ОСТАННІ НОВИНИ
Text: Dmitri Lisitski, CEO at Allbiz, E-Commerce International Centre
Only those business models are successful in the Ukrainian part of the Internet that help solve specific customer-related problems. For instance, it is traditionally believed that selling furniture on the Internet is difficult. Personal contact is important for buyers of such products, as furniture is a major purchase you can’t easily bring yourself to. However, this segment is growing. Niche cleaning services for houses and apartments are also experiencing upsurge.
The Internet is not just about retail sales. It is suitable for B2B segment to conclude deals between companies. Of course, the specific nature of the business is that the deal is still concluded offline, and the transaction also takes place in an offline mode. But trading platforms may give a key component — access to a new customer. Many young companies understand today that it is necessary to start a new business with an online component present from the very beginning. This is the cheapest and the most effective way to attract new customers. But the main recipe for a successful online business is the analytic approach. It is necessary to perceive every step; otherwise your actions may become costly and inefficient.
The Internet and e-commerce development has already prompted even such a conservative branch of Ukrainian economy as agricultural business to begin mastering online to promote its products and gain access to foreign markets. Our farmers receive a lot of orders from customers abroad. The major buyers of their products are Russia, Poland, Moldova, Belarus and Turkey. In recent years they receive increasingly more orders from Czech, Romanian, Georgian, the U.S. and Greek companies. For example, domestic grain and legume crops are bought by Poland, Czech Republic, Moldova, Georgia, Spain and Russia at Allbiz site. In addition to former USSR countries, technical crops are purchased by Algeria, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Ukrainian technology products are demanded by foreign farmers. Equipment for livestock, poultry farming, beekeeping and fish production is eagerly bought by Russian, Belarusian, Moldovan, Polish and Kazakh companies. They are also buying fertilizers and plant protection products. The planting stock, seeds and flowers are in demand in the U.S., Vietnam, Poland, Turkey and Romania.
Online helps increase sales not only on external, but also on local market. In Q3 2015 the number of orders received by companies trading at Allbiz increased by 70% compared to Q2. It also applies to expensive technical products such as agricultural machinery. This year, the equipment for cultivation and processing of grain is in the highest demand. It accounted for 22% of all online orders for machinery products. The second place by order numbers was shared by soil cultivation machinery and agricultural sprayers. They accounted for 14% of all orders. Ukrainian manufacturers successfully sell spare parts for agricultural machinery, attached implements, trailers and semi-trailers online. The overall share of these products is 27% of all orders.
The interest of Ukrainian farmers for the promotion of their business online continues to grow. In Allbiz Agriculture section, 19,200 companies are registered. Since the beginning of the year their number increased by 8.5%. During the economic crisis, our farmers are expanding the range of tools to promote their goods online and experimenting with new ones.
Our trading platform offers them a new payment system: they pay only for actual orders placed by visitors. Access to new customers’ contacts and tools that help understand their needs is one of the most effective ways to increase sales, so such services are popular all over the world. Last year Allbiz launched Orders PLUS service. Corporate users pay only for opening a prospective customer’s contact information, not for visits, page views, or referrals. Approximately 15 000 orders have been already placed in the Agriculture section. Overall, since the beginning of the year there were over 130 000 orders at Orders PLUS placed by customers from different countries.
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