Vietnamese ecommerce businesses are welcoming transformational opportunities amidst the rapid development of technology, market, consumer, and major investor presence. However, for outstanding and sustainable growth, in addition to seizing opportunities, businesses need to build a comprehensive ecommerce ecosystem. Therefore, a best-finish of the ecosystem in general and its components, in particular, is the foundation stimulating businesses, markets, and user interactions.

So, what are the components of the ecosystem? How should the business develop the ecosystem in line with its business strategy?

What components are included in the ecommerce ecosystem?

The ecommerce ecosystem is an interconnected community implementing all interactions and connections of human organisms, social organisms, information technology and applications, and services to provide value and effectively operate the components in the ecosystem. (Based on the concept of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Van Hong)

The ecosystem components are operated through consistent mechanisms, policies, and laws to create a secure data interchange system, ensuring the rights and duties of businesses and consumers.

The main components:

• Ecommerce infrastructure system includes hardware (servers and devices), software (services/tools for managing and analyzing), networks, and facilities forming the basis for the remaining components and ensuring that all e-commerce processes run smoothly and efficiently.
• Ecommerce platform is a software application to build and manage all the activities. Today’s well-known ecommerce platforms can be mentioned as Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Haravan, Wix,…,
• The development component provides services and solutions for ecommerce websites, systems, and processes. In Vietnam, some of the notable ecommerce service and solution providers may include SmartOSC, Isobar, SECOMM,…
• Marketplace provides an environment and all services to support ecommerce, allowing commercial activities between plenty of sellers and buyers. The leading ecommerce marketplaces in Vietnam can point to Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo,…
• The payment includes networks, systems, and devices processing all ecommerce transactions. Currently, jointly with the payment, card types (domestic card, Visa, Mastercard,…), payment gateways (OnePay, PayPal, …) or e-wallets ( Momo, ZaloPay, ..) have been developing in Vietnam.
• The shipping system includes the entire process of managing and distributing goods from the warehouse, packaging and delivering to customers. Typically shipping providers are Giao Hang Tiet Kiem, Giao Hang Nhanh, ViettelPost, J&T, Ahamove,…
• Accounting software helps manage all data on ecommerce invoices, sales revenue, and cash flows. The birth of e-invoice software such as e-invoice, MISA meInvoice, FPT.eInvoice,… has maximally supported accounting processes.
• Marketing supports promoting brands and products, and simultaneously approaches and personalizes customer experience through strategies, channels, and tools.
• Management system uses the resource and operational processes software to enhance the seamlessness and performance of the entire ecommerce system. The most popular management systems are ERP, CRM, IMS, POS, OFM, etc.

How has the ecommerce ecosystem developed and perfected?

Stage 1: The fundamental ecommerce ecosystem

In the 1st stage, while customers are not been aware of their purchasing needs, the ecommerce ecosystem has fundamentally formed, beginning to approach, educate and stimulate consumers’ concern about brands and products.

Basic components (4/9): Infrastructure, Platform, Marketplace, Marketing

• Infrastructure: essentially participating in the ecosystem, mainly using desktop and network devices, data systems, and facilities to support operating other components inside the ecosystem.
• Platform: building website on simple platforms, including simple ecommerce interface and functions.
• Marketplace: implementing sales on the ecommerce marketplaces to run sales-efficiency experiments, increase brand popularity, and approach a wide range of users for nurturing potential customers.
• Marketing: using social media, advertising, content, email,… to increase views, and traffic and build awareness of brands, products, and services in the potential customer mindset.

Highlight components: Marketplace, Marketing

Inchoate components: Development, Payment, Shipping, Accounting and Management

Stage 2: The basic-operating ecommerce ecosystem

Customers become aware of their needs at this stage. As a result, the ecosystem comes into operation to approach potential customer needs.

Basic components (8/9): Infrastructure, Marketplace, Platform, Development, Marketing, Payment, Shipping, Accounting

• Infrastructure: well-developed, ensuring all the seamless processes and interactions among components.
• Marketplace: maintaining sales operation with constantly renewed programs and events to attract potential customers.
• Platform: operating the end-to-end system, continuously updating new versions to enhance the increasing performance.
• Development: developing and operating the ecommerce system and continuously improving system productivity.
• Payment: perfecting the payment processing system and fully integrating payment gateways.
• Shipping: perfecting the shipping system and partnering with shipping providers to deliver the first orders.
• Accounting: completing the accounting and financial system to manage all ecommerce transactions
• Marketing:
  • Increasing web-display frequency on search engines to increase brand and product identification and attract more potential targets.
  • Continue promoting social channels, advertising, content, email,… to improve the experience, education, and conversions for target customers.

