Defining the Marketplace
The marketplace is a globally known platform that is very reliable and with a simple principle. It is now defined as a website on which independent sellers, professionals or individuals, have the opportunity to sell their products or services online for, in the most famous cases, a commission taken by the site on each sale.
There are other economic models based on fixed costs on sales, subscriptions, insertion costs, price per lead, or services to sellers.
The marketplace has many advantages for both parties. For buyers, it allows them to benefit from a large choice of products. For professionals, it offers access to a legion of potential customers and payment guarantees.
Also, there are services offered by Facebook, eBay and Amazon to users that consist of sales areas. This does grant sellers a diversity of functionalities of these platforms and the excellent traffic on these marketplaces, but it remains the seller responsibility to take care of the warehouse of his merchandise.
There exist several marketplaces where storage and distribution are taken care of. The storage service will be perfectly carried out when the marketplace has enough resources to ensure the satisfaction of both parties, buyers and sellers allowing itself to expand the network and earn more profits.
The advantages offered by the Marketplace
This new way of selling your products is very efficient, and we encourage every business to start selling on these platforms in order to reach more clients and reduce the Marketing cost. Here are the advantages that every marketplace user can benefit from:
Visibility
The marketplaces grant their online retailers more visibility with less marketing costs. Choosing websites such as Amazon, Facebook, Airbnb or eBay that are well-known internationally leave you with no need for ads in order to promote your products and services because their traffic is more than enough.
All you have to do is present good quality products with attractive prices and leave it all to the platforms to handle. They have a good SEO and your integration will award you more visibility and better positioning in the market.
A better SEO
Every online retailer's struggle is to acquire the best Search Engine Optimization. You don't have to worry when you're selling through the marketplaces, their specialized team in natural referencing will take charge of that in order to optimize their own.
You can benefit from the expert work when your transactions are done on the marketplaces, enabling your products to earn better visibility.
An easy comparison
Marketplaces do offer a lot of benefits for their online retailers, but that can only happen if the previously mentioned one does put an effort to successfully achieve the set goal.
As a seller, you will be on a battlefield with your competitors who are selling the same or similar products to yours. What you have to do to avoid the comparison is to provide the most innovative products or services that distinguish you from the rest of them. Offer a better quality or a better price that attracts consumers to your products instead of going for your competitor's.
The platforms can also provide you with all the answers you need for your market research. It contains various sellers presenting the same product comparable to yours, you can navigate through the presented offers, analysing them in order to come up with a more attractive one.
Protection
As we previously mentioned, some marketplaces take charge of the warehousing, delivery or even the payments processes which reassure the buyers and encourage them to make the purchases.
Consumers always in search of a secure place to buy their needs from and with the existence of scams, the trust issues with the online purchasing act did increase. That is why people tend to trust well-known marketplaces that take care of the previously mentioned processes for protection.
Ease of foreign transactions
As a trader, you are probably aware of the difficulties faced when you try to make a foreign transaction. These difficulties could be related with the product documents presented to you, the payments, the After Sale Services...etc. Let’s not even mention the perpetual changes in VAT.
The advantage of being an online retailer on the marketplace is that you don’t have to deal with any of the previously mentioned struggles. These platforms are present internationally and in every country you wish to ship for. They will handle all the processes including the payment and all you will have to do is provide the products or services.
The Marketplace’s limits
With all these advantages provided from the Marketplace, these platforms can also have some shortcomings.
Integrating the best logistics
Succeeding in your online sales relies on the SEO of the position you have, that is why your visibility and SEO play an important role in your sales process.
In order to have your products on the top of the Marketplace’s offers, you have to offer the best quality at a reasonable and competitive price, which will encourage the consumers to choose you instead of your competitors. The more satisfied clients you have, the better your SEO will be on the Marketplace. Every single step needs to be managed carefully from the purchase till the order delivery. By doing this, the marketplace will acknowledge your power and give you even more visibility and other perks.
Marketplaces are not for Marketing
When joining the Marketplace, your information will be publicly shared with various Internet users for an important low cost, but that does not mean that these platforms are advertising channels. In fact, they are considered as means of distribution and also a persuasive commercial means for your business.
