The ecosystem of export cross-border e-commerce is composed of three main parts: independent websites, cross-border e-commerce platforms, and traffic platforms. The biggest difference between independent websites and cross-border e-commerce platforms is that independent websites do not have traffic themselves, and they need to constantly divert traffic from various traffic platforms through paid or free methods to ensure continuous input of traffic; however, cross-border e-commerce platforms have their own traffic, which means that as long as sellers upload products to the platform, they have the possibility of placing orders. This also explains the existence of the group of “professional distributors”. It is unimaginable for independent websites to place orders by “crazy” distribution.

The traffic platform is divided into two parts: social platforms and search engines. Readers should be familiar with search engines, which are also an important source of traffic for independent websites. Among them, search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) are compulsory courses for independent website sellers. However, social platforms are gradually surpassing search engines. In recent years, social platforms represented by Facebook have become increasingly popular, gathering a large amount of traffic with more purchasing power and lower prices. Based on the traffic dividend of social platforms, an e-commerce model based on social platforms was born, which we call social e-commerce.

Based on the above content and the current actual situation of the export cross-border e-commerce industry, a simple group division of export cross-border e-commerce practitioners is made: cross-border e-commerce independent station sellers, cross-border e-commerce platform sellers and overseas social e-commerce sellers.