Highlight components: Marketing, Payment, Shipping, Accounting

Inchoate components: Management

Stage 3: The advance-operating ecommerce ecosystem

The ecosystem enhances operation with many essential functions to directly navigate customers’ searching and buying considerations, thereby increasing the customer funnel conversion.

Advanced components (8/9): Infrastructure, Development, Marketplace, Platform, Payment, Shipping, Accounting, Marketing

Maintaining components: Infrastructure, Development, Marketplace, Accounting

Highlight components: Platform, Payment, Shipping, Marketing

• Platform: investing in developing the ecommerce system with a dedicated platform to operate and process complicated functions optimally.
  • Developing new functions to optimize user experience: interface renewal, promotion features (pop-up, banner,…), customer service (live-chat, chatbot),…
  • Optimizing the “Call-to-action” function and gathering emails on the website, at the same time implementing sale-off, and promotion programs to increase conversion
• Payment: integrating more payment methods to diversify the checkout experience, from COD payment, and internet banking to VISA, Mastercard, or e-wallets.
• Shipping: optimizing the packaging process, improving delivery speed by partnering with transportation providers or building an in-house delivery team, in addition, optimizing operational processes for instant order fulfillment.
• Marketing:
  • Website: concentrating on blog content and optimizing product detail content.
  • Continuously maintaining Social Marketing performance
  • Focusing on the email channel to nurture and stimulate potential customers.

Inchoate components: Management

Stage 4: The optimal-operating ecommerce ecosystem

When customers transition to the decision-making stage of purchasing, the ecosystem maximizes effectiveness in all processes and operational components, simultaneously focusing on developing conversion functions through continuous improvement and innovation of marketing components.

Optimal components (9/9): Infrastructure, Development, Marketplace, Platform, Payment, Shipping, Accounting, Marketing, Management

Maintaining components: Infrastructure, Development, Marketplace, Platform, Payment, Shipping, Accounting

Highlight components: Marketing, Management

• Marketing: focus on ecommerce marketing strategy
  • Implementing email plans to remind abandoned carts to stimulate potential customers constantly
  • Maintaining customer service using email channels to gather customer feedback and reviews while using products
  • Promoting loyalty programs with discounts, accruing points, membership cards,… to increase return customers
• Management: 
  • Integrating ERP software to manage data, human resources, and processes more seamlessly
  • Synchronizing Website with ERP and CRM to optimize operational processes and increase customer funnel conversion

Stage 5: The complete ecommerce ecosystem

All the ecosystem components are complete and effectively interact with each other. In addition, the ecosystem is directed towards operating maintenance to support product experience, customer retention, and return-customer stimulation.

Optimal components (9/9): Infrastructure, Development, Marketplace, Platform, Payment, Shipping, Accounting, Marketing, Management

Maintaining components: Infrastructure, Marketplace, Payment, Shipping, Accounting, Marketing

Highlight components: Platform, Development, Management

• Platform: using customer reviews to improve the quality of products, services, and system functions
• Development: providing solutions and developing specialized functions for a much more complex ecommerce system
• Management: seamlessly operating and managing all data, processes, and resources among website, ERP, CRM, and POS systems

Barriers Facing the ecommerce ecosystem in Vietnam

Although the ecommerce ecosystem in Vietnam is proliferating, it is being hampered by substantial barriers.

Outside barriers

Legal issues in ecommerce

In comparison to the general Vietnam market, ecommerce would be a relatively new business. As a result, the legal framework for ecommerce remains inadequate and disorganised. In which tax, security, and information authentication in e-transactions, intellectual property rights, etc., have not been adequately safeguarded by legal means.

The disparity between the legal framework’s perfection and the faster market change makes ecommerce challenging to control or at threat of unhealthy growth.

