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• October 2021
• Sell across multiple channels. What Facebook's outage can teach us?

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Edu blog

IdoSell

Facebook's outage deprived more than 3 billion users of access to social media. Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp were also out of action for several hours. The crash not only hit personal lives but also brought to a halt some businesses that rely on these apps.

The applications stopped working suddenly. For several hours, users could not add stories, post photos, or reply to messages. Scheduled meetings on WhatsApp, including business ones, could not take place. Likewise, planned promotional campaigns, advertising posts did not take off and it was impossible to contact customers. Businesses that operate primarily on Facebook were paralyzed.

Is social media the future of e-commerce?

Selling on social media is a definite trend in modern e-commerce. Marketplaces seem to be a safe solution, especially at the beginning of the e-commerce adventure. You just need to have the merchandise and you can start selling. Social media help to immediately reach a large group of recipients. Therefore, they are wildly popular advertising and marketing channels for many e-commerce companies, from various industries. Clothing and cosmetics companies are clearly present on Instagram, and virtually all shops from every industry have their promotional campaigns on Facebook.

Don't make your business dependent on one channel

What can Facebook's outage teach online shop owners? First of all, that it is better to have more sales channels. By listing in several places, you don't run the risk that one provider's servers will "go down" and your business will be dependent on how quickly the failure (or errors) are fixed.

What else passes for multi-channel selling? A difficulty for entrepreneurs can be marketplace policies. Some sites often make changes to the terms and conditions or increase the commission. Sellers have no influence on this and have to adapt. If you have your own online shop that operates independently of the marketplace, you do not pay any commission.

According to IdoSell specialists, your own online shop is one of the most important sales channels. Of course, this does not mean that you should not sell on Allegro or Amazon or mark your presence in other marketplaces or price comparison sites. On the contrary.

It's better if there are more channels

The optimal solution in e-commerce is to sell in multiple channels and build a strong brand with your own online shop. This is the most developmental option for an entrepreneur.

The largest IdoSell shops never sell in just one channel. Sellers often decide to sell products simultaneously on Allegro and Amazon, on price comparison sites, advertise on Google and social networks. At the same time, they consciously manage prices and product availability by channel (the different prices of the product in different channels).