Transaction volume surges! This cross-border e-commerce platform has another big move

In 2023, China's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports reached 2.38 trillion yuan, an increase of 15.6%, and has become an important driving force for China's foreign trade development. In recent years, the Chinese government has continued to promote institutional, management and service innovation, promote the healthy and sustained rapid development of cross-border e-commerce , and support foreign trade companies to expand sales channels through cross-border e-commerce.

As the general trend, more and more traditional B2B companies are turning to cross-border e-commerce, and new ways of playing and new trends in the industry are constantly emerging. In the context of the evolution of the "AI+ cross-border e-commerce " industry , how can merchants and platforms fully embrace the era of artificial intelligence ? With the gradual rise of customer-centric consumption concepts, how will the supply chain play the greatest role? How can social e-commerce empower cross-border e-commerce B2B? ...

On March 26, the "Vitality and Upgrade" 2024 APEC SME Cross-border E-commerce Summit and Dunhuang Online Group's Annual Merchant Conference were held in Shenzhen. Dunhuang Online Group, which has been deeply involved in cross-border e-commerce for 20 years and has profound industry accumulation, brought a new and professional interpretation of the future trends and growth points of the cross-border e-commerce B2B track.

New changes in cross-border e-commerce B2B : supply chain migration, development of overseas social e- commerce ...

The shift of global commercial procurement to online is an inevitable trend. The scale of the cross-border e-commerce B2B market has maintained a sustained growth trend. DHgate Group has observed that in recent years, the entire industry has begun to see three new changes:

1. The supply chain is dispersing and migrating , and the original large B procurement is moving closer to small B procurement. There are more and more cases of seeking industrial source cooperation on the DHgate platform . Good service and products are the key to promoting the transaction rate.

2. The development of overseas social e-commerce requires a rapid response from the supply chain. The overseas market is not short of mass-market goods, but rather of creative, high-quality and cost-effective specialty goods. The growing number of influencers who bring goods requires more mature B2B2C services - all of which put forward new requirements for Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms to integrate localized supply capabilities, cargo size and fulfillment quality. Sellers also need to respond quickly to customer needs, strategically select products, and quickly turn over orders to adapt to the explosive growth brought about by the influencer economy.

3. B2B purchasing needs are becoming more and more similar to B2 C-end consumer needs . They expect to get the same logistics experience, quality control and service as local e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.

Li Chun, Co-CEO of DHgate Group

Li Chun, co-CEO of DHgate.com Group, said: "AI technology + quality supply chain services will change the overseas expansion landscape in the next decade."

Providing one-stop solutions on the supply side, logistics side, technology AI and supply chain finance , actively embracing the new development trend of cross-border e-commerce B2B , seizing the opportunity to seize the commanding heights of future development, and becoming the focus of cross-border e-commerce platforms. Dunhuang.com Group is one step ahead, and in the next three years, it will focus on promoting consumer experience upgrades, overseas services for brands and carefully selected suppliers, acquisition of B-type customers in new consumption scenarios, optimization of B2B industry vertical large models and AIGC application development, to help merchants accelerate their overseas expansion.

Platform investment upgrade drives consumer experience upgrade

As online traffic becomes more and more expensive, competition among sellers is becoming increasingly fierce. Whoever can attract and retain enough consumers will be the ultimate winner. Industry research shows that user experience has a huge impact on purchasing decisions. After buyers encounter a bad shopping experience, 86% of users will no longer place an order. At the same time, IRP Commerce data shows that the cost of acquiring customers for e-commerce has increased year by year. In January 2024, the cost of e-commerce visitors increased by 19.40% year-on-year.

Improving product and service quality and upgrading buyer experience are the lowest-cost and most efficient performance growth paths for merchants in the current era of unprecedentedly fierce industry competition. Dunhuang.com ’s core strategy for 2024 is to upgrade experience and investment. The platform will continue to work with merchants to make every customer buy more.

Shen Xiaoyan, Vice President of Investment Promotion and Category Operations at DHgate.com

DHgate will ensure improved user experience from three aspects: merchants, products, and fulfillment.

In terms of merchants , we focus on the supply from the source of the industrial belts, establish an offline industrial belt operation center, build an online exclusive channel for the industrial belts, incubate 1,000 powerful merchants in the industrial belts, and realize direct supply from the source of the industrial belts;

In terms of products , the quality of buyer experience will directly affect product stratification. By matching different levels of rights and interests, a closed loop of full-link traffic for high-quality products can be opened up.

In terms of fulfillment , 100% online logistics will be achieved by 2024, and the "X-day delivery" and late compensation products will be continuously enriched to greatly improve the certainty of fulfillment.

In order to provide products that meet the requirements of good merchants, good products and good services, Dunhuang.com has officially launched the "Pick Plan ", which will create 1 million Pick products by 2024 and provide them with a series of traffic gain rights to ensure that the traffic inclination obtained will increase by more than 70%.

Supply chain service upgrades help merchants grasp new trends in overseas expansion

At present, the number of influencers who bring goods is growing day by day . Domestic brands and factories want to open up new incremental markets through social platforms such as TikTok. More and more overseas influencers and content creators also hope to directly connect to the Chinese supply chain to realize the rapid monetization of fans' traffic. Traditional small B procurement and C-type consumer purchasing needs are showing a trend of convergence. Better and faster logistics services, order services and B2B2C services are the key to maintaining the advantages of platforms and merchants.