Circular No.47/2014/TT-BCT on the management of ecommerce websites, particularly, contains guidelines on the ecommerce business registration process and procedures. However, their controlling method has not been carried out properly, resulting in fewer registered businesses than actual statistics.

Therefore, most of the legalities of starting ecommerce business have not been verified, leading to transaction fraud and other fraud. More serious are domain misappropriation and spoofing by hackers to business counterfeiting, causing severe damage to businesses and consumers.

This shows that the current legal framework needs to enforce more specific steps to prevent attacks from cybercrime.

Consumer confidence

One of the significant barriers is the reality that occurs throughout the purchase process. For example, product and service quality issues, typically the quality assurance process (for counterfeits, poor quality products), transaction frauds (credit account takeover), and shipping (fraudulent goods exchange in packaging and shipping),… all have a direct impact on customer interests and the healthy, sustainable growth of the ecommerce ecosystem.

Investment barriers

Another significant barrier is the competition and investment budgets among businesses. In particular, data security requirements and infrastructure investments are putting financial pressure on existing ecommerce businesses. As a result, the ecommerce ecosystem is primarily controlled by the expansion of marketplaces and international businesses investing in the Vietnam market.

 Inside barriers

Although the current number of ecommerce ecosystem components is fully completed, the uneven development level makes interactions and operational processes sporadic and challenging to achieve optimal growth. The challenges have mainly come from:

• Ecommerce infrastructure: The limitations of infrastructure, facilities, and capacity to access technology in rural areas create notable gaps compared to urban areas, affecting market coverage in Vietnam.
• Logistics: Logistics infrastructure has fallen behind ecommerce growth. The inequitable synchronization between logistics services and the lack of technology are still significant barriers for almost all SME logistics businesses in Vietnam.
• Payment: Cash payment (COD) accounts for a high percentage, 60%, of transactions in the entire e-payment market share. This creates more risk when parcel refusal and failed deliveries make the order fulfilment process more costly and time-consuming.

Besides, the most significant barrier is the lack of a strong connection among ecosystem components to bring unifying and synchronous ecommerce solutions. The current connections are commonly between marketplaces and shipping providers or digital banking/e-wallets to provide economical and intriguing solutions for consumers.

However, that seamless and unified connectivity has not yet evolved to maximize business interactions in the ecosystem and among businesses in the ecommerce market.

1. How customers experience products in traditional shopping

Traditional shopping refers to the way customers directly buy products at stores, markets, or supermarkets. Since that trading model has emerged, the ecommerce experience about products has often originated from direct product-observation and -interaction. A consumer can hold and touch the item directly, feeling its characteristics, such as hardness, softness, size, or even color. They can quickly try one dress and exchange another one for a suitable size. This model has several benefits for shoppers:

• Guarantee of product quality: Customers have the opportunity to interact and observe the product directly before buying. At that time, customers can choose a product with complete packaging, favorite colors, or delicious fresh food, or a skirt of a suitable length.
• Time-saving in return and exchange policy: The traditional purchase is rooted in the amicable sale principle. Of course, the buyers will be partly responsible for goods quality due to the opportunity to touch and inspect them before buying.
• High-satisfaction level: Customers tend to be more enthusiastic and get more exciting feelings when using products. They will not put too much doubt on the reliability of the product.

The benefits of experiencing products with traditional models will have many changes in online shopping models. Although customers will enjoy the convenience of freely choosing a suitable item in a wide range of goods at more bargained prices and also experience regular promotions, the limited interaction with the product pre-buying has reduced the convenience as the traditional model did before.

2. AI invention penetrating process to optimize the ecommerce experience

With the rapid development of the digital age, customer demand is a critical factor that is a priority in every development strategy and orientation. In particular, businesses also invest more in modern technologies to optimize consumer-product interaction, and AI applications are a useful option for ecommerce experience optimization process.

Within the Ecommerce field, AI aims to the product experience, contributing to the efficiency of the business’s customer-centric orientation. The AI application has been integrated into search engine systems to support the creative and effective searching process with features such as “search by image” associating with material, shape, size, or brand. The display technology also invests in improving product interaction, shortening the distance between online and offline models.

Moreover, AI supports the ecommerce industry as a knowledgeable online assistant. This technology can bring two-way benefits when supporting both user experience and data analysis about user behavior trends.

