Having an idea to start an online eCommerce business is always great. But if you’re wavering between starting an eCommerce website or a Marketplace, that case, do consider reading this article.
Well clear this up here, what’s the difference?
The conventional eCommerce websites are the online store that lets the owner of the site sell their products. Marketplaces are a new way of approach where a lot of vendors/owners sell their products to the consumers.
Here are my thoughts to help make your choice clearer.
MARKETPLACE VS ECOMMERCE WEBSITE
1. The Way Of Branding
Traditional storefront eCommerce solutions have the advantage of focusing on a single brand or business. This both relies on upon and helps to foster customer brand loyalty, resulting in high customer lifetime value.
This benefits the buyer because they don’t need to hunt around for complementary or competing products. This benefits the seller because they can leverage the marketplaces’ strength and volume of visitors.
2. The Cost Of Starting Something Valuable
Users can take the slack assets as an advantage, though they are owned but not entirely used. and that means marketplaces can create strong customer value with much less outlay for the marketplace operator.
The owners of the asset benefit because they get greater utility from something they can’t use all the time. Traditional ecommerce usually requires that someone foots the bill to buy sufficient stock, otherwise customers face long lead times as goods are drop-shipped from the storefronts’ wholesaler.
But on the flip side, the items that are sold are used exclusively by the buyer, and they can be assured of infinite availability. Traditional eCommerce is a good solution for a single brand selling its stock.
3. The Way Users Can Find What They Want?
Storefronts have the challenge of making consumers aware they exist. This means the individual merchant has to spend more to drive traffic to their site but can focus their spend on tightly targeted marketing.
Then, once a buyer has found their storefront the selection process is simpler, as they are selecting from the products offered by only one company. Hence, hopefully, the commitment to buy is a fairly quick one.
Marketplaces can spend on targeted marketing too, but the cost is borne by all merchants operating on the site. The targeting can be especially effective if the marketplace offers unique products that are tightly associated, addressing a buyer’s aggregated need.
As there are many sellers they individually advertise the existence of the marketplace causing a viral spread of awareness. The more happy buyers transacting on the site the more they help to spread the recognition of the marketplace and do so in a more pinpointed way than targeted marketing alone.
The marketplace operator must select a platform that can allow search criteria to be tailored to the buyer’s needs.
4. Different technology approach
Ecommerce storefront exists to serve the customer through its online presence, and so it’s designed in that way. But coming to the Marketplace, it is a streamlined process of online shopping. Marketplace provides online shoppers with a one-stop solution to buy what they want.
Though they’ve similar features, the way they operate and in exhibiting the efficiency are entirely different.
Building a marketplace requires appropriate modern technology. These technologies should offer some powerful APIs and cloud-based software that enables short implementation times. Modern marketplace solutions support omnichannel technology; integrating physical in-store, web, native mobile, fulfillment, and social commerce channels into the one platform.
5. Positive cash flow
Here the eCommerce websites need more principal capital they take a longer time to overcome the break. Whereas Marketplaces on the other hand have better profit margins as their revenue generation differs from the traditional one.
In Marketplaces, the total revenue depends on the volume of transactions made by the consumers.
This is the prime reason for the success of the marketplace’s business model. The success of the marketplace is growing every day and its trends won’t fade way simply.
The market for the eCommerce marketplace is constantly evolving in recent years. All this just because it helps the user to create an effective shopping experience for their consumers. So this major aspect made this business model even more successful than you could imagine.
WRAPPING UP
All these things considered, there is no way to compare the eCommerce website with the Online Marketplace. The marketplace is an easier way to reach the top of the market and to succeed in online business.
Reach a Marketplace expert developer to explore your idea of developing a Marketplace.
