--- title: "In 2022, How to Determine if Your Business Has an Opportunity to Transition Online?" description: "A question that concerns business owners who want to transition online or are already doing so: how to determine if your business has an opportunity to transition online? Why transition online? First, the product side has changed. Products are divided into physical and virtual types. Let's think about a question: Are we short of products now? Yes, we are not short of products at all. The level of material satisfaction has far exceeded our actual needs. Imagine as an ordinary consumer, the products you see in offline physical stores are highly homogenized; what your store has, others have too; what your platform offers, other platforms will soon offer as well. Product competition is unprecedentedly intense." author: "刘芳" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2022-03-04" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/in-2022-how-to-determine-if-your-business-has-an-opportunity-to-transiti-b9a01ab7/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/in-2022-how-to-determine-if-your-business-has-an-opportunity-to-transiti-b9a01ab7.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/-avoiCveGBA_kHd-MZoy4w" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/2022%E5%B9%B4-%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E5%88%A4%E6%96%AD%E8%87%AA%E5%B7%B1%E7%9A%84%E4%BC%81%E4%B8%9A%E6%9C%89%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E8%BD%AC%E5%9E%8B%E7%BA%BF%E4%B8%8A%E7%9A%84%E6%9C%BA%E4%BC%9A-b9a01ab7.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/in-2022-how-to-determine-if-your-business-has-an-opportunity-to-transiti-b9a01ab7/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # In 2022, How to Determine if Your Business Has an Opportunity to Transition Online? > A question that concerns business owners who want to transition online or are already doing so: how to determine if your business has an opportunity to transition online? Why transition online? First, the product side has changed. Products are divided into physical and virtual types. Let's think about a question: Are we short of products now? Yes, we are not short of products at all. The level of material satisfaction has far exceeded our actual needs. Imagine as an ordinary consumer, the products you see in offline physical stores are highly homogenized; what your store has, others have too; what your platform offers, other platforms will soon offer as well. Product competition is unprecedentedly intense. A question that concerns business owners who want to transition online or are already doing so: how to determine if your business has an opportunity to transition online? **Why transition online?** **First, the product side has changed.** Products are divided into physical and virtual types. Let's think about a question: Are we short of products now? Yes, we are not short of products at all. The level of material satisfaction has far exceeded our actual needs. Imagine as an ordinary consumer, the products you see in offline physical stores are highly homogenized; what your store has, others have too; what your platform offers, other platforms will soon offer as well. Product competition is unprecedentedly intense. **Second, the channel side has changed.** Current channels are divided into online and offline. In recent years, offline channels have seen community group buying stand out, but it has been heavily suppressed lately. Other traditional offline channels haven't changed dramatically; at most, storefronts look better, designs are more beautiful, environments are more comfortable, products are richer, and experiences are more extreme. But the richness and diversity of online channels far exceed imagination. Moreover, the characteristics, content, marketing, and context of each channel are different. Do you use Bilibili? The content on Bilibili is different from many other short-video platforms. So now a brand cannot use one set of content for all online channels. Content that is popular on one channel may fail on another. Offline is relatively better, but with the increasing prevalence of smart retail, offline channel changes are closely linked with online. For example, some physical stores are purely for experience. After trying in the experience store, customers scan a QR code to buy online, and it's delivered to their home; the store doesn't even need to stock inventory. **Third, the user side has changed.** Generation Z and Generation Alpha have risen. They live in an era of material abundance, with high life satisfaction, leading to more personalized and diverse demands for products and services, showing tendencies of consumption for persona, socializing, and self-pleasure. They also show lower brand loyalty, switching products faster than flipping pages. Today you are a trending product on Xiaohongshu, tomorrow you'll be abandoned. For example, Perfect Diary perfectly illustrates this. They have strong judgment and many information channels, so to please these new users, brands need higher capabilities in data research and market research, testing the speed and accuracy of product development, beyond any previous era. **Fourth, the marketing side has changed.** With new technologies, marketing has changed significantly. Previously, we saw CCTV plus heavy advertising. But now that approach doesn't work. With users moving to mobile, 5G implementation, and the rise of digital marketing, we have entered a new era of big data algorithm push with personalized content. As long as you leave traces online, you'll be flooded with algorithm-precise pushes based on your traces. **Behind this, technology is the primary productive force. As long as technology changes, products, channels, users, marketing, and supply chains will all undergo huge changes.