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How does Alibaba.com differ from the others?
Alibaba.com looks like a marketplace to most companies, but it is actually very different from other online platforms dedicated to B2B sales due to two main reasons:
Alibaba.com works just like a trade fair, with buyers visiting sellers’ at their exhibition booths. These booths are represented in the platform by mini sites, built in landing pages personal to each seller account that can be customized and personalized with information on products, certifications, and all contents useful to make a great first impression on potential business partners.
Sellers will have to put close attention to the design of their mini site product pages as well, including commercial information proper to any B2B platform, such as MOQ and price range to generate business connections.
How do Sellers & Buyers come together?
On Alibaba.com business connections and interactions between buyers and sellers can happen in two ways:
These two different interaction methods correspond to two different set of skills and resources from the Seller’s part: on one hand digital marketing, for SEO and product page optimization, as well as investments in adv, on the other, the personal communication skills of the Seller in perceiving, creating, and nurturing fruitful business connections, as well as creating trust with the buyers online.
Is this platform right for your business?
Alibaba.com serves many industries and product categories, especially Food & Beverage, Agriculture, Beauty & Personal Care and Apparel, and offers market access to a huge number of countries given to the wide array of buyers present on platform.
As of today, the platform goal is just to help companies from around the world to come together and generate business opportunities. For this reason, it functions more like a trade fair rather than a marketplace, leaving not only negotiations to the companies but also complete management of the operations necessary to enable international trade, such as logistics and payments.