Those are the two factors motivating brands to invest in developing more modern and efficient AI platforms towards a smarter, automated model for perfect customer experience.

3. AI trends for smarter ecommerce experiences in the digital age

Since applying to the ecommerce industry, various AI technology types have contributed to significantly changing consumer habits and purchasing decision-making processes, ultimately optimizing the convenience that customers received from online shopping. However, AI tools are continually developing and improving every day to enhance the user experience, and they also regularly stay updated with many popular trends.

Product 3D view

The 3D formats have been practical to enhance more excited customer-product interactions. Customers can observe different product aspects or even try placing a small decoration item at any house location to check the product’s suitability. This invisibility generally creates exciting experiences to increase interaction making customers more interested in the product.

Some interior brands have been using 3D scanning technology to perfectly experience interior space and architecture. Based on a provided video, customers can enjoy AR via remotely 3D virtual reality technology.

Mobile virtual reality fitting room

That AI ability can be a perfect solution when a store has too many customers visiting at the same time while the fitting room is overloaded. Customers can scan product images and try them out on a mobile phone screen. This technology is already available on Lacoste’s app, supporting customers to try their favorite shoes freely via their smartphone.

The development of 3D and virtual reality technology has proved that nothing is impossible in the digital age. AI development is also a considerable solution for ecommerce barriers, mainly interacting with products when buying online to optimize ecommerce experience.

In the future, as many expert predictions, AI can be a modern and popular trend to optimize the ecommerce experience correctly. However, businesses also need to consider the needs of target customers to have appropriate applications and increase the number of potential customers and loyal customers in the long run.

1. Breakthrough ecommerce barriers with customer-centric orientation

Customer-centric orientation can significantly improve the problems that consumers are suffering from shopping online. This orientation is correctly a long-term process to breakthrough ecommerce barriers, follows the business for a lifetime, creates brand values as a result, and other measurable values, such as highly-appreciated customer feedback, increasing the number of products sold.

At first glance, customer-centric orientation looks quite general and tends to imply intangible values. However, the “customer-in-center” mindset can generate both cognitive and measurable values. Before it can create measurable values, the business needs to have a clear awareness and specific purpose of this orientation, maintaining it as a unified business culture.

To get started, be customer-friendly in all aspects—organizations at first need to analyze the customer community’s needs and insights. Customer feedback, including limitations from existing products/services on the market, service quality, promotion campaigns, is the foremost factor to consider. Proactively getting customer feedback on products and services is all valuable information; thus, organizations will have time to complete both product systems and customer service.

It is an equally critical factor that improving user interface can produce oriented rather than product-centric. Many businesses assumed that the “good wine needs no bush” developing style would naturally create attraction itself. Indeed, this style is not wrong; however, it is still not powerful enough in the long run. Proactively taking care of customers, receiving the limitations of existing products are the fastest steps to improve producing more appropriate products. Products tailored to the needs make customers perfectly comfortable in the user experience.

2. Set sales goal to prevent cash-flow issues and breakthrough ecommerce barriers

To breakthrough ecommerce barriers effectively, one of the critical things is to set clear business goals. It is difficult to predict future fluctuations; however, proactively create realistic goals and prepare everything to achieve them. Businesses can start from their monthly goals about the cost, revenue, or market share achieved, then set out tasks to achieve the goal instead of declaring the whole year’s goals with an incredible number that no one could ever reach.

Besides, sales goals can give great support to an organization’s financial problem. In particular, the cash-flow factor should not become the only weapon that businesses abuse to invest endless-capital for ecommerce races. The fact has proved that enormous capital investments have made a large number of SMEs miserable. Meanwhile, ecommerce giants have received sponsorship from well-known global ecommerce organizations. They have been ready to run.

3. Strengthen product policies to breakthrough ecommerce barriers

The ecommerce market needs to tighten product policies to deal more effectively with fake or low inferior quality products. This reason is the most significant issue without any practical solutions, and it also comes from both sellers, ecommerce enterprises, and consumers. Vendors are for-profit; businesses cannot control the stores; consumers prefer low prices despite good-quality; all of them are potential factors making the issue of fake goods, counterfeit goods more widespread.

