Webmaster’s Shop: Challenges of Changing Online Trading – Quest Guide

SEOnews editor

On March 25, the Yandex Webmasterskaya online conference was held. In the section “Steps for the growth of an online store”, a report was made by Fedor Virin (Data Insight). He told how retail is changing, how it affects companies and what new competencies it requires from teams.

Offers to see the report. Below the video you will find a text transcript.

The Challenges of Changing Online Trading: Quest Guidelines

Fedor began his speech by saying that the simple years of online trading are over. A few years ago there was a linear development: technologies, processes. Internet commerce grew at a staggering rate of 20-25% per year. It was like this until 2019, and then everything broke. Big networks and big money went to the Internet. The linear development of tools and technologies stopped working.

3 big streams that are happening in the e-commerce market:

the market becomes turbulent due to the advent of big money – this is when several players invest hundreds of millions of dollars a year to get tens of percent share in this market. Big money is a battle of big players for the capitalization of a company. For many businesses, there is no room left in this situation;
new players appear on the market: manufacturers / brands, bloggers / influencers, startups that have become online stores. Until recently, there were only two types of players on the market – companies that grew from offline to online, and companies that grew from online to offline;
the market for 2020 has grown by 1.5 times. The pandemic has changed the situation in retail; it will not return to the past.

There are several challenges to online trading right now.

1. New sales channels

New sales channels have appeared: marketplaces, social networks, ad services.

One of the main problems that sellers who come to marketplaces face is that their products are not being sold. According to Fedor, the most demanded competence on the market now is the competence of a specialist in working with marketplaces. But there are no such people yet, they need to be educated within companies.

Social media, in particular Instagram, is now another huge sales channel in some niche categories (flowers, wedding dresses, photographer services, etc.). The introduction of the “Buy” button increases this channel at times.

Avito is becoming another major player in the e-commerce market. According to Fedor, Avito is now one of the most interesting tools for online trading, because it can give sellers an impulse for rapid growth.

Cross-border trade is another important channel. A company that operates in the local market cannot be compared to one that operates in the global market. Entering other markets is difficult, but necessary for those who want to grow.

What to do with this challenge

Small companies Fedor advises hiring as many people as possible to develop new channels. Such specialists will quickly pay off. Also, the budget should include funds for experiments. You must always keep in mind: if you use the same sites, “they will end tomorrow, but you don’t have any new ones.” The experiment budget should be between 20 and 50% of the total advertising budget. It is the same with new sites – from 20 to 50% of all seller’s efforts should be directed to them, otherwise the store will not grow.

For large companies implementing changes is a long and complex process. There, the problem is solved by allocating a separate team within the business, which is subordinate to the C-level manager. Such a team is not built into internal communication, it is only engaged in conducting experiments.

2. New formats for brands in retail

Brands want to work directly with consumers. They do it badly or not at all, but they are moving in this direction.

The next step for retail and brands is vertical / own brands.

What to do with this challenge

Main competencies for brands the ability to work with influencers and competencies in advertising in social networks become.

The main competence for shops becomes the ability to work with contract manufacturing.

The scariest thing that is happening now is that the speed of innovation is becoming critical. The winners are those companies whose time to market is weeks.

3. New formats of logistics

Logistics remains the most expensive process. All logistics are based on IT. The weaker the company’s IT, the more risks and losses in logistics.

The most important problem that is now observed in online commerce is the lack of knowledge by stores of the logistics tools and technologies that are on the market.

4. Lack of qualified personnel

Offline retail mostly faces a shortage of unskilled staff. Online retail needs developers because there are many processes to run at the same time.

What to do with this challenge

Use outstaff developers and business analysts, hire newbies and grow team leads inside the online store.

Interesting from Webmaster 2021:

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The Yandex.Vzglyad service now has a tool for quick interface tests

Yandex.Webmaster now has a service that shows duplicate titles and descriptions

Webmaster: how to analyze the user’s journey so as not to lose customers

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