Can you believe it’s already July? Half of 2020 has already passed us by.
Even though places are gradually reopening, it definitely doesn’t feel the same outside.
Fortunately in the e-commerce world, many businesses are still going strong and growing.
Here’s the 80/20 of E-commerce this week:
1) Canton Fair Online a bust?
Did you check out the Canton Fair Online recently? The biannual Canton Fair was forced to go virtual because of the Covid19 Pandemic.
While it sounded like a great idea, the actual implementation left a lot to be desired.
In my experience
- Their website interface was hard to navigate. I tried clicking to find suppliers’ virtual booths but couldn’t “meet” with anyone
- Also the supplier selection was limited and seemed much fewer than what you would normally expect to find at the offline Canton Fair
According to the South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba!) some attendees online commented that product pictures were allegedly photoshopped and not representative of the actual products.
Another user tried “speaking” with suppliers but response times were very slow. One person even reported waiting an hour for a supplier to respond to a question and eventually he gave up and left.
This isn’t that surprising considering it was Canton Fair’s first effort running the show online.
In my experience years of experience in China however, websites are not the best way for companies to deal with customers.
Put it another way – no disrespect but Chinese websites suck… Having lived over a decade in China, I’ve tried using websites from big corporations, small businesses, etc and none of them performed well – at least for me.
That’s why I was not surprised about the Canton Fair online experience.
But not all things are negative…
On the other hand Wechat is definitely the way to go. The ecosystem on Wechat is much more sophisticated than that on the Chinese web. I can book a taxi, order groceries, and even pay my utility bills all on Wechat.
The next Canton Fair scheduled for Oct 2020 is still up in the air now whether it will be offline or online.
I would love to see them trial a Wechat version and I think it would make contacting suppliers dead simple since all of them are already on that platform.
Getting foreign users on WeChat is another story though…
2) Prime day is delayed to the week of Oct 5
According to CNBC, Amazon has decided to delay Prime Day again. Now they are telling sellers to plan for it to be Oct 5.
Better plan your products and advertising campaigns accordingly!
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/amazon-delays-prime-day-until-october-due-to-coronavirus.html
3) Amazon vs Walmart vs Shopify ecommerce wars – survey
Last week I asked you for your vote on who you think will come up on top in the ecommerce wars.
We didn’t get that many responses to this survey (8 total) but in our totally unscientific study – Amazon won in a landslAlso the supplier selection was limited and seemed much fewer than what you would normally expect to find at the off
According to the South China Morning Post (which is owned by Alibaba!) some attendees online commented that product pictures were allegedly photoshopped and not representative of the actual products.
Another user tried “speaking” with suppliers but response times were very slow. One person even reported waiting an hour for a supplier to respond to a question and eventually he gave up and left.
This isn’t that surprising considering it was Canton Fair’s first effort running the show online.
In my experience years of experience in China however, websites are not the best way for companies to deal with customers.
Put it another way – no disrespect but Chinese websites suck… Having lived over a decade in China, I’ve tried using websites from big corporations, small businesses, etc and none of them performed well – at least for me.
That’s why I was not surprised about the Canton Fair online experience.
But not all things are negative…
On the other hand Wechat is definitely the way to go. The ecosystem on Wechat is much more sophisticated than that on the Chinese web. I can book a taxi, order groceries, and even pay my utility bills all on Wechat.
The next Canton Fair scheduled for Oct 2020 is still up in the air now whether it will be offline or online.
I would love to see them trial a Wechat version and I think it would make contacting suppliers dead simple since all of them are already on that platform.
Getting foreign users on WeChat is another story though…
2) Prime day is delayed to the week of Oct 5
According to CNBC, Amazon has decided to delay Prime Day again. Now they are telling sellers to plan for it to be Oct 5.
Better plan your products and advertising campaigns accordingly!
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/amazon-delays-prime-day-until-october-due-to-coronavirus.html
3) Amazon vs Walmart vs Shopify ecommerce wars – survey results!
Last week I asked you for your vote on who you think will come up on top in the ecommerce wars.
We didn’t get that many responses to this survey (8 total) but in our totally unscientific study – Amazon won in a landslide
Stay safe and have a great weekend,
Gary
PS: Can you do me a favor? I’m working on creating new content to help you grow your Amazon and Ecommerce business. I would love your honest feedback on what challenges you have selling on Amazon in 2020 in this short survey here. Thanks!
PPS: If you didn’t take the survey, can you pls hit reply and let me know why? Not interested, survey too too long, etc?