Ma Yan, Vice President of Platform Operations at DHgate.com

DHgate Group continues to focus on supply chain services, and the social e-commerce platform MyyShop it launched is focused on providing overseas influencers with the ultimate B2B2C service, which can achieve the ultimate time efficiency of 14 days from production, inspection to delivery to the destination country - 10 days to complete domestic production, 24 hours to complete inspection, and 4 days to deliver goods from domestic to overseas warehouses.

According to Dunhuang.com data, the transaction volume of influencers on the platform accounted for as much as 30% in 2023, and this amount will continue to increase this year . Using the influencer resources of the platform, many Dunhuang.com merchants have formed a special operation team and formulated a complete operation system, covering all aspects such as influencer promotion and post-sales. In addition to traditional shelf-based e-commerce, relying on social influencer e-commerce has successfully found a new way to generate revenue. One of the merchants sent out more than 10,000 samples in 2023...

Liu Shuohu, Vice President of Logistics and Supply Chain of DHgate Group

In addition, in 2023, the average logistics fulfillment time of Dunhuang Network Group was shortened by 25%, and the parcel volume increased by more than 60%.

In the past, when customers purchased oversized products such as kayaks, they could not use normal express and truck services. They had to unpack the containers in Los Angeles and find truck companies for transportation. They had to go through the cumbersome process of shipping, unpacking, customs declaration, and truck dispatch. The logistics cost was extremely high, and it was easy to have problems with import customs declaration. DHmogo, a new pan-home B2B cross-border e-commerce platform of Dunhuang.com Group for the European and American markets, can provide customers with a comprehensive logistics fulfillment solution for sea-rail intermodal door-to-door transport, and directly deliver abnormally large goods to customers in one stop, reducing logistics costs by more than 12% while ensuring safe and timely delivery of goods.

AI technology upgrade, the first large-scale model in the vertical field of cross-border e-commerce "Feitian" debuts

The industry is entering an era of high-quality competition. The cross-border circle has sounded the slogan of improving quality and efficiency . The "AI+ cross-border e-commerce " operating model has emerged widely. At present, with the continuous iteration of AI technology, cross-border e-commerce platforms and sellers with differentiated AI service capabilities are expected to further consolidate their market share and achieve industry leadership.

"Feitian" , the first large-scale model in the vertical field of cross-border e-commerce developed by Dunhuang.com Group , uses the data accumulated by Dunhuang.com for nearly 20 years. The number of model parameters reaches tens of billions. It understands the cross-border e-commerce industry scenarios better than general large models and can more effectively solve AI hallucinations and data offset problems.

Liu Wentao, Vice President of DHgate Technology Center

Data shows that after the launch of AI smart product labels and AI short video applications, the conversion rate increased by 53% and 28% respectively; through AI smart translation, the product translation of multi-language sites such as German, French and Spanish was optimized to break the language barrier, which led to a 271% surge in sales. Next, the seller backend will successively launch new features and new gameplay such as AI smart coupons, product title selling point generation, smart dressing, product video generation, product image background change, and smart shopping guide robots, which will undoubtedly comprehensively upgrade the platform user experience and help merchants achieve a significant increase in conversion rates.

The global B2B e-commerce market is vast, and a group of sellers are taking advantage of the trend to take off

According to research data from third-party institutions, the global B2B e-commerce market is expected to reach $20.9 trillion in 2027, and B2B product sales generated through e-commerce will grow by at least 10% annually by 2025. In the United States, the most important market for cross-border e-commerce, Statista statistics show that total U.S. retail sales are expected to reach $7.9 trillion in 2026, of which the share of B2B e-commerce is continuing to rise.

After 20 years of deep cultivation in the industry, Dunhuang.com , the first B2B cross-border e-commerce platform in China serving small and medium-sized enterprises , has long grown into the largest Chinese cross-border export B2B e-commerce platform in the US market and the second largest in the world . In 2023, the number of active buyers increased by 57% and the transaction volume increased by 32%.

Shen Xiaoyan, Vice President of Investment Promotion and Category Operations at DHgate.com

Dunhuang.com platform covers all kinds of goods such as clothing, shoes and hats, furniture, home appliances, etc. , which almost meet all the needs of consumers at home and abroad. Each category contains huge business opportunities. For example, the growth rate of home furnishings and 3C is strong, household sundries have increased by 80% year-on-year, and Chinese brand mobile phones have achieved triple-digit growth year-on -year . In addition, with inflation and global consumption downgrade, the growth rate of "saving" mentality-related categories ( refurbished machines, affordable brands, big-name substitutes , headphones, etc. ) is also very obvious. In addition, the Z generation of young consumers has risen strongly, and young people have a strong demand for new designs, new processes, and new fabrics , which has driven a substantial increase in the sales of quality, life, and self-pleasing products .

Facing different markets, domestic supply chains and small and medium-sized enterprises have different strengths. Combining their own advantages, deepening supply chains and polishing product strength, batches of high-quality merchants on Dunhuang.com have seized the opportunity to take off, truly building their own buyer loyalty and moat. Overall, the average GM share of regular customers of a single store on the platform can reach 54%, and some stores even reach 80% .

At present, whether it is the vast development space of the global B2B e-commerce market or the example of high-quality merchants, they all show a bright prospect for players who want to enter this track. Dunhuang Network Group has been deeply involved in B-type procurement scenarios for 20 years . As a B-end platform with huge competitive advantages , it is bound to drive more merchants to develop together in the future.

Dunhuang Network