Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2022-08-30 Origin: Site
As a large country spanning the Eurasian continent, Russia is at the forefront of my country's 'One Belt, One Road' strategy due to its unique geographical location. It is also a major emerging market in the field of cross-border e-commerce today.
On June 6, 2022, the Russian E-commerce Association announced that from January to April this year, Russian e-commerce sales increased by 50% compared with the same period last year, reaching 1.5 trillion rubles (equivalent to 179.7 billion yuan), accounting for 11.8% of Russia's overall retail sales. According to data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China-Russia trade in goods reached US$146.87 billion in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 35.9%. China has remained Russia's largest trading partner for 12 consecutive years.
Affected by international conflicts, a large number of brands have announced their withdrawal from the Russian market, and e-commerce platforms such as Asos, MatchesFashion, Yoox and iHerb have announced that they will stop shipping in Russia.
As a result, a large number of Russian consumers turned to domestic local e-commerce, resulting in a surge in sales of local e-commerce in Russia and the supply of many commodities exceeded demand. At the same time, Russian e-commerce platform Ozon Global stated that the number of Russian consumers purchasing overseas products online increased sevenfold year-on-year in April. It can be seen that factors such as high consumer demand, strong purchasing desire, and insufficient supply of local goods have greatly promoted the development of cross-border e-commerce and brought business opportunities to China's foreign trade export companies.
According to the research of MPSTATS analysis service agency, Leading Sales Research Institute learned that between February 27 and March 10, the price of Wildberries, a local retail platform in Russia, increased. The first obvious reason was the increase in energy and raw material prices caused by international conflicts. As we all know, both Russia and Ukraine are the world's largest suppliers of ore raw materials. This conflict has had a greater impact on the European metal smelting industry, leading to severe shortages of metals ranging from aluminum to zinc, which has led to an increase in commodity prices.
Secondly, Russia’s local light industry is underdeveloped and relies on imports all year round. Various factors such as the epidemic have caused the prices of local commodities to rise. Among them, the price of household appliances increased significantly, with an increase of 10.4%. At the same time, the Lingdong Sales Research Institute learned that Russian users have a greater demand for dishwashers, blood pressure monitors, electric toothbrushes, vacuum cleaners, etc.
my country's manufacturing industry is developed, and there are huge supply chain advantages in daily necessities, textile light industry, small household appliances and other industries. They are not only high-quality and low-priced, but also can be produced quickly to meet the needs of large-volume procurement or retail in the market. China's foreign trade export companies can seize this business opportunity and develop cross-border e-commerce business.
Leading Sales Research Institute has learned that many foreign e-commerce platforms and brands have withdrawn from the Russian market one after another, and Amazon has also stopped serving Russia. In March, international payments Visa and MasterCard also withdrew from the Russian market, resulting in a huge gap in the overall Russian e-commerce market.
According to a report from the Russian E-commerce Enterprises Association, Russia's cross-border e-commerce shopping volume dropped by 55% year-on-year in March 2022 to 12.1 billion rubles. This is closely related to the recent trade measures of Western countries with Russia.
In this vacuum period of the e-commerce market, the Russian market is in great need of new foreign trade companies to supplement it. China's foreign trade export companies can seize this opportunity, take the initiative, build independent cross-border e-commerce stations, and bring Chinese products to Russia.
As an indispensable and important part of the cross-border e-commerce ecosystem, independent websites are an important bridge for Chinese companies to enter the Russian market. Focus Lingdong has an independent website building SaaS service system that can help cross-border sellers easily build independent websites and provide solutions for cross-border sellers' DTC brands to go overseas.
Social networks have become an important channel for business promotion. They are content-led and continue to accumulate fans, thereby achieving traffic conversion and ultimately achieving the goal of closing transactions. Business promotion through social networks can reduce advertising costs and utilize resources.
Therefore, to do a good job in cross-border e-commerce business, you need to understand the social platforms commonly used by Russians. Currently, the social platforms commonly used by Russians include VK, Instagram, OK ru, and Facebook.
VK (formerly Vkontakte) is an online social platform in Russia. It is one of the European social platforms and one of the Russian social platforms. Its functions are similar to Facebook, so some people call it 'a clone of Facebook'. VK has a large audience, with more than 90 million monthly active users, and a large proportion of high-income groups.
Instagram is a social application software owned by Facebook, which can provide free online picture and video sharing, and the posts are highly interactive.
