In the past two years, with the end of the platform bonus period, many sellers have begun to pay attention to independent stations.
Many sellers choose independent stations because they have suffered losses on third-party platforms. To be a third-party platform, you always have to follow the platform policy. If you are not careful, you may be closed and accumulate a lot of inventory, but independent stations can avoid the interference of these external factors and accumulate their own private domain traffic in the long term.
So, which channels are beneficial to sellers?
What are the advantages of independent stations and platforms?
Today, we will analyze the differences between the two in depth
Third-party platform operation
Advantages:
Getting started is relatively simple, product uploading and basic operations are simple and easy to use.
The platform generally has a large amount of traffic, and the platform itself will also divert traffic, such as Amazon’s bestseller, and as a hot product, it has its own huge traffic.
Generally speaking, the purchase intention of platform buyers is clear, and the conversion rate is generally high;
The competitive environment is relatively transparent, through internal ranking, evaluation and sales forecast, that is, operating according to the same rules, and at the same time providing convenience for studying and learning excellent sellers, you can learn to imitate the details of other stores to improve yourself.
Disadvantages:
Because the threshold is relatively low, there will be a lot of people entering the market, and price wars and homogenization are serious. Analogous to Taobao, Taobao’s threshold is particularly low, so the diversity is getting less and less, but cross-border platforms have language barriers;
The platform is subject to more restrictions on compliance with the rules, there are many uncontrollable factors, and the interference of multi-platform strategies or rule changes is greater.
It is difficult to settle its own users, difficult to control its own brands and customers
The traffic dividend is getting smaller and smaller. With the influx of sellers, especially the increasingly worse environment of domestic e-commerce, they all turn to cross-border platforms, and the traffic on the site has declined significantly.
The commission ranges from 8% to 15%
There are situations such as follow-selling and malicious screen swiping.
Closure of stores, product infringement, complaints.
Independent station operation
Advantages:
Autonomy is in their own hands, no commission is required, the seller can completely plan, design and market their own independent site according to their own ideas and intentions, there is no product restriction, even if it is a borderline or slightly infringing, it can be done to meet the personalized needs of different sellers;
It is easy to accumulate its own users, be able to grasp its own customers, and facilitate marketing and cross-marketing of old customers.
Most platforms find it difficult to understand customer information and can only communicate through online platform sites.
For example, establish a membership system, member classification, marketing strategies at different levels, different discounts and coupons for members at different levels, and promote secondary marketing and other related services by analyzing the shopping habits, payment habits and other portraits of different members.
Suitable for self-built brands. When the seller’s independent station users and volume reach a certain level, there will be more other ways to play, such as retail vs. wholesale, wholesale vs. consignment, front-end vs. supply chain, factory vs. front-end, etc.
Having an independent platform and a complete system makes buyers feel different. Even company-level official websites will have great advantages in exhibitions. Most people have domain names of Alibaba and Amazon websites. Once their business cards say their official websites, they will immediately become the focus.
Disadvantages:
High requirements for the operation team, in product selection, programming, art, creativity, advertising, promotion specialists, etc.
You need to rely on yourself to control the flow. Don’t let untrusted people control it. When flying orders, if the flow is taken away, you may not know it!
The duration of the hot sale can be relatively short. For example, the hot sale cycle of Amazon can reach 3 years, and the independent station can only last for 3 months at most. The seller must continue to develop new hot sales to ensure the input-output ratio.
The traffic cost will definitely become more and more expensive over time. This is a consensus.
So for 2B customers, the first thing to do is to seize resources.
For 2C customers, you must come up with your own methods as soon as possible.
At present, the traffic and conversion rate of independent stations are definitely not as good as those of Amazon.
But the acquisition and customer accumulation of independent stations are unmatched by third-party websites such as Amazon and eBay.
This is very similar to Tmall and JD.com in China.
In other platforms, you cannot leave the platform. If you leave, you will lose a lot of things.
If you are self-operated, then the supply chain, market, after-sales service, and logistics need to be fully responsible by yourself.
In this case, the investment will be greater, but customer loyalty will far exceed that of third parties.
In fact, whether you choose a platform or an independent station, they each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Only by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the platform and the independent station, if conditions permit, it is best to use them together, use Amazon to sell things, and use the independent station to attract traffic.
In the long run, the operation and development of independent stations are more beneficial.
Independent stations have absolute autonomy, which is more conducive to brand establishment and sustainable development in the later stage. To a certain extent, higher profits can be achieved, and follow-selling can be avoided.