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How do you successfully combine selling in a marketplace with your own online shop?
Marketplace can be compared to a large virtual market, where many people offer and sell their assortment at the same time. With a marketplace, you can present your goods in new places, which means many potential customers. However, remember that it is worth developing your brand and investing in your own online shop, and treat the marketplace as an additional sales channel. This way, you will not be dependent on external services and you will not pay commissions on items sold.
Focusing your sales only on auction sites may seem like a safe and easy solution. In theory: you just need to have goods and you can start running your business, because the platform will help you reach many customers right away. In practice, it turns out that simply appearing in an auction site is not enough, and selling in a marketplace generates a lot of costs.
What are these fees due to? Selling in auction services is connected with a high commission. Depending on the product, this ranges from 4 to 16 percent. In addition, traders have to pay, for example, for items that have not been sold in a year or simply for listing certain products. In addition, services constantly involve sellers in various activities that are related to the standardisation of the offer, so they do not have time to think about improving their sales channel, the possibility of reducing fees and development.
Why sell in a marketplace? How to wisely weave it into your sales strategy? What products and offers sell best? You'll find out in the article below.
How can I successfully combine sales in the marketplace with sales in my own shop?
It is good practice to plan the marketplace share of your sales. If you are just starting out in e-commerce, the marketplace is often an easy and also the first choice for acquiring orders.
If you already have an active shop with a certain market position, it is worth thinking about the right pricing strategy. Prepare your offer so that it can be easily used later on in the sales service. What should you bear in mind? Accurate descriptions and appropriate images of your goods will not only allow an easy entry into the new sales channel, but also ensure the quality of your offer in the shop.
It is also important that the cost and time of introduction to a given marketplace are as low as possible. It is therefore good to use tools that make it easier to enter a new marketplace by standardising and automating processes.
Marketplace - advantages and challenges
Marketplace, especially for new shops, is a good place to get orders quickly. In the beginning, it can be a big boost to sales. Foreign marketplaces can also be an easy first step to international sales.
For larger businesses, it is a good idea for the macretplace to be just an additional channel that operates practically on its own.
It is also worth selling on a marketplace because your competitors are there. However, it is not worth basing your main sales on external services, because any change in commissions, presentation, requirements or threat of account withholding can result in a sales freeze, after which it is difficult to regain the previous position and the losses incurred.
How to effectively manage a marketplace and an online shop
It's worth noting that with sales sites, you rarely end up with just one additional channel. If you want to present your offers on multiple marketplaces, including marketplace and comparison sites, you should think about one common hub that will allow you to integrate multiple such channels together.
Relying on a direct connection between your product management system and your site will allow for quick updates, avoiding errors with out of stock products or fast shipping of orders. Apart from supporting the built-in warehouse and accounting systems in a given system (as in IdoSell), you cannot forget about the modules supporting the packaging process or allowing for a well-thought-out pricing policy, such as Dynamic Pricing.
Which marketplaces are worth selling in?
Merchants usually start their adventure with marketplaces from the most popular directions (and thus from services dominating on a given market).
In large services, such as Allegro or Amazon, we often face the challenge of high competition. This may result in price pressure. Therefore, it is worth directing your offer also to smaller services, such as Arena, where the competition has not yet found its way. Dedicated services, targeted at a specific industry such as Morele, 1But.pl or Empik are also a good option.
Reach new customers thanks to integrations with all important marketplaces in Poland and abroad. Starting sales at once in many marketplaces has never been so easy!
What offers work well in a marketplace?
If you sell so-called recurring goods, such as shoes, clothes, electronics or toys, you can successfully start presenting and selling your products in the marketplace. This is advantageous as the cards for these products are usually present on the site and the products themselves have the necessary data such as EAN.
What about rare or individually produced goods? The marketplace will allow you to build and consolidate your brand, stand out from the competition and achieve a higher margin.
Is it worth selling only on Allegro and Amazon, or maybe in all or selected marketplaces? How do you reconcile the marketplace with the online shop you should care about most? Which offers will work in the marketplace and which marketplaces should I choose? How do you effectively attract traffic and bring it into your online shop? How to manage prices wisely? These and many other questions will be answered by e-commerce expert Konrad Pleszczuk. Join us for a free IdoSell webinar, coming February 24, 2022.
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