A casual view on online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay suggests that the platforms have been created for mutual profit. Store owners leverage increased exposure for their products and in return, the marketplace owners gain the never ending inventory and commission from the sales made by the sellers.
However, a closer look might not suggest the same for all. No doubt the mutual profit for both the entities still remain, but we are here concerned about should you really care about expanding your presence beyond your online store?
The question asked by me here is a conflicting one because we are the ones developing connectors for easy integration of PrestaShop stores with marketplaces like eBay, Etsy, and Amazon. The answer to this question depends on several factors. A decision to sell on a marketplace can be a boon for some, while it may not be the same for others. You need to consider several variables, that may include the type of products you sell, the level of competition in your domain, the fee Marketplaces charge and what restrictions they put on sellers.
In this post, we will discuss the pros and cons of selling on the popular marketplaces that will help you decide, whether you should sell or not on these platforms. So, you will have a choice of making some well-informed decisions on the part after reading this post.
Why should you sell on Amazon and eBay marketplaces?
1. Improved sales by leveraging a high traffic website-
Amazon and eBay the two very popular eCommerce sites. Today, everyone knows the name of these websites, and before finalizing a purchase decision one simply does not forget to checkout the product on these sites.
Amazon alone draws an average of 197 million visitors in a month. So, why should you not leverage such a huge exposure to your products? Moreover, an unconfirmed claim from an Amazon executes suggest that an average of 50 % boost in the sales can be seen after joining Amazon marketplace.
2. Opportunities to win new customers-
On marketplaces, customers do not visit especially for a particular seller on the site. They were searching for their desired product and they found it on the marketplace site, other wise they could have just discovered it anywhere on any other site. Similarly, when a customers land on your product pages on the marketplace, it doesn’t mean they have come searching for your store. They were just searching for their desired product on the site and found it on your store. Once, they have landed on your product page or your store page, even if it;s not your site, you can win new and repeat customers through your excellent product, service, and fulfilment.
3. Marketplaces are automatically in preference by many people-
A marketplace site is an all-in-one repository for diversity of products. One can find anything he wants on a single site. There are several customers who prefer to purchase everything they need from a single place only, and the places providing such opportunities are always in their preferences. The case is no different with why people prefer to visit shopping malls or departmental stores instead of a single shop.
The variety and all-in-one aspect draw a lot of customers towards marketplaces who prefer to do that kind of shopping. Moreover, the seamless checkout and fulfilment on these marketplaces bring additional layer of pros in the shopping experience. So, sellers on marketplace sites like eBay and Amazon are always in benefit with these kind of shoppers. While small eCommerce sites might not have that kind of traction.
4. Easy connection from your store to marketplace-
Marketplaces like Amazon and eBay does not necessarily want you to sell through their seller panel only. If you own an eCommerce site already, it could be a laborious task to manage your site and marketplace store separately. To overcome the situation, marketplaces provide some solutions for easy site integration.
For example, Amazon’s MWS allows an eCommerce site owner to connect his site with Amazon Seller central and sell directly from the eCommerce site on the Amazon marketplace. Similarly, there are solutions for eBay integration too. So, selling on Amazon and eBay can a seamless process for some eCommerce site owners too.
Why should you not sell on Amazon and eBay?
The pros of selling on these popular marketplaces might suggest that it’s all good and you should start selling instantly. However, I will take this opportunity to also mention conditions when you might not feel good about selling on these platforms.
1. Exposure to a new set of expense:
As mentioned in the very beginning, both the entities on the marketplace site(Admin and seller) receive some mutual benefits. For sellers, it is all that have been mentioned in the previous points. While the marketplace admin receives his share of benefit in the terms of percentage deduction from each sale you make on the site.
Setting up a marketplace shop will surely improve your sales, but it will expose you to a new set of expense paid to the marketplace admin – marketplace commission/fee. The nature and range of the deduction can vary from marketplaces to marketplaces and category to category.
So, before signing up on Amazon or eBay, you must have a deep understanding of sales margin and nature of fees that you would pay. You can refer here for different fees charged on Amazon and eBay.
2. Marketplaces are all about products; not sellers:
Marketplaces don’t exist for the sellers. Though sellers are the crucial entities on the marketplaces, and it is because of the sellers why there are products on the site, marketplaces tend to help themselves first. They will promote the products and categories on the site rather than promoting a seller. That means, they may restrict you from promoting your shop or communicating with the customers.
Certain dictation can be seen in the case when they might be the sole entity to decide which product would go live and which product they would discontinue showing at anytime they want.
Additionally, if they find a popular product from your store receiving good orders, they might just decide to stock those products by themselves and act as a competitor for you for that product. And there would be nothing that could stop them from doing so.
Finally,
Selling on popular marketplaces like Amazon and eBay is a decision that should be made after considering some situations. Both the pros and cons explained here would definitely help you to make an informed choice. You can choose to sell on single marketplace or may also sell on multiple marketplaces at once. As a suggestion, you should have appropriate integration solutions by your side so that you can have your own site and sell on the marketplaces at the same time without any hassle.
You can now list the products and the descriptions at a few button click with the help of eBay integrators by Knowband. Knowband provides integrators for the various CMS platforms like Prestashop eBay Integration Addon, Magento eBay Integrator, eBay Magento 2 connector as well as OpenCart eBay Integration plugin.
Liked This? You’ll Like These Too
