Tag: Marketplace Integrators

eCommerce Website or Marketplace? Where to sell on?

If you are a newbie in the eCommerce industry, making the choice where to list your products isn’t an easy task. You have to look for all the available possibilities and benefits offered by them before making any move. Online trading basically helps a vendor to reach out among chunk of customers easily and take their business to new heights.E-commerce websites and the marketplaces are the two prime  options  when it comes to online trading. Both of them are followed with their own pros and cons.

Marketplace Vs eCommerce Websites

First of all, lets narrow down how these two exactly differ from each other. Marketplace is a third party website which provides a
platform to many third party retailers to sell their products online. Example: Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Etsy etc. The vendors can join the marketplace and start selling their products online. On the other hand eCommerce website is an independently owned  store of a seller
where customers can buy products of a particular brand directly from its native website. These websites are self owned by the merchants and can be easily built using various eCommerce platforms like Shopify, PrestaShop, Magento, WooCommerce etc.

Both of these options comes with advantages and disadvantages and this is what makes difficult for a seller to make the right choice. Here are some of the factors which will surely help you to understand the difference between both the platforms in detail and help them in deciding the best choice for their business:

1. Building Brand Image:

There’s no doubt in saying that creating your own website gives you full control on your brand’s image. You can easily present your product according to your own choice without any hassle. But, anyone who is a seller on marketplace would have the limited options therefore, he/she will be unable to affect the brand in any way possible. The presentation factors like layout, font, colour etc are standardised by the marketplace due to which often it happens that the product pages are not appealing and attractive for the users. Marketplaces also forbid sellers for mentioning their company name in any way. That is a loss too.

Creating a great brand image is immensely important when it comes to sell online. No matter on which platform you are using for the same. Having your own website provides you the authority to create a product page on your own choice. It lets you create the experience you want for your customers. You can also encourage your brand personality by reflecting your professionalism in your website design.

2. Traffic and Leads:

Building your brand image is not just enough in an online business. Making good sales is crucially important as well.
If you are an eCommerce store owner, you can implement various strategies and tactics to promote your brand name. Right from optimising your website rank till creating a social networking campaign, you can go for anything which suits you. However, there is a possibility that all these strategies can take a lot of time and efforts with no assurity of successful results.

On the other hand Marketplaces are well-established and highly trusted website than self-owned web-stores. Selling on a Marketplace could be an advantage for this factor as it’s easy for customers to reach out your products. According to statista.com, 197 million users visited Amazon’s websites per month. The huge popularity of Marketplace for online shopping automatically provides you the accessibility to million of customers  without spending any money on marketing.

3. Effortless start:

Seller need not to worry about the features like domain name, hosting name etc. All these features and mechanism are already well established in the Marketplace. Moreover sellers need not to look for the marketing platforms in order to promote their products.

4. Customer Experience:

If your product has been purchased on a Marketplace, the customer experience is totally associated with Marketplace and not with the seller. Although the product belongs to the seller but, still the user-experience belongs to the Marketplace.

If you are an eCommerce site owner then the customer experience with the product directly belongs to your website. Seller has the full authority to control and customise all the factors associated with the product review and enhance the user shopping experience. But, they need to do it on their own.

5. Expand your Reach:

It’s really important to attract visitors towards your product and convert them into potential buyers. Selling through your website provides you the freedom to display products as per your choice but the your product reach is confined to limited customers only. Sellers would be missing out millions of leads across border which clearly results in limited sales.

Whereas, Marketplace helps you to expand your business worldwide with minimal efforts. Seller is able to access millions of customers globally without making any advanced investments. You can even make a good cross border sales and boost up their overall business growth too.

6. Wide payment options:

Wide payment methods offered by the Marketplace offers an hassle free checkout experience to the customers. Payment options often influences the shopping decision of the customers. Availability of Multiple payment methods tempts the sellers to get enrolled in the Marketplace.

Conclusion:

Well, it’s good for a seller to own an eComemrce website but selling through marketplace won’t hurt your sales either. Many online merchants sell on both marketplaces and their own website to expand customer reach and brand recognition. However, the best place to sell online totally depends on the product type and category of your store. So, regardless of the platform you choose to sell on, it’s important to be aware about the latest trend going on in the eCommerce industry and implement it for massive sales and growth of your business.

Now you can easily list down your products on marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Walmart and others in just a few simple steps. KnowBand offers Marketplace Integrators for various CMS platforms like PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento and Shopify which allows you to present your products among larger audience and encourage the brand recognition as well.

