Online marketplaces have long been the a la carte destination for sellers. Ever since the advent
of marketplaces like eBay and Amazon and many more, it has empowered sellers to start their
business without any hassles. However as the Internet has evolved, small businesses today are
no more limited to selling through one channel like a marketplace. It is just another channel but
not a standalone business junction anymore. Instead, they venture out to sell online through their own webstore. This blog article will surely give you an insight into why sell online.
How can small businesses benefit from opening their own eCommerce stores?
● Small businesses need to focus on branding that marketplaces cannot offer
Every small business has the potential to grow bigger, ss Seth Godin puts it “Small is the next
big”. Businesses are focusing a lot more on branding. By selling on a marketplace, the branding
gets diluted. For example, if you run a small boutique in NYC and you are selling on Etsy, your
products will just be a collection amongst others. Your shop will be like hundred other Etsy
shops. But if you have your own web store, you can not only brand yourself through that, you can
also check for your website traffic. The scope of improvement is huge in running your own
eCommerce store and sell online like you can play with the design, content, keywords and also be able to run
user engagement campaigns.
● Ecommerce stores rules out price battles
Marketplaces have been known for encouraging huge price wars. These online marketplaces are
looking for sellers who offer the lowest price and merchants also compete with each other to
offer the same to sell faster. These sellers employ competitive pricing software that constantly
tracks prices to beat other players. This fierce price war is unseen if you sell online through your own
eCommerce store. You can price your products as you wish and can better engage in marketing
rather than wasting time on issues such as Detailed Seller Ratings etc.
● Get better search engine rankings with ecommerce stores
If you are selling on marketplaces, you do not have many options in playing with keywords and search
engine optimization. These online marketplaces do not allow you to add many keywords. For
example, if you are selling jewelry, there will be other sellers as well selling jewelry. So if all
jewelry sellers have the same description, Google may penalize them and you receive negligible
search engine traffic. On the other hand, if you are running an eCommerce store, you can work
out an SEO strategy and move ahead accordingly. You can also check your website traffic
analytics to optimize your web store and route your products to the right target audience.
● Know your customer
The most important asset for any business is its customer base which also includes the potential buyers. The marketplace can give you access to only those customers who have bought your products but not of others who were looking for them and may buy later. Even if Market place shares the data of all the visitors with you, it will also be available for all other competition, and the effort done to drive them to sales on the marketplace have equal chances to buy a competitive product. Definitely, if you sell online you will be solved of this problem.
● Opening Webshop is easy and low investment
With so many SAAS bases eCommerce platforms available which not only help you to set up your webs store in hours but also have different packages at affordable prices to meet the business need of any size and ease of scalability with business growth now it is a lot more easy and intuitive to invest in own branded store supporting the above-talked benefits.
Many other benefits related to customer loyalty, reference sales, and alike also cannot be beneficial to its full potential with a marketplace. So what are you waiting for? Still, if you don’t sell online, start your own website and see the difference.
