and operation, so they can maximize the Have the flexibility to brand yourself and express your brand vision and story with a custom website. Don’t worry about it being like the platform where users purchase products but find it difficult to remember the store and brand.
2. Accumulate your own users
Compared with the platform, you can better understand customer information, and you can conduct secondary marketing and cross-marketing through customer group analysis.
3. Avoid the rules and restrictions of the platform
Since it is an independent website, you don’t have to worry about the various rules and restrictions on the platform, and you can avoid the costs and risks caused by violations.
Disadvantages
1. There is a certain technical threshold
Although there are many mature SAAS website building tools and service providers, they are still inherently difficult for the operation team. There are certain requirements for the strength of the seller. In addition to technical thresholds, they also have to independently control art, creativity, advertising, promotion, supply chain, logistics, after-sales, etc.
2. The problem of traffic drainage needs to be solved
Leaving the platform also means leaving a large amount of free self-generated traffic. If the problem of off-site traffic diversion cannot be solved, independent stations will be unsustainable. This is also one of the most difficult problems faced by most independent stations at present. Therefore, successful independent website teams have their own unique insights in attracting traffic and marketing.
One of them is to make full use of various resources and tools. For example, veterans will use official plug-ins such as Facebook Pixel to accurately find their core customer groups and deliver tailored ads to them; they will also use multi-browser tools such as AdsPower. The tool solves the problem of independent logins for multiple FB accounts and efficiently operates the personal account in hand.
Summary:
Therefore, based on the advantages and disadvantages of the two, we can analyze that third-party platforms are often more suitable for cross-border novices who are just getting started, while independent websites are more suitable for those who have certain experience. Mature sellers with operational experience and scale, who have their own supply chain and want to build a brand. Of course, many people choose a two-pronged solution of selling goods on Amazon and driving traffic to independent websites. No matter which one you choose in the end, the most important thing is to understand the advantages and disadvantages of both channels, and to understand the development model and direction of your store.