As today’s generation rely on their handheld devices for any online purpose. It’s really important for a vendor to reach the customer’s devices to ensure higher sales and growth. Knowband offers Advanced Magento Marketplace mobile Extension to build a fully-functional marketplace and a mobile app at same time for your store.

Find out our more articles here:

Why you should start selling on a Marketplace?
Why you should integrate your eCommerce store with a Marketplace?

Why you should sell on an eCommerce Marketplace?

With the huge involvement of the internet in daily lives, a large number of customers are buying products online globally. The advancement of the eCommerce industry is flourishing day by day. If you are a retailer then the idea to sell online could never go wrong.  Selling online expands your reach globally. This helps the online marketplace to make more profits than usual.

There are numerous ways of selling online apart from starting an online website. Retailers can even sell their products through renowned marketplaces. The growing competition among sellers encourages them to implement some new strategies to attract more customers to your product. Selling on Marketplace like eBay, Etsy, Walmart, etc could be a bet as they can easily give a brand more exposure. and get you instant access to a vast number of potential customers.

If you create your own eCommerce website, you can get full control, large profits, higher scalability. It can become costly for you as setting and promoting a niche brand requires high investments. But if you choose a marketplace, you could sell your products online with certain control but will be able to leverage the global reach and services of a Marketplace. Customers often prefer buying products from Marketplaces because of the wide variety of products and the ease of all-in-one shopping. Apart from this, selling products on Marketplace could offer you much more.

Marketplace statistics to give a clear idea

  1. Here is a graph from a similar Web representing the total visits of two famous marketplaces Amazon and eBay. 
  2. In a recent blog, published by the webretailer, Amazon is still on the top, surpassing every other marketplace. It gets around 5.2B visits every month.
  3. The report includes data for 155 most visited marketplaces with more than one million visitors per month. And eBay ranks 2nd globally in the similarweb reports.
  4. The top 20 marketplaces have a collection of general merchandise except 3 that sells specific product categories, eg. Etsy.
  5. General, Fashion, Arts, crafts and gifts, Homewares, and Electronics are the top five product categories among the popular marketplaces.

Top 5 Marketplaces in India

  1. Amazon India
  2. Flipkart
  3. Snapdeal
  4. Myntra
  5. Shopclue

Top 5 Marketplaces in Spain

  1. Amazon Spain
  2. Milanuncios
  3. El Corte Ingles
  4. Ali Express
  5. eBay Spain

Top 5 Marketplaces in Italy

  1. Amazon Italy
  2. eBay Italy
  3. Mediaworld
  4. Unieuro
  5. AliExpress Italiano

Top 5 Marketplaces in Poland

  1. Allegro
  2. Ceneo
  3. Chrono24
  4. Showroom
  5. Domodi

Top 5 Marketplaces in France

  1. Amazon FR
  2. Cdiscount
  3. eBay FR
  4. Leroy Merlin
  5. Fnac

Top 5 Marketplaces in Germany

  1. Amazon Germany.
  2. eBay Germany.
  3. eBay Kleinanzeigen.
  4. Otto
  5. Idealo

Below are some of the reasons to start selling products on Marketplace:

1. Huge audience access:

The huge popularity of Marketplace like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, etc. for online shopping automatically provides you the accessibility to all its customers  without having to spend any money on marketing. It’s a good opportunity for small business owners to gain good profits without any advanced investments.

2. Low Startup Cost:

As Marketplace has all things set up in one place, the retailer has to hardly make any investments other than some few expenses. Thus, the minimal cost is involved in selling on a Marketplace in comparison to selling on your own eCommerce website. For example Marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, etc charges:

  • Monthly Subscription Fee for selling on their platforms
    And,
  • Listing Fee or Commission which is a standard amount for every product they listed on the Marketplace’s catalog.

3. To increase trust level:

It usually happens that the users buy the same product as yours from the Marketplace due to a lack of trust. Once your product reaches Marketplace, it will get more exposure and this will definitely motivate the users to go for instant purchase. It’s also beneficial in getting high sales and revenues too.

4. To reach Global Market:

Marketplaces provide you an option to expand your business reach globally with minimal effort. Sellers can access millions of potential customers globally without making any advance investments. This would definitely boost up your cross-border sales and overall business growth. For example, Amazon, Walmart, Etsy eBay are top leading Marketplaces serving millions of online customers all over the world

5. Enhance your brand’s visibility:

If you are a newbie in the eCommerce industry, it’s obvious that customers are unaware of your brand and products. You surely need recognition in the market. Marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Walmart help you to boost up your brand and visibility by listing all your products on their web page.

