Vietnamese SMEs to enter the global market through strong online presence

The seminar, entitled “E-commerce and Development Opportunities for SMEs under the Conditions of New Trade Agreements”, hosted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), in partnership with VeriSign, a global leader in domain names and Internet security, and P.A Vietnam, a leading domain registrar in Vietnam.

The event attracted over 100 participants who were members of business associations in the port city and neighbouring provinces, along with SMEs, trade agreement consultants and experts on e-commerce development.

There are approximately three billion people around the world are online today, and each year more than $300 billion in e-commerce sales is conducted in the US and over $1.3 trillion in e-commerce sales is conducted globally.

According to the Vietnam E-commerce and Information Technology Agency (VECOM), business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce sales in Vietnam in 2014 totaled approximately $2.97 billion.

Regarding the benefits of e-commerce, Nguyen Van Thoan, deputy head of Training Department at VECOM, said, “E-commerce is expected to become an important tool for the development of small and medium businesses due to its ability to allow 24/7 customer sales, reduced marketing and support expenses, and an overall market expansion to regions outside Vietnam.”

“With a strong presence online, domestic SMEs will be able to compete in the new business environment and become global businesses with easy access to partners and customers around the world,” Thoan added

In order to seize this opportunity, it is important for businesses to build and develop their own online brands with a reputable domain name.

Nguyen Van Hoc, director of P.A Vietnam in the south, said: "Choosing an appropriate domain name is the first step in building a successful online presence. With years of experience in the field of domain names, we find that businesses typically choose .COM domain names to build online brands for themselves.”

With over 17 years of uninterrupted availability supporting more than 117 million domain names registered worldwide, .COM is the global standard for doing business online. Moreover, according to a Searchmetrics’ analysis, out of 100,000 domains and 100,000,000 links, 75 per cent of all links go back to a .COM domain name.

In fact, diverse bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) will likely be signed this year by Vietnam and its partners, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Vietnam-EU FTA, the South Korea-Vietnam FTA and the Vietnam-Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union.

These new FTAs will have a big impact on Vietnam’s economy, particularly because the low tax rates as part of these FTAs will bolster Vietnam's foreign trade.