Products are king, and focusing on product quality and customer needs is the most important point in doing e-commerce. The quality of products directly determines the vitality of e-commerce. Imagine if there is a product with excellent quality, which is not only an upgraded version of similar products, but also solves the functional pain points of similar products, then the product will have core competitiveness.
Traditional enterprises that want to enter cross-border e-commerce can be divided into the following three categories: the first category is factories with many years of OEM/ODM experience in various products; the second category is foreign trade enterprises engaged in traditional B2B foreign trade; the third category is enterprises without product production and trade experience, and they just want to get involved in the cross-border e-commerce.
In fact, the first two types of enterprises have accumulated a lot of “big data” in many years of manufacturing or foreign trade experience, such as what standards a certain product is exported with, which country is the main market, etc. These are of great reference value for the choice of target market when engaging in cross-border e-commerce. Therefore, traditional enterprises engaged in cross-border e-commerce, in addition to relying on their own strong product research and development capabilities, can also obtain information for improving products from customer feedback from retail channels and massive Internet information.
1. Increase product categories
As a seller, fixing the categories of products you sell is equivalent to setting an upper limit on the sales scale, because the market of a single category is always much smaller than the market of all categories. This is also the driving force for many procurement and sales (non-production line) sellers to continuously expand their categories.
For these sellers, the second reason for continuously increasing categories comes from the product sales platform. At present, the cross-border e-commerce platforms with the most Chinese sellers are mainly Amazon, eBay and AliExpress, which are actually similar to Taobao. Stores on these platforms will be eager to expand their product categories unless they spend enough time on customer maintenance and store logos to stand out from the crowd. The reason is simple: on these platforms, consumers usually use the search function to reach the product purchase page instead of directly entering the seller’s store website; while consumers are constantly comparing the prices and functions of products on different pages, most people don’t care whether the store sells other products, as long as the quality of the target product is good enough. Let’s take a simple example: suppose a consumer wants to buy a speaker, then he will directly search for the speaker to find a satisfactory product to buy, and whether the store where he buys the speaker also sells clothing is not within the scope of the consumer’s concern.
In this case, under the guidance of the platform rules, the sellers’ sales skills become how to make a better first picture, how to write a better title, and how to improve the store’s reputation. The most important point is how to have more product pages and expose them to customers for them to click. With more products, there may be more product pages, and the exposure rate will also increase. Therefore, adding product categories has become an effective means for sellers to open up the market.
2. Segment the target market
Just like KFC does not only sell fried chicken in different countries, for example, in China, they also sell rice. This is the same as when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When entering a market, you must follow the rules of the game in that market and cater to the habits and hobbies of the players. In addition, a mobile phone may have different network standards in different countries, and an appliance may have different applicable voltages or plug standards and power limits in different countries. Based on these situations, product manufacturers or sellers need to sell products suitable for local consumers to the target market.
Even if the products are exactly the same, different national conditions will lead to different product usage habits and usage experiences. For example, for the same flashlight, in front of diving enthusiasts in Australia, it may be necessary to introduce its waterproof performance more; while in front of outdoor sports enthusiasts in some inland countries, it may be necessary to introduce its drop and shock resistance more. In short, it is necessary to understand the scenarios in which customers use the product. The degree of understanding of the product usage scenarios directly determines whether the sales can directly meet the user’s needs. This is the significance of studying the characteristics of users in the specific target market.