To temporarily deal with the issue of inferior quality goods, it is necessary to focus on developing return and exchange policies and accompanying preferential policies. Businesses should quickly recall counterfeit or error products if the customer has received the product, give back customers an authentic one, and may come with a discount voucher for the next purchase. This reaction shows the attitude of the proactive settlement of businesses, as well as keeps customers calm.

On the other hand, to maintain the product and brand values in the long term, there should be a permanent policy in product quality assurance, product censorship policy before officially selling products online—for example, the ecommerce website TIKI.VN has done well when ready to commit a 111% refund if found counterfeit, simultaneously also completed the product quality assurance process before officially opening for sale on the website.

Additionally, other ecommerce businesses also make commitments to supply genuine products much more firmly. However, this is just an effort from one side; ecommerce businesses can only fulfill their role and work to ease the issues, not the most radical solution because counterfeit or inferior quality goods had originated from when traditional trading existed. In terms of a holistic approach, significant efforts from every consumer are essential, in other words, personal consciousness. This effort is quite complicated and needs to come first from the family and society’s educational process to form consciousness in human growth and personal development.

A high sense of quality will be the most comprehensive solution, whether from consumers, sellers, or businesses, which can then create more weighty policies that maximally protect consumers’ interests not only in ecommerce but also in all other economic sectors. Comprehensive policies will significantly eliminate inferior quality goods step by step to breakthrough ecommerce barriers.

Customers, cash flow, and product quality are the keys to determining the success of an ecommerce system, also affecting many other aspects. Therefore, to do breakthrough ecommerce barriers is to come first from the leading foundations and create synergy for removing existing barriers.

1. Quality of goods – one of the barriers to the ecommerce industry

The variety of products published on every ecommerce website is always diversity-guaranteed to meet almost the market needs. However, ensuring the criteria of goods quality has been an unresolved question up to now, becoming one of the barriers to the ecommerce industry. The burning issues of low-quality products, counterfeit consumer goods are eventually uncontrollable and exist in the market. Those effects can be derived from a couple of factors that can be analyzed from the perspective of the sellers, ecommerce enterprises, and consumers.

The seller’s consciousness

The low-quality of goods has come from the traditional trading model operated offline, and merchants inevitably take responsibility in that case. Although consumers can contemplate the offline model seriously, the product quality is still sellers’ responsibility and control. Uncontrollable-quality sources become a critical issue when merchants provide goods with a profitable price to get much higher returns by selling fake or inferior quality products with very attractively “low” prices. In the flourishing process of online business, those unsolved issues have the chance to spread across the online-offline frontier and lose control.

The perception of ecommerce enterprises

When the quality issue emerges, e-firms are the first to be impacted. Those types, namely B2C and C2C, act as middlemen for merchant support to sell products on ecommerce exchanges.

Consequently, those enterprises restrict the source of inferior products and entirely rely on consumer feedback to address the issue in a very passive way. The quality barrier prevents enterprises from gaining consumer trust to maintain their loyalty.

The buying awareness

The spread of low-quality goods partly comes from consumer awareness. In the e-market, there is still a consumer group preferring inexpensive or on-sales items to other high-price and authentic products to save the living cost or try a variety of products. They tend to choose low-price items neglecting the origin and information while never complaining about the lack of product-clarification. Low-awareness behavior gradually contributes to the growth of uncontrollable-inferior products and as a result, the development of barriers to the ecommerce industry.

The growth of poor quality products depends on many factors and the responsibility of sellers, businesses, and consumers for the sake of a healthy and trustworthy market.

2. Buying habits – one of the barriers to the ecommerce industry

The need to change buying behavior from offline to online is also one of the barriers to the ecommerce industry in Vietnam. To certainly clarify, take a look at three fundamental behavior-levels happenings when consumers make a purchase.

The first group is pure traditional shoppers, who tend to see and touch what to buy. They wholeheartedly believe their eye-process can ensure more quality and conformity of the product. Therefore, they never trust any online items because of unmanageable-value. As a consequence, changing the buying habit of this group is the most challenging requirement.

