The road to the rise of vertical websites

Zhejiang Jin Chinese Jin Jian to start a business 5 years ago, from China's packaging network, resigned after starting a business. He was so ambitious that he was ready to start a fight. Jin Jiancheng founded the global Mining Network, only a few people at first. In the 2007, China's internet industry, like Jin Jiancheng such a plunge into the vertical site of the adventurer is a lot of people, their entrepreneurial impulses are mostly from the same year China's chemical network in Shenzhen A shares listed. In the circle, China Chemical Network founder Deliang story, a lot of people can recite: one day, still doing clothing industry website Deliang to Hangzhou, a clothing fair to do market research, a sudden heavy rain to exhibitors and the audience are poured without a trace. Deliang suddenly think of an old classmate in nearby chemical company work, so went to the rain. He found that the old classmate had a whole drawer all over the country big chemical Company's business card, Deliang, immediately decided to do the chemical industry E-commerce (Electric business channel) website. Since then, the Chinese chemical network members and advertising fees to the pattern of countless vertical web sites to emulate the object.

"A group of entrepreneurs are encouraged by Deliang, vertical sites such as springing up, a time there are tens of thousands of of good, but most of the last is difficult to maintain the survival of the waves, all died." "The largest SME information provider--ming million Vice general manager Zhang Tunming recalls the 2007 China vertical Web site prosperity picture unavoidably sigh," at present, the domestic large-scale vertical website has 5,600, the total income exceeds 25.3 billion. Among them, some vertical website scale is very small, only a few people, although can support oneself, but difficult to have the breakthrough development. ”

China Business-to-business Alliance

2004, in the face of just the rise of the vertical site, Ming million budding to do the idea of E-commerce Alliance, its launch of the "Chinese Product Promotion Alliance" is the earliest E-commerce Alliance platform in China. "The initial idea was simple, to combine all the vertical sites into bigger." Zhang Tunming said, "At that time, the number of joined the site crazy growth, the highest peak reached 8,700." "In fact, the idea of doing E-commerce alliance has been lingering in the minds of Ming million founder Jiguang, as early as 1996, Jiguang launched China's first business-to-business Web site-China Business Information Network, and the" Big E-commerce program "is also the ambitious dream of many internet companies.

From 2004 to 2007, Chinese vertical websites experienced explosive growth, but the levels were mixed, and only 20% survived. "By the beginning of the 2010, the pattern of the entire vertical site has changed dramatically, so we re putting the idea of a vertical website alliance at the heart of the strategy," Zhang Tunming said. "At that time, the determination to strictly control the number and quality of franchisees, the overall plate control around 1000, this is the first one. ”

In early 2010, when Ming-Wan found Jin Jiancheng's global Mining network, the latter had developed into China's largest mining vertical site. Jin Jiancheng very readily agreed to join, in his view, not only to join the alliance to earn a certain annual fee, but also to get free advertising, the deal is very cost-effective. The global mining network immediately became one of the first 200 vertical alliance websites of the Chinese Business-to-business Alliance. April 2010, the Chinese Business-to-business Alliance officially launched, to join the vertical web site set the threshold is in the industry first three, PR value (page level technology) and information update quality website. Next, Ming in case of family to talk, the camp gradually expanded, such as the industry ranked first Chinese hardware network, China Machinery Web site, the former 1.5 million times, registered members 100,000, and the latter average daily view of more than 5 million people.

"At present, China's Business-to-business alliance has covered more than 69% of the national procurement staff and 76% of corporate bosses, the goal is to do e-commerce in China, the main distribution center." "The Insider of the alliance said.

Holding a regiment to keep warm

Done nearly 10 years of internet marketing Xue in Tianjin Dagang operating a instrumentation company, the beginning of the company joined the Chinese Business-to-business Alliance. Now the company has no offline sales staff, face-to-face sales have all changed to E-commerce. "I've been doing this for almost five or six years, and many private enterprises in Dagang are learning about us," he said. "Liu Cohe said.

According to Tsinghua University professor Chai Yutin, in the past year, small and medium-sized e-commerce application scale is growing rapidly, in the future, more SMEs will choose the industry, professional web site platform. Ministry of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises E-commerce Research Group survey shows that 2009 E-commerce scale of 1.99 trillion yuan, an increase of 20.3%, of which the choice of vertical site of small and medium-sized enterprises accounted for 13.9%.

But at the same time, in the past year, the main advertising-for-profit vertical web site is facing a painful transition, as the total number of advertisers dropped, capital on these vertical site profit expectations are declining. "It's too hard and sometimes it's better to sell." A vertical website insider. The vertical website has come to a crossroads, the business model that relies on the specialized domain advertisement as the main profit source has already faced the serious challenge. Great Wall Lubricants A distributor said: "The domestic lubricant industry only the site has dozens of, it is difficult to determine which one to vote." At the same time, we need to integrate upstream and downstream partners, so down, involved in the site will be hundreds of, put ads more difficult to operate. ”

The business model of business-to-business alliances relies on product search, providing business opportunities, building communities to integrate upstream and downstream relationships, and driving customer access through search. Differentiate the crowd, form industry groups, provide access services. And most of China's small and medium enterprises are industrial enterprises, they need more professional vertical website, to find the information and products needed. The problem now is that there are too many vertical websites. Zhang Tunming said he believes that the future of simple information-type vertical Web sites need to hold a group of heating, because only the provision of information will cause the user group too small, advertising value is low, it will be difficult to appear in previous years as the explosion of growth. As a result, these vertical sites should try to extend to other areas, such as working with search engines or carriers, and so on.

And the Liu of the Sadie Group thinks, the vertical website to the electronic Commerce transformation process, should use the advanced Internet technology more, if through SNS more joins the customer interaction, will the user more firmly adhesion on the website. For example, in shopping online, users can post, mutual exchange of information, such a site is not only an E-commerce site, but also the integration of SNS technology exchange platform.

"For industry-class vertical portals, the key is to expand the ecosystem through the joint or the support of distributors, and to form as complete an industrial chain as possible." In this field can also be divided into two categories: there is a dealer in itself, there are sources, can obtain more customers through E-commerce, expand their own ecosystem; there is also a way from the website to the dealer, such as comments on the net, is the first user to the enterprise extension. Who is the most integrated in this field, who is likely to do the most. Peng, vice president of Northern Lights, said that in this case, the vertical site alliances is an inevitable way out.

Flow of information, logistics and capital

In addition to the vertical union of the group heating, it is inevitable to subdivide the industry. This is evidenced by the famous Dunhuang net in the field of business-to-business.

In many foreign trade business-to-business Web sites, the Dunhuang network to stand out by virtue of the implementation of the transaction after the completion of the system charges. And the Business-to-business platform, including Alibaba, collecting membership fees is the main profit model, the Dunhuang net play is completely different. For example, an American hardware store wants to buy a batch of water pipes, usually in the vicinity of the state first to choose the main water pipe purchase, but in the financial turmoil in the environment, the hardware store finally found in the Dunhuang online satisfied with the products and placed orders. A few hours later, it received detailed parameters and electronic contracts from the Dunhuang web about the plumbing products. After confirming the contract and paying according to the network payment method provided by the Dunhuang net, the rest is waiting for the goods to be delivered. This is the Dunhuang network "transaction service-oriented business-to-business" business model, with the traditional focus on information dissemination, the dissemination of information to maximize the use of "information service-oriented business-to-business" has a great difference.