OK ru is a friend-based social platform favored by older social media users.
Facebook is an online social platform, but its influence in Russia is relatively small.
Therefore, the Leading Sales Research Institute believes that Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies conduct social media marketing on commonly used social platforms in Russia.
Russian search engines include Yandex, Google, Rambler, Mail, webalta, etc. But the most commonly used search engines by Russian users are Yandex and Google. Yandex is one of the local search engines in Russia. It surpasses Google in the market share of local search engines in Russia, and 90% of Russians use it to search.
Focus Leading has been committed to providing search engine optimization and search engine advertising services. Focus on the Leadong website building SaaS platform and its B2C website building platform LeadongShop. Through mainstream search engine optimization such as Google and Yandex, it improves the weight of the website page, accurately locates the country, region, hobbies, and localized characteristics of the customer group. It adopts a flexible advertising strategy to obtain high-read, high-click, and high-conversion five-star pages. It quickly reaches the top of search results, wins business opportunities and orders, and quickly increases Russian users' recognition of Chinese brands through a large number of brand exposures.
Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies must first solve problems such as website establishment, language, payment collection, and logistics when launching independent cross-border e-commerce business in Russia.
In recent years, DTC brands going overseas has become a development trend in the cross-border industry. The construction of independent websites can help enterprises realize cross-border retail business.
Focus Lingdong inherits the precious essence of Focus Technology Co., Ltd. that has been accumulated in the field of foreign trade e-commerce for more than 20 years. It focuses on cross-border e-commerce independent website building SaaS platforms to help cross-border sellers tap customer value in subdivided industries. It provides one-stop cross-border e-commerce independent website construction and operation services that integrate marketing planning, brand design, website construction, content construction, user experience optimization, and exposure and traffic to help companies enter the Russian market.
There are language differences between China and Russia, resulting in poor communication and thus hampering cross-border e-commerce business. At the same time, trade between China and Russia has developed rapidly in recent years, which has created a huge demand for website building in minority languages.
Lingdong Cloud Platform has more than 100 website building services in small languages. The small language marketing websites developed by it provide an integrated platform for many foreign trade companies with full terminal device support, global language support, full backend integration, comprehensive search engine optimization, full marketing promotion docking, and omni-channel entrance promotion.
Payment collection is an essential part of e-commerce activities, and bank card payment is currently one of the most commonly used payment methods among Russians. However, when Russians consume online, the frequency of using electronic payments is increasing year by year. Currently, the EU has removed 7 Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system, and the PayPal payment system has also suspended Russian services.
Russia's electronic payment system also includes QIWI Wallet, etc. QIWI Wallet is a payment service provider in Russia. Its services are similar to China's Alipay, so some people call it 'China's Alipay'. At the same time, since the end of 2018, Yandex has accessed WeChat payment method, and Alipay can be used for payment in Moss and St. Petersburg.
The independent SaaS platform of Leading Sales supports Russia's QIWI Wallet payment system, China UnionPay, the international version of Alipay and the international version of WeChat, and can collect payments without any hindrance.
Logistics is an important indicator that sellers need to understand before entering the Russian cross-border e-commerce market. At present, FedEx and UPS in the United States have stopped their services to Russia, and Germany's HHLA Hamburg Port and Warehousing Logistics Company and operator Eurogate have suspended services to Russia. In addition, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Denmark have all stopped cooperation with Russia, but the logistics from China to Russia are basically not affected.
Local logistics companies in Russia include CDEK, DPD, etc., among which CDEK is one of the Russian logistics companies.
The SaaS platform of Lingdong Sales Independent Station supports Russian logistics companies such as CDEK, DPD, Russian Fengshun, and Russian Huanyun, helping sellers to deliver goods without worries.
Focus Leading has certain strength in search engine optimization and can bring exposure to enterprises through independent website search engine optimization. Leading Sales Research Institute provides you with some specific methods on how to do search engine optimization for your reference.
As a well-known basic SEO indicator, web page loading speed is the most easily overlooked because our personal perception is difficult to detect the subtle difference between one second or even a few milliseconds.
The loading speed of web pages greatly affects the visitor's user experience. If the web page loading time is long, the website's 'conversion rate', 'bounce rate', 'average visit duration' and other behavioral data will have a negative impact, thereby reducing the website quality score and affecting the website ranking.
