Recently, Ali’s Q3 financial report was released, and international retail revenue increased by 26%.
Not only is Ali's overseas e-commerce business growing rapidly, but more and more Chinese companies have also begun to go overseas. However, under the complex and ever-changing international political and economic environment, companies going overseas must not only deal with the differences in infrastructure in different countries, take into account data compliance in different regions, but also pay attention to cost and efficiency...Facing the above challenges, we have a stable Efficient global technical capabilities are critical.
Since 2016, Ali has successively acquired overseas companies such as Lazada, Daraz, and Trendyol, and Ali's global business layout has initially formed. Since then, it has officially invested in globalization technology as an important technical strategic direction of the group. After years of evolution, it has gradually developed into a relatively independent technical system within the Ali Group.
Recently, we invited an internal technical team to systematically showcase Ali's global technical capabilities for the first time, including infrastructure, global safety production & quality assurance system, global commodity domain construction, global merchant platform, user growth, and product recommendation Technology evolution and capacity building in many fields, hoping to provide some reference and reference for industry peers.
1. Overview: Under the trend of globalization, how to build stable and efficient technical capabilities?
In the process of global business layout, Chinese enterprises are faced with differences and challenges in four dimensions: language, culture, region, and supervision. Cross-language communication in e-commerce transactions requires companies to invest heavily in language translation; differences in culture and user habits require product differentiation for different countries and regions; imbalances in infrastructure between regions, data compliance, technology Import and export compliance is a difficult problem that needs to be overcome...
How to build stable and efficient global technical capabilities? For the two business models of book-to-book and cross-border, how to choose and deploy the architecture... Li Weijie, head of the Ali Group's global business platform team, introduced the construction and evolution process of the global technology system from an overall perspective.
>>> Click to view the article details
2. Infrastructure articles | 6 years of technical iterations, challenges and explorations of Ali's globalization and compliance
Most of the overseas e-commerce service targets are cross-country, and the network performance and basic hardware facilities of different overseas countries are quite different from those in China, which poses many challenges to the stability of business and the smoothness of experience.
For example, the shorter the delay from when a user initiates a request to receiving a response, the better the performance of the technical system. However, global Internet services have natural challenges in delay, that is, longer physical distances, but a delay of 1 second will also cause a decrease in conversion rate and even loss of users.
How to ensure the stability of infrastructure and solve compliance risks? This article will first focus on the challenges and technical practices of the globalized infrastructure layer.
>>> Click to view the article details
3. Exploration on the Construction of Global Safety Production & Quality Assurance System
There are certain differences between the business, technology and structure of globalized e-commerce and domestic technology. From the perspective of safety production guarantee and quality assurance, these differences bring more challenges.
In terms of business, globalized e-commerce mainly has two basic types: book-to-book and cross-border. For the choice of the two business models of book-to-book and cross-border, there are different technical architecture selections behind it. When organizing a global promotion, how to quickly discover, define, and solve problems to ensure the safe and smooth progress of the promotion?
This paper provides answers to some key issues of the global safety production and quality assurance system.
>>> Click to view the article details
4. Exploration and evolution of global business platform technology
In the globalized environment, merchants have a wide range of products, many business roles for product services, and great differences in the business of different roles... The entire product capability design will be very complicated. How to differentiate and support the efficient iteration of global business? How to lightweight support the rapid construction of innovative business? It has become a proposition that each core platform of globalization must answer. How to balance and trade off?
Combining the characteristics of global merchant products and the organization and collaboration of the front and middle offices, Ali has defined three architectural models for the merchant platform service business. This article focuses on the evolution process of the technical architecture of the global merchant platform and the technical thinking behind it.
>>> Click to view the article details
5. How the three-party spiral growth of the user-seller platform makes product recommendation more intelligent
As an important e-commerce segment of Ali in Southeast Asia, Lazada has developed rapidly in recent years. On the one hand, the number of users continues to grow, and on the other hand, business and supply are changing rapidly. A large number of products are released on the platform every day, but the uneven quality of products can easily confuse users. In addition, the conversion rate of products will also be affected by sales reviews, sellers and platform operations. How to accurately capture high-quality products in a dynamically changing environment and improve the user's purchasing experience?
Lazada abstracts the evolution of products into a separate proposition, and is committed to making product recommendations more intelligent during the three-way spiral growth process of the user-seller platform. This article will share with you Ali's experience in exploring and practicing in three links related to the evolution and growth of products and the purchase experience of products.
>>> Click to view the article details
6. From chaos to clarity, thinking about the construction of Ali's global commodity category domain
Commodities are one of the cores of the e-commerce product system, and categories are one of the cores of the commodity model. The basic business data provided by the category system runs through the entire e-commerce system.
Due to the differences in culture and operating habits in different regions, the global category system needs to be adjusted according to the local business. In areas with low knowledge reserves and high personnel mobility, the dependence on category operation products is higher. Therefore, category domain construction is very important in global business. This article introduces the differences between domestic and international commodity categories, as well as the construction and thinking in the process of globalization.
>>> Click to view the article details
7. Exploration and practice of Ali International Station user growth technology
Like many traditional industries, the cross-border trade industry has also experienced digital transformation and innovation in recent years, and the first place to participate in model innovation is mainly concentrated in the fields of information display and business matching. There are many differences between cross-border B-type users and C-type buyers. There are complex user structures and sparse behavior data; the target population is small, and the accuracy of traffic introduction is high; the retention rate of B-type buyers is low, and the C-type growth strategy cannot Replicate the three major challenges. This article will share with you the exploration and practice of Ali International Station in the construction of user growth technology system.
>>> Click to view the article details
8. Ali International Station - Exploration and Evolution of Callout Technology
In recent years, the promotion of APP in the field of user growth has developed rapidly, and the calling end is an important technology among them. Not only can the scale of three-party traffic be enlarged by calling the terminal to attract new users/promote activation, but also the second-party traffic can be effectively utilized, bringing business opportunities to the website continuously. However, due to the differences in strategies and evolution due to differences in scenarios and goals, the construction of the call-end system for overseas business and domestic business has different characteristics. Compared with domestic business, the type and direction of overseas business are quite different, and the advantages of the two parties to attract each other are difficult to be utilized overseas. Therefore, Ali International Station has improved and polished the overseas call-end technology. This article will give you a detailed introduction to the exploration and evolution of Ali International Station's call-end technology.
>>> Click to view the article details
Welcome to follow and subscribe, one-click collection of Alibaba's globalization series, and continue to read the latest articles in the future.