Marketplace Versus Website: What Is Most Appropriate for Selling Your E-Commerce Company?

Are you interested in selling your e-commerce company, but you are not familiar with the process that you need to consider? Selling any e-commerce company doesn’t have to be difficult when you retain the services of a business broker. But the first decision that you’ll consider in this process is whether or not to sell your e-commerce company via a marketplace or a website.

There is no doubt that there are many different benefits to selling products online, which is probably what drew you into the process of doing it yourself. Reaching more customers than a traditional brick and mortar store and being able to sell at all hours the day greatly expands your potential to make profit. There are so many different e-commerce options, and as a result of that, people are looking to cash in and tap into the power of selling on an e-commerce website. Some merchants must consider this initial decision of selling on their own websites, such as an independent e-commerce website or selling through another company like Walmart, eBay, Etsy or Amazon. Determining what is most appropriate for your business involves thinking about the benefits and downsides of each.

There are many different advantages to selling on a third-party marketplace and this is a top reason why plenty of sellers use this option. First of all, it is simple to get started and maintain a business when launching on a third-party marketplace.

An online marketplace can simplify the process, particularly for new sellers. This is because the infrastructure is already established, and this saves the hassle and time associated with building your own website from scratch. Since no one individual seller owns an online marketplace, the payment and transaction details are handled by the marketplace.

This removes a lot of things from your to-do list and can make the process easier overall. Since many of these marketplaces already have established forms of traffic and plenty of people visiting their website, there are millions of shoppers already leveraging them to find the best deal. You can make an impact by tapping into the power of the traffic already established on the marketplace.

There are downsides, however, to selling on a marketplace. Since there are multiple competing brands on the same site, you must always be aware of how to stand out from everyone else who is trying to accomplish the same goal of stealing their market share. Your competitors might target shoppers who visit your individual listing and then place advertisements for their own products on your pages.

Whether or not this impedes your ability to do business, depends specifically on the competition intensity in any product category, which means that you might not get the easy sales or exposure that you are intending. Furthermore, people who purchase your products might never realize that you, as the third-party seller, truly exists. Most people who shop from these marketplaces, such as Amazon FBA, assume they are buying from that marketplace, even when it is relatively clear that they are purchasing from a third-party seller.

Because of these disadvantages, it is important to realize that you might want to do some additional steps to build a niche site and create your own brand awareness.