The second group is hybrid buyers combining traditional and modern buying styles. That hybrid group tends to select-for-best. For instance, they can quickly add a book or ten pens to their cart because it is more convenient than buying at the bookstore. However, they will directly go to a clothing store to choose an item that fits their size and ensure the fabric quality. That behavior similarly happens when they buy shoes, bags, or other fashion items. In brief, hybrid customers have changed their buying habits in the most popular fields over the years. Hence, there will be much higher requirements for unique products such as fashion items, technology devices, motorcycles, and cars in some cases.

The last group tends to complete online shopping. They take advantage of online shopping as a convenient and speedy tool, helping them save more time during the shopping process. However, this group still has some challenges: maintaining trust-worthy and credibility to upgrade target consumers to loyal customers.

While the increasing mobile-usage has somewhat raised the online shopping demand, the user-habit transformation is a worth-factor that needs better solutions in long-term strategies or it will be one of the barriers to the ecommerce industry. In particular, the significant element affecting ecommerce user-habit is the story of quality-expectation and the reliability of online stores.

3. Barriers to the ecommerce industry in Vietnam include long-term investment

Long-term productive resources in the ecommerce market are also one of the considerable barriers to the ecommerce industry. For this purpose, the ongoing need includes warehouse management, branding & marketing, payment & shipping processes. Consequently, all of the elements should require enterprises to keep the non-stop funding on continuous losses.

Along the same lines, small and medium-sized enterprises can not afford long-term competition versus the ecommerce giants in the market. For instance, international names like Alibaba, JD.com, or Amazon create an enormous distance for other SMEs to overtake.

In general, the capital investment race invisibly makes large ecommerce businesses more robust and extensive. Meanwhile, it oppositely generates more barriers to the ecommerce industry in Vietnam due to the lack of sufficient capital in the long term. Following this, depending on each organization, there will be many issues when operating an e-business. Therefore, it is necessary to have the most comprehensive outline and meticulous ecommerce study to set the oriented developing goals.

1. The developing process of ecommerce businesses in Vietnam

To discuss the establishment of ecommerce businesses in Vietnam, firstly, it is necessary to look at the development of the website systems. Years ago, the websites primarily displayed information on the Internet for easy access from audiences. Gradually, it has become a competent tool in creating brand identity, improving reliability, and supporting businesses to collect one-click testimonials from their visitors.

Over time, businesses want to increase productivity by selling products while saving costs and facilities. On the other hand, customers also need to buy products faster without directly going to the store. That is the reason leading to the birth of ecommerce.Today, the flash development of ecommerce allows businesses to easily access the market while increasing the opportunity to maximize user experience. In Vietnam, the ecommerce market has only been growing in recent years but has made a breakthrough with prominent brands like Shopee, Tiki, and Lazada.

2. Highly-recommended platforms should apply for ecommerce businesses in Vietnam

Magento

Magento has excellent functions, which highly create flexibility and adaptability, accommodating all sizes of ecommerce businesses in Vietnam. However, Magento is not very friendly for beginners. Instead, the platform has a massive range of features that are adaptive for almost the user-community.

Advantages

• Optimize search engines and security
• Include a variety of features supporting the sale and management of products
• Support multiple currencies, languages
• Integrate most of the payment gateways
• SEO-friendly

Disadvantages

• Only suitable for users having a basic understanding of code and web systems
• Require payments for extensions

Woocommerce

WooCommerce is not an autonomous platform to build an ecommerce website. It is a type of plugin running on WordPress. In other words, WooCommerce will optimize ecommerce functions for the website community based on the WordPress foundation. Thus, enterprises can start an online development plan in a more accessible and faster way.Utterly different from Magento, WooCommerce is more comfortable to use, especially suitable for beginners. Plus, it also possesses enough extensions handling almost basic tasks from product management to payment methods that can bring a website to the top ecommerce business in Vietnam.

Advantages

• Provide free editions
• Quickly access to extend features and customize the store
• Have strong support from a large user community

Disadvantages

• Advanced features often require extensions
• Extensions may need the other sub-extensions to support

Shopify

Pick up enormous scores from users; Shopify possesses the functions to integrate SEO, supporting the website system work, and customize fluidly. It also provides services based on the SaaS model with the main control center.

