How Russian online shopping to deal with Amazon

Despite the fact that the general situation in the Russian economy has been recently described in the main words “stagnation” and “slowdown”, the domestic e-commerce market remains a tidbit for many. Over the past year, it grew by 26% to 510 billion rubles, and, according to some experts, by 2015 it can be expected to double. All this makes the Runet an important goal for large foreign players like Amazon, eBay, Asos and Alibaba. How can domestic online stores resist such monsters of online retail?

Problem?

The fact that Amazon finally decided to come to Russia was announced back in April 2013. Then Forbes reported , citing its sources, that the store’s office in Russia would be headed by Arkady Vitruk, the former general director of the ABC-Atticus publishing group. The company was expected to officially launch by the end of 2013, but this did not happen. However, the cancellation of these plans was also not reported.

Meanwhile, eBay is much more active in the Russian market ( even strategic bombers are already being sold there ). The company not only spends significant funds on advertising (including on TV), arranges promotions, but also invests in technical means that will help to gain a foothold in the Russian market. In particular, it is planned to resort to machine translation technologies to solve localization issues - expensive experts are hired to work on this area.



ASOS has been shipping goods to Russian users for quite some time (a Russian version of the site was launched to facilitate the shopping process), but difficulties may arise with the introduction of new customs rules in this area. On the other hand, it can become a kind of incentive for further penetration into Russia.

Once all these events can turn into a puzzle that will mark a new era of Russian ecommerce - competition not only with foreign stores sending packages to the Russian Federation, but with monsters of world retail who came with one goal - to conquer this market.

How to resist domestic online stores in such a situation and maintain a chance of survival?

Assortment expansion

One of the most important aspects in attracting and retaining customers online store is the range. The wider the choice - the more purchases are made, the more time is spent on the choice, for which the visitor can have time to show different products. As a result, online store turnover is growing. This is proved by the experience of many large retailers - for a reason, the same Lamoda on its website posts information about thousands of products.

At the same time, expanding the range is, in fact, easier said than done. An online store that wants to do this will immediately encounter a lot of issues, the main of which are the availability of warehouse space and the amount of working capital that can be used to purchase goods. If you add to this the need to create ecommerce content (descriptions and photos of new products), which also costs a lot of money, then everything becomes even sadder.

On the other hand, you can start working on order., acting as a virtue, advertising a product that lies in the warehouse of the supplier. This is a profitable scheme - the supplier only provides information on the remains of the goods, he gives their description and photo, and the store only needs to advertise and sell the goods, only then ordering its delivery. An excellent scheme, if not for one “but” - suppliers that are willing to work very little, but in order to really expand the range (and not just add a couple of names of Chinese smartphones) they need at least a few.



To solve such problems, there are special b2b portalswhich, on the one hand, combine on one platform those suppliers that are sufficiently equipped to work on order, and on the other hand, provide online stores with an interface for accessing the system, thanks to which you can download data on balances in your account In the warehouses of specific suppliers, reserve goods.

As a result, the online store serves as a "showcase" that attracts the buyer (moreover, descriptions and photos of the goods are also provided by the portal), and the goods are stored in the warehouses of suppliers, which entails a reduction in costs.

Automation

Even if a lot of products are presented on the website of an online store, this does not mean that you can give up on UX , usability and not do automation. It has long been proven that product recommendations drive sales. Large retailers spend a lot of resources on creating their own engines, but for a small store it is much easier to use the existing recommendation system - in RuNet several companies provide such services.



Another aspect of the work of an online store that can be automated is logistics. Not all stores can afford to independently arrange delivery within the country, and the online trading market in Russia is growing, mainly due to buyers from the regions. But if there is a demand, then it must be satisfied and earn on it.

There are also special services for automating logistic tasks in RuNet, for example, MultiShip purchased by Yandex, which allows online stores to organize delivery in Russia. Most of the largest logistics services in the country are connected to this service. You can work with them without a separate agreement and additional technical integration. All calculations go directly through the service, which is extremely convenient.

And of course, in a number of automation tasks, the need to build an analytics process - where and who came from, what products I ordered, etc. It is necessary to constantly work to improve the site and, as a result, increase conversions.

Conclusion

Despite the fact that at the moment there are still not all the major players who have laid eyes on the Russian market, they have come to it, ultimately this is inevitable. And then small and medium-sized online stores will have to compete not only with their foreign colleagues (the new customs rules play into their hands here) as well as with Ozone, Yulmart and similar domestic companies, but with recognized leaders in the global e-commerce field, which have gigantic experience, authority and practically inexhaustible resources.



Then the situation will be similar to what happens in the same America when Walmart comes to a new district - difficult local times come for local small shops and they either die or find new niches and opportunities for optimizing their business. There are no other options.