New Opportunities in Cross-border E-commerce Industry

Amazon's Account Ban Causes Industry Shock

2021 is referred to as a turning point for the cross-border e-commerce industry. Amazon has shut down more than 50,000 accounts, involving about 1,000 companies, with sales privileges of over 600 Chinese brands being revoked. This move is expected to bring over a hundred billion yuan loss to Chinese brands.

During the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, some Amazon sellers posted on a cross-border forum that overnight they had 16 accounts scanned and all were cleared. The suspended accounts were mainly due to Amazon's inability to verify seller account information, or not receiving any listing and sales history information, similar situations have also occurred with other sellers.

On the eve of last year's Member Day, Qingming Festival, and Labor Day, many sellers' accounts were also cleared. Amazon's account clearing during Member Day and holidays has become a common practice. Specific reasons for account bans include being determined as associated scapegoats, long periods without updating activities, infringement, and various other reasons.

The Rise of Independent Sites, the Transformation Path of Cross-Border Sellers

The accelerated development of cross-border e-commerce industry has made homogeneous competition increasingly fierce, and many sellers are beginning to seek transformation. The rise of third-party platforms such as Shopify has provided new development opportunities for independent site model, making self-built e-commerce platforms possible.

According to data, the market size of China's cross-border e-commerce independent sites was only 0.2 trillion yuan in 2016, increasing to 0.8 trillion yuan by 2020. In 2021, the total number of independent sites has reached approximately 200,000, and the market share is expected to reach 41% by 2025. In the next three years, the number of independent site sellers in China will exceed 500,000.

Advantages of Independent Sites

Compared to third-party platforms that are subject to strict regulation, independent sites have higher autonomy and freedom. Through self-built e-commerce platforms, brand owners and small manufacturers can better carry out sales strategies and product innovation, providing more personalized products and services for global consumers.

The advantages of the independent site model include free communication with consumers, higher degree of freedom, increased product innovation efficiency, and providing more personalized products and services, among others.

Future Development Trends

Now, the cross-border e-commerce industry is transforming from pursuing large-scale extensive development to the era of refined operation in brand globalization. The transformation of technology services, user groups, and traffic methods collectively drive the global layout of independent websites.

The popularity of social media and the rise of short videos have prompted consumers to prefer purchasing through the method of 'grass-rooted shopping.' Compared to third-party platforms, independent websites can attract traffic through social media more freely, making it easier to convert consumers to the seller's private traffic pool.

Two Models of Independent Websites

Independent websites mainly have two models: based on SaaS website building platforms and self-built using open-source website building tools on cloud servers. Cloud servers offer higher cost-effectiveness, ensuring better access quality and website stability. By using cloud servers to build independent websites, sellers can have a more personalized website and operate more independently and flexibly.

The Importance of Independent Websites

For international brands, cross-border e-commerce independent websites allow for more personalized operations, achieve secondary conversions, increase consumer brand loyalty, and brand premium conversion rates. However, choosing the right platform is crucial when entering the independent website market.

Current Market Situation

Currently, there is a mix of good and bad website building platforms in the market, with inconsistent fees and service standards. Many sellers who are trying to set up independent websites for the first time are unaware of specific market conditions and can only rely on some 'experience'. They either choose low-threshold and low-cost options, or blindly follow well-known platforms, often resulting in frequent 'pitfalls'.

Issues with traditional cloud servers

Traditional cloud servers are mainly designed around the needs of large enterprises. Developers need to be familiar with their billing system, evaluate software and hardware configurations, and select storage, network, and security products on their own. The business control panel has numerous details, posing high barriers, high costs, and difficulty in choice for small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals.

Tencent Cloud's solution

Tencent Cloud's lightweight application server, Lighthouse, can help sellers set up a ready-to-use, stable and reliable cross-border e-commerce independent site with very low expenses in just 1 minute. Lighthouse is simpler and more user-friendly, targeting small and medium-sized enterprises and individual users, simplifying the user experience of cloud servers and shielding complex technical details.

Features of Lighthouse

Developers only need to select the underlying basic application image to complete the initialization configuration. Pre-installed applications include WordPress, WooCommerce, and BT panel, as well as simple functions such as one-click remote login and remote commands, reducing the construction period from days to less than 1 minute.

Advantages of Lighthouse

Lighthouse provides high-bandwidth traffic package plans that sell overall basic cloud resources, integrating popular open-source software into packages for one-click application deployment. The independent management console supports Tencent Cloud Web Console and Tencent Cloud Assistant Mini Program, enabling convenient operations.

Benefits of Using Lighthouse

For cross-border sellers, using Lighthouse can help to quickly build independent sites based on open-source WordPress and WooCommerce e-commerce plugins. WooCommerce is the preferred website building tool for cross-border sellers, and using Lighthouse can expedite the setup process, saving time and costs.

Independent sites usher in new opportunities

With the gradual normalization of the epidemic, overseas consumption is gradually recovering, and China's cross-border e-commerce export industry is embracing a new round of development opportunities. In the case of serious product homogeneity, independent stations can better fit brand building, upgrade the brand through content creativity, overall visual design, product packaging, etc., and help sellers find differentiated market breakthroughs.

Continuous expansion

Data from iMedia Research shows that the number of independent stations established by Chinese companies overseas has reached 200,000. Tencent Cloud's lightweight application servers have served tens of thousands of companies going global, with more and more enterprises pursuing the operation mode of cross-border e-commerce independent stations, keeping autonomy and control in the hands of the brand.