Advantages

• Convey a considerable range of themes that can be selected depending on each category
• Support users 24/7
• Integrate ads and payment gateways via Visa, Mastercard, and other payments

Disadvantages

• Require payment when using
• Request to use the available URLs
• Not support domestic payment gateways yet
• Not support Vietnamese yet (High-consideration if businesses plan to develop ecommerce businesses in Vietnam)

Haravan

Haravan is an open platform allowing easy website creation with similar characteristics to Shopify and WordPress. The platform possesses various features providing more conveniently supportive sales-management tools, especially the multi-channel sale on ecommerce websites, namely Lazada, Shopee, and Tiki.

Advantages

• Allow users to develop a variety of functions
• Have an inexpensive cost
• Support the Vietnamese language

Disadvantages

• Require payments when using some of the extensions
• Run as a local platform that is highly suitable for SMEs in Vietnam

3. Web design is the key to kick-off ecommerce businesses in Vietnam

The website system is a prerequisite to be maintained, updated regularly and continuously because it is the only interface connecting businesses and customers. For ecommerce businesses in Vietnam, designing a web system plays a crucial role in contributing to the success of an online business or its failure. This design phase is usually performed by the UI/UX team responsible for both visual and user experiences on the websites.

With the experience of developing ecommerce websites, SECOMM developers can apply most of the current platforms to meet our partners’ needs, especially ecommerce businesses in Vietnam. We always value the quality of our work and provide the most appropriate solutions to the occurring issues. Promptness, timeliness, and quality are the consistent goals that we always aim at in the process of operation.

The growth of e-business in Vietnam

One of the factors stimulating e-business growth is the high demand for the internet, in which Vietnam is the top-country in terms of internet users. Therefore, online selling has a fast-growing rate with impressive recorded statistics and contributes to the country’s market economy in many ways. The following is the large-scale blooming of e-business in Vietnam.

Besides, online businesses can easily access the market while just using about 1/10 of the marketing channels’ cost. Low advertising costs have increased the popularity of online sales, which grows not only on the domestic scale but also globally.

Since 2016, e-businesses in Vietnam have undergone significant breakthroughs by cooperating with international partners, making businesses participate in the e-business market, and marking the premise for the outstanding growth of e-businesses at present.

Opportunities for e-business in Vietnam when Amazon enters the market

The Amazon penetration into the Vietnam market has come up with new opportunities for a huge community of e-business in Vietnam. The country has a strong potential for traditional handicrafts, which are considered unique and ideal for selling online. With that strength, Vietnam will promote domestic products to international markets at competitive prices.

Under the support of Amazon Global Selling, Vietnam brands can integrate with international e-markets with significant growth, which is a step toward the digital economy in Vietnam.

Vietnam has expertise in producing goods, so Amazon Global Selling’s participation meaningfully contributes to accelerating the market-expanding process for both international partners and consumers. That contribution can boost the working process for Vietnamese businesses and the ecommerce market share of the economy.

Challenges from the penetration

Besides wide-open opportunities, e-business in Vietnam quite faces significant challenges from the Amazon advent. Firstly, Amazon makes domestic ecommerce in the face of fierce competition. The Vietnam market had welcomed Alibaba previously.

Nevertheless, it was not overly ambitious because large enterprises had their proven capability in this field, namely Shopee, Tiki, Sendo. However, the long-term race invisibly extends a boundary for SMEs to cross over or get close to the same level.

Secondly, publishing products in the international ecommerce field increases expenses. The more giants join the ecommerce game, the more earnestly and competitively the race of spending money becomes. However, plenty of e-businesses focus on the spending process of selling 1 billion dollars of goods without having correct forecasts on long-term expenses. In the long run, over-spending will require more investment, affecting the bottom-line growth, namely the businesses’ net profits.

On the other hand, the origin and quality of goods need to be guaranteed. Regarding the current ecommerce market in Vietnam, fake or counterfeit products have not been solved thoroughly up to now. As a result, selling on Amazon will face restrictions if businesses can not control their goods’ quality. Simultaneously, it requires policies from the government to promote ethical businesses within the Vietnamese economy.

In general, Amazon has created a new breeze for e-business in Vietnam. It plays a vital role in stimulating market competitiveness, improving product quality, and user experience for great customer-oriented support. However, to do that, businesses need to have the right strategies in addressing challenges and difficulties to shorten the cooperation process with both partners and international customers.