Why is it wise for a business to sell on a marketplace?
You are confident that your product has a unique value proposition and it will generate demand. Also, you have done your homework on promotional offers, marketing campaigns and your social media presence is getting better day by day.
What about the platform where you will sell your product?
One option is designing your own storefront on popular mediums like Shopify, Magento, Woocommerce, etc., or sell on top marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.
Although Shopify helps in setting up a store in just a few hours, on the other hand on an established marketplace you get instant access to a large pool of customers.
In this blog post, we will explore why you need to set up on existing marketplaces and how it would help your business grow.
Table of Contents
Finding and selling to customer is easy
Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and other marketplaces are traffic generating machines, they have a lot of monthly traffic. Whereas, if you start from scratch you have to find customers first, build an audience/ customer base which is more expensive than selling on an already established platform.
Amazon is getting 200 million traffic a month on average.
Projected retail eCommerce GMV share of Amazon in the United States from 2016-2021
Customer conversion is higher
When we compare marketplaces with self-selling platforms like Shopify, marketplaces customers convert easily.
One of the known fact about marketplaces is that they have a user base which trusts the platform and chances of their conversion are pretty high. This reduces your work on marketing efforts from zero.
You may reach out to people who have never heard of you before. Thus, an opportunity you get through a marketplace.
Sell internationally
Most of the marketplaces offer international selling. So when a seller starts selling, he has an option to expand his reach and sell in more and more countries.
Amazon alonge has buying customers in 180 countries.
Use marketplace as a marketing channel
If your brand is established and you just want to get more customers, marketplaces are idea to get more and more people interested in your products.
Customer acquisition is great on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Walmart etc. You spend your marketing budget on Facebook, Instagram, Google ads, etc., but the fact is you get higher conversion from marketplaces.
Test product before launch
You have a unique product and you assume that it would do great in the market but you don’t know it yet based on the facts/data.
For that very reason, you can use a marketplace as your testing ground. Instead of using your web store, use a marketplace and see the trend.
Payment escrow services
Marketplaces have their payment escrow services which means customers pay with confidence and if any dispute arises marketplace won’t release the seller payment.
So dispute resolution is at the end of the marketplace.
Final verdict
Although selling on any marketplace involves their fees, and it isn’t just as easy as you possibly can assume. However, the financial risks here are lower. Marketplace selling is less complex than launching your own storefront. Quick access to user base and smooth processes.
Phaedra Solutions develops and manages ecommerce storefronts for businesses like yours, and empowers them with technical and digital solutions
We believe anyone can dominate an ecommerce niche, product, segment or category with the right set of skills , product research, and technical setup.
Get in touch with us to learn how we can do this for you.
