What is Foreign Trade Independent Station? Foreign Trade Independent Station Review, Features

An independent foreign trade website is a website with an independent domain name and autonomy on the Internet. Simply put, an independent website does not rely on a third-party platform, such as a company's official website, which is designed and operated by the company itself. This is an e-commerce independent website.

The importance of independent website

In the first half of 2017, the total sales of cross-border e-commerce exports was 4.91 billion, of which 2.58 billion came from independent station platforms, accounting for more than 50%. In addition, Amazon brand registration requires the provision of a brand independent station.

According to the shopping habits of European and American consumer markets, it is a good choice to build an independent website. Because when they buy things, they not only look at the quality of the product, but also care about the qualifications of the company. Before they place an order, they first look at the product reviews, then look for the brand name on the search engine, look at the product display status of the independent website, or look at the relevant reports of the brand, and judge the qualifications of the brand. If the reviews are acceptable and the brand is trustworthy, they will place an order to buy. Therefore, European and American brand companies have many independent websites.

Advantages

1. Build corporate brands: Through independent website domain names or apps, you can continuously accumulate corporate brands, which can not only enhance consumer trust in your products, but also lay the foundation for brand empowerment.

2. Realize data security and added value: Keep 100% of the data in your own hands to achieve data security and added value. Currently, third-party platforms only open part of the data, and many core user data are not open to sellers. However, on independent sites, all data belongs to the enterprise. In addition to controlling the security of the data, the enterprise can also realize secondary development of the data and continuously tap the value of the data.

3. Avoid restrictions from rules: With high autonomy, the platform can avoid restrictions from rules. Since the platform is self-operated, it is very flexible and there is no need to worry that changes in platform rules will affect operations. At the same time, the premium space for goods can be increased through product design.

4. Reduce costs: The transaction commission cost is low, which reduces the transaction commission or annual fee paid to the third-party platform. At the same time, the service fees on the payment side are also relatively low.

5. No price comparison: When users come to the independent site, they either buy or leave. The process is very simple. The independent site is your own, and no other merchants will compare prices with your products on your independent site.

6. Security: There is rarely any worry about the independent site being blocked, which is a huge advantage compared to the platform.

Disadvantages

1. The process is too complicated: To build an independent website, you first need to have a website, then learn how to optimize it, then do keyword research and layout, then fill in the content, and then promote it. Without professional participation in this process, it is difficult for ordinary people to accomplish it.

2. Professional talents are needed: Because the process is too long and there are many professional issues in each link, the company needs professional people to manage and evaluate.

3. Trust: Compared with platforms, a big problem with independent sites is the trust issue. Users may feel easily deceived.

4. Long period of time to see results: Due to the complicated process, each path needs to be done by a dedicated person. More importantly, the independent station has to find traffic on its own, so the period of time to see results is very long.

5. The core difficulty of independent stations is actually operation and traffic acquisition. This is also the reason why many cross-border e-commerce companies cannot afford to build independent stations, or even suffer losses. The operation of independent stations is different from that of third-party platforms. The operation of third parties is based on the regulations of the platform and the attributes of the platform users. It is the operation of goods. But independent stations start from scratch. The consumer groups, platform attributes, user shopping experience, etc. that they are facing are all designed by the company itself, which means that the company has to operate both the platform and the goods, which puts very high demands on the company's operations. Traffic promotion is the most expensive part of independent stations. The continuous expenditure of traffic costs is the reason why many independent stations cannot survive.

How to solve the traffic problem of independent station

The core indicator of traffic value lies in conversion rate. Without a good conversion rate, no matter how much traffic enters the website, it will be wasted. Therefore, to do a good job in traffic promotion:

1. The first step is to do a good job of traffic diversion. There are many ways to divert traffic, such as Facebook commercial advertising, Google ADWORDS, KOL, information flow, remarketing, DSP, SEO, etc., but different traffic sources have different "quality" of traffic. It is necessary to match the "platform-product-traffic attributes" to determine the optimal traffic source.

2. The second step is to convert traffic, which can be divided into display volume-click rate-order rate-repurchase rate, and finally form a transaction. Optimization should be done in every link, from display method, picture design to payment design, the user experience should be done well, which is a test of refined operation.

Product Recommendations

From the perspective of several independent websites that have done relatively well, such as Global Easy Shopping, Shein, and Banggood, they are basically vertical platforms for clothing and electronics. On the one hand, these products are high-frequency products, electronic products are low-profit but standard products, and clothing is a high-profit non-standard product category; on the other hand, vertical categories are used as the main focus to avoid category dispersion and facilitate supply chain management.

How to do it (suggestions)

It is recommended that sellers should adopt omni-channel and select appropriate platforms + independent sites based on actual conditions.

In other words, you can do Amazon, but you can't give up building an independent website. The two should be combined. If users come to your independent website, then we can give the user the choice of shopping. If you want to drive traffic to Amazon, you can set the price of the independent website higher. If you want customers to place orders on the independent website, you can lower the price on the independent website. Then collect and accumulate users (EDM, remarketing, discounts...).