** The environment won't wait for you. After reading this, do you still think your business doesn't need to transition? **Transition may succeed; not transitioning is waiting to die.** **Can a traditional enterprise have an opportunity to transition online?** I think there are several judgment points: culture and values, product, manpower, supply chain, systems, how much money to spend and how to distribute it, and the boss's mindset. **First, are your corporate culture and values prepared for online?** In many traditional enterprises, employees' thinking and abilities are traditional; they stick to their comfort zones. Once the company starts reforms to break their comfort zones, their resistance is both visible and invisible. Visible resistance is manageable; you can see and intervene. Invisible resistance includes setting hidden obstacles, being indifferent, not doing work, not cooperating, and slandering, leading to the failure of new projects. Finally, they perfectly blame the new project team. If you find such situations in your enterprise, either your transition decision is wrong, or the original team is causing trouble. **Second, can your product be online?** I see many traditional massage and beauty salons wanting to go online, and some entrepreneurs consult me. I tell them: if you want to go online, you mainly need to achieve two things: 1. Cover as many regional users as possible and drive traffic to the store, increasing existing sales. #### Source: Sohu - Phoenix City 2. Make your products online, such as launching essential oil products, home self-learning teaching products, etc., to extend to users beyond geographical limits and increase new increments. There is also a third option: cross-industry alliances with non-conflicting products and similar users, but often these alliances don't work well. Not because they don't want to cross-promote, but because their own business isn't sorted out, let alone helping others. **Third, is your team prepared for online?** Does your team have people who understand online? People who understand public domain? Private domain? Communities? Members? Live streaming? Video production? Good copywriters? Good designers? Now I also ask: do you have people who understand NFT? If not, you need to think carefully: without people, what can you do? Rely on AI? **Fourth, is your supply chain prepared for online?** Your supply chain can meet offline requirements, but what about after going online? Can the warehouse store independently? Can it sort? Pack? Deliver? Is delivery density high? We all know supply chain is a bottomless pit. If business density (delivery density) is low, and metrics like average order value are low, delivery costs will be high. That means your costs will rise across the board, and once costs rise, competitiveness will definitely decline. **Fifth, have you considered the online part in your business budget? How to distribute money?** Going online is like starting a new business online. You open a new battlefield, and you need to prepare enough ammunition for it. Have you prepared ammunition? Opening this new battlefield brings many unforeseen problems and difficulties; you need to be prepared for losses. How much loss can you bear? How long can you bear it? Is it within your consideration? If the online part brings profits, have you considered how to distribute the money? It definitely can't be mixed with traditional business. Project partnership is a good solution. For reference, Vanke's successful project partnership system. **Sixth, are you prepared with online system tools?** Going online inevitably requires introducing many system tools, which is a significant investment, but without these tools, going online is almost impossible. Moreover, system tools require money for new additions, upgrades, and replacements. Systems are a big project. If outsourced, service response is fast, but the fit with actual business is often questionable, since outsiders don't understand the business as well. If developed in-house, the author has experienced it: the time for requirement analysis is long, development time is long, business changes quickly, and the practicality of what's developed is a test of patience. Traditional business owners cannot ignore the system preparation aspect. **Seventh, does the boss understand online business? Are they personally involved?** This is placed last, but if the boss doesn't participate, none of the above can be achieved. If a boss doesn't understand how to conduct online business, and just waves a hand and says, "Go ahead, I fully support you," that's empty. If a boss does this, the project won't work and will definitely fail. Moreover, talent who understand online business (like traffic operators) are scarce in the market. **Final thoughts:** Bosses might ask: Transition is so difficult, so let's not do it and stick to our current business. Who says there's only one solution? If you standardize everything and roll out a big plan, it's hard, but if you start with the smallest business model and run it, the trial-and-error cost is low, so you can try. **Lean startup and agile iteration within the enterprise are good methods for testing online waters, because starting from the smallest business model allows you to expand or contract, advance or retreat, and stay within expected control.** **About the author:** Liu Fang, new retail private domain marketing consultant, personal brand and private domain consultant, with 17 years of experience in the retail/FMCG B2B industry, columnist for multiple business media platforms, invited private domain traffic mentor for new consumer goods at Wu Xiaobo Channel's 890 New Business School/New National Products Promotion Association (online and offline), and operator of a well-known retail brand's tens of millions of private domain traffic and multiple 100k+ article hits. _**-END-**_ --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. 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