E-commerce vs Marketplace

 

The usual dilemma for many is to create an e-commerce or sell directly in the marketplaces?

Many now believe that to sell their products it is better to rely on marketplaces rather than e-commerces. Of course, the best way to do branding would be to have both, that is, to sell on a direct channel (e-commerce) by doing search engines marketing, using price comparators, social networks and anything else, and at the same time introduce products on marketplaces.

Often, the solution of having both is still prohibitive in terms of investment for many companies.

The third solution is to rely on someone who manages both e-commerce and marketplace accounts on our behalf, but this solution often involves costs of thousands of euros per month, which are unjustified compared to sales volumes.

The main differences of selling on your own e-commerce rather than on marketplaces is that in the first case the “online shop” needs huge budgets to promote it, without it the products it contains would not be found; in the second case it is possible to open accounts on the main marketplaces and upload the products. In this case the problem of “do it yourself” is often related to the difficult and cumbersome use of the marketplaces dashboard which, among other things, work differently, in addition to the fact of controlling and coordinate the warehouse, almost always unique, with all the marketplaces where the products have been inserted and put up for sale.