(2) Increase the number of backlinks to the website
Search engines generally rank these web pages by determining which URLs are more valuable and authoritative. The number of backlinks can effectively improve the authority of the website and the click-through rate of the website, thereby affecting the website ranking.
Backlinks are very similar to word-of-mouth. For example, if we open a coffee shop, the more people recommend our products, the better our reputation will be. The same is true for backlinks. The more external links, the more recognized other webpages are for the value and content of our webpage.
(3) The content of the page is clear and clear
Searchers may see text, video, pictures and other types of page information. If this information is not what the searcher needs, it will be worthless to the searcher. Therefore, as a robot that answers questions, all the search engine has to do is present the most relevant content that the searcher needs on the results page for the searcher to choose.
However, thousands or even more results may appear during the search process. When our website content occupies more seats on the results page, and puts keywords in the title or tags, and the displayed page content matches the searched words, allowing searchers to pay attention to the website content, search engines will think that the content of our web pages is more relevant and more valuable to searchers.
(4)RankBrain system
RankBrain is an artificial intelligence algorithm system. It helps search engines provide users with relevant results or relevant answers.
RankBrain will also continuously learn and update data, so search engine search results will be updated at any time according to data changes, providing searchers with higher-quality answers.
For example, on the results page of a certain question, a lower-ranking URL provides higher-quality content than a higher-ranking URL. RankBrain will adjust the result page to improve the ranking of web pages with higher-value results and demote pages with lower relevance.
Engagement metrics are data on how searchers interact with a website in search results. This data includes the following:
① Number of clicks
② Time on page (the time a visitor spends on the page before leaving the page)
③ Bounce rate (the percentage of users who choose to leave after viewing only one page)
④ Pogo-sticking (search engines visit multiple different pages in order to find the results of a question)
When it comes to page rankings, engagement metrics signal to search engines that ranking adjustments need to be made. Generally speaking, a website with a higher ranking will have higher engagement, and higher engagement search engines will also improve the website ranking. Engagement indicators have a certain impact on rankings, and search engine rankings will also impact engagement. The two are cause and effect.
Focus Leading has certain strength in social media marketing and can help companies carry out social media marketing. Leading Sales Research Institute provides you with some specific methods on how to do social media marketing for your reference.
(1) Create content according to the platform
Each social platform has different user groups. Therefore, we need to understand the communication methods and preferred forms of different channels and different types of audiences on the platform. A topic that is very good on one platform does not become popular on another platform. This is because the content format set by the platform and the user access format are different. Cross-border sellers must understand the content formats of different platforms, and try not to cross-post the same content of the same type on different platforms.
(2) Use the 10:4:1 rule
The 10:4:1 rule is a linking strategy, that is, if we plan to publish 15 posts, 10 of them should link to other people’s content, 4 should link to our own content, and the last 1 is our hard or soft advertising. In short, the 10:4:1 strategy is to first publish relevant content to attract the audience, and then guide the purchase. First, gain user trust, and then conduct marketing conversion.
(3) Pay attention to the relationship between the brand and the audience
Focus on the relationship between your brand and your audience rather than the number of followers you have on social media. Many marketers pay great attention to data such as the number of fans, likes, comments, and shares of content or videos. However, these data cannot bring direct conversion. Sellers should pay more attention to the audience’s participation and the relationship between the brand and the audience.
(4) Personalization
A humane and personalized brand image can enhance brand credibility and make people interested in participating in communication and interaction. Regularly sharing interesting and engaging posts can increase the real value of the brand on social media. Some brands will also share interesting videos of the company team or chat with the public, which is also a means to increase their influence.
(5) The call to action must be highly instructive
After the content is published, sellers hope to bring actual conversions. A reliable CTA call-to-action can persuade users to click and register for our link or website. If you want to create a more effective CTA, sellers need to consider the purpose of the CTA, create a sense of urgency, and attract attention at the same time.
The above is the content shared by the Leading Sales Research Institute about the Russian cross-border e-commerce market.
Under the new situation in 2022, Russia will become a new blueprint for the development of cross-border e-commerce. On the one hand, huge consumer demand, rising local prices and serious market gaps promote the development of cross-border e-commerce for Chinese companies; on the other hand, the website building tools, minority language services, payment and logistics services, search engine optimization services and social media marketing services provided by Focus Leading can help Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies enter the Russian market.