6. Deliver outstanding customer service

There are similar options to help sellers fulfill customer standards for quick, free delivery. They have their customer care teams that work 24/7 for customer service and to resolve their real-time issues.

For example, with programs such as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and eBay Global Shipping, you can choose to have on your behalf the marketplace warehouse, pick, prepare, and ship product.

7.     Provides a broad variety of payment and shipping options

For quick purchases, the marketplace offers different payment and shipping methods. A seller does not have to worry about shipping while selling over different marketplaces.

Dropshipping is another trending feature provided by many marketplaces. While some allow the sellers to add their shipping methods or the seller can use the marketplace shipping services.

8.     Extremely authoritative and trustworthy

Many eCommerce experts may contradict this but some may take the favor. Marketplace like Amazon is a safe and reliable place for the transaction. They provide secured options for payments and are integrated with various payment gateways.

Similarly, many online marketplace platforms are secured with PayPal security. It is the most trustworthy payment method worldwide.

Expert Sayings:

1. Yasuhiro Fukushima, Japanese business executive -“Thus, in the future, instead of buying bananas in a grocery store, you could go pick them off a tree in a virtual jungle.”

2. Paul Graham, Y COMBINATOR – You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.”

3. Mudit Khosla, CEO, Tradus:  If one chooses to sell through a Marketplace, then there is very less requirement of working capital unless there is a deal; there are no rentals involved.

4. Ankur Sethi, Founder & CEO, Nupinch.com: If any local retailer wants to reach a million customers to just showcase the products, he’ll end up spending some fairly huge cash. Whilst, these Marketplaces act as a channel partner & help you reach millions of users, to some really deep parts of the countries & in turn push your sales exponentially.

Make more out of Marketplaces:

  • Sellers should register themselves on all possible Marketplaces and make more ways of earning revenues.
  • At the initial level, try to provide some discounts and offers to attract more customers to your product.
  • Keep a check on the customer reviews about your product and try to appreciate them or address their concerns. This strategy helps in making loyal customers.
  • Always remain aware of the latest trends and technical advancements of selling online.

Choosing the right Marketplace:

Selling through online Marketplaces like Walmart, eBay, Etsy is definitely a great option for an eCommerce retailer but choosing the right one for your business is the basic step to lead. Well, it totally depends on the product type and category of your store. Every Marketplace has its own standardized process of registration, requirements, terms, and conditions, etc. Sellers must go through these instructions and understand that which website will provide the right positioning and brand value to their product. One of the main things on which retailers should keep a check while choosing the right Marketplace is the traffic of the website. The more is the traffic, the more numbers of orders he can get for his products.

6 points to check about a Marketplace:

Although each Marketplace works differently there are some points that are similar in between them and are also a must check for a seller. They are:

  • Website Traffic
  • Reputation between customers
  • Stability
  • Checkout process
  • Policies and Guidelines
  • UI of Marketplace

The most important feature of a Marketplace is that it must provide a user-friendly interface to the customers. Sellers need to keep a check on this feature as they may face an issue in case the product is returned. Many times, the marketplace does not hesitate to accept the product which is returned without even questioning the buyer, thus this may incur a loss for the seller. So, it’s important for a seller to make the right choice for massive sales and overall business growth.

Start a Hyperlocal Marketplace that serves locally

With the clear idea of marketplace selling benefits, you can choose the right platform for your brand. Multichannel selling is profitable and builds your brand identity. Along with that, you can start selling your products locally. To make it painless, start with an online website using KnowBand’s hyperlocal marketplace module. You can deliver the products to your customers at their doorstep. You will need a delivery boy app that will allow you to manage the package delivery process.  There is more to learn about it.

Over to you:

The less complexity involved with selling on a marketplace is inevitable for sellers. It’s really necessary to give an enhanced recognition to your business and Marketplace suits perfect for the job. So, regardless of the marketplace, you choose to sell on, it’s important to be aware of the latest trend going on in the eCommerce industry and implement it for a profitable business in the future.
This was all from my end, now it’s totally up to you to select a Marketplace according to the products of your store for the overall growth of your business.

Selling on Marketplace was not that easy before. Integrate your eCommerce store with the Marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, and others in just a few simple steps. KnowBand offers Marketplace Integrators for various CMS platforms like PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento, and Shopify which allows you to present your products to a larger audience and encourage brand awareness as well.

Find out more articles here:

How to get a Marketplace site: a step by step guide
Ecommerce Marketing Calendar 2021
Best eCommerce platforms for starting a multi-vendor marketplace
5 Ways to Attract Sellers on your Online Multi vendor Marketplace

Why you should integrate your eCommerce store with a Marketplace?

The growth of eCommerce isn’t hidden from us. Online shopping is spreading with pace and its influence can be witnessed all over the world in almost every field. The modern users have already shifted their preference from physical stores to the mobile screens and this has lead to the growth of online Marketplace with each passing day.

Big Marketplaces have millions of daily visitors. Many shopaholics visit the renowned marketplaces because of their brand popularity, vast variety of product choices and many more. One of the reasons behind online commerce expansion are the unmatched offerings and benefits. The Customers might be checking small eCommerce websites too, but they still buy the same product from these renowned Marketplaces. This definitely clears the scenario that if you haven’t thought of integrating your store with a marketplace, you must be losing most of the online leads and potential customers.

Integration with a Marketplace offers numerous benefits to small as well as large businesses. Here, I am listing down 5 solid reasons to integrate your website with an online Marketplace:

1. To Beat the Competition:

Beating the competition isn’t easy in this ever-growing retail market. This makes it prime requirement why you should start selling on a Marketplace. There are numerous websites as of yours and even they are selling the same product. Thus, it might be hard for you to stand out between all these webshops. So, you should compete with all these websites by integrating with a Marketplace to encourage your brand name and increase your business growth.

2. To Reach huge audiences:

The major benefit of integrating with a Marketplace is to attract their huge audience towards your product. Many shoppers don’t buy products from small websites due to lack of trust. Marketplace is the perfect spot to get noticed between the potential customers and compel them to buy your product. Even a little bit of attention could turn out into huge sales and revenues.

3. To save time and money:

Promoting your brand name separately through various marketing processes can sometimes be not fruitful for you. In that case it could lead to huge loss of revenues and waste of time too. The basic approaches to popularise your brand doesn’t come with any surety. That’s where Marketplaces comes into picture. They not only provide a bigger platform to build a digital storefront but also lures the heavy consumer traffic too. This hassle free approach will definitely save your time and money and will result in massive sales.

4. To improve your SEO:

It’s really important that your products are placed on the top shelf of search results to divert customer’s attention towards them. If a product is not visible to the shoppers then there is no point of its sale. Marketplaces also helps to increase your brand exposure and SEO strategies. Product listing on an online Marketplace helps you improve your SEO results by bringing it to more user’s visibility. The website’s excellent SEO practices turns out in huge sales and revenues.

5. To ease international sale :

Marketplaces let you navigate into international markets and helps you to increase your cross-border sales. Besides attracting customers in your country only, you can reach out to millions of more customers worldwide with just a single platform. Your sales will most likely increase and this will let you to be a conventional seller all over the world. Being a global third party seller will eventually boost up your sales and business growth.

6. IT infrastructure already in existence:

There is no need to invest in the IT infrastructure and other related resources for selling a product. Sellers can take advantage of Marketplace structure without any hassle. By this, sellers can earn huge chunk of profits without even investing a single penny on technical advancements.

7. Hassle free product shipping and delivery management:

There are many marketplace sites that own a courier service for shipping and delivery purposes. If you are at your initial stage of business, you can take advantage of the delivery service owned by Marketplace. This will let you save your revenues from investing on delivery services. This will let sellers to provide free shipping to customers and will go for instant purchase.

8. Test a new product:

If you have launched a new product, you could not assume that it must be acceptable in between customers or not. In this case, you can test your product by launching it on a reputed Marketplace as it could be visible to millions of customers worldwide. This will give you the acceptance of your product all over the world and if customers are satisfied, you could import more stock of the same and sell it without any hassle.

Conclusion:

Integrating an eCommerce store with an online Marketplace is definitely a great option for both small and large sized businesses. It’s really necessary to give an enhanced recognition to your business and Marketplace suits perfect for the job. This was all from my end, now it’s totally up to you to select a Marketplace according to your website and products and integrate the same as soon as possible.

Integrate your store with the Marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Walmart, Newegg, Google Shopping and others. In order to provide an effortless listing and inventory management process to store owners, KnowBand offers Marketplace Integrators for various CMS platforms like Prestashop, OpenCart, Magento and Shopify. This helps in showcasing your products among larger audience and enhance the brand awareness as well.

Find out more articles:

  1.  How to sell your product on Walmart Marketplace?
  2.  How to Rank Higher and Get Your Listings Seen in eBay Search?
  3.  How to rank your products up in Etsy search results?
  4.  How to rank your products up in Walmart search results?