Marketplace or your own online store?

Every business that wants to sell online faces two paths: opening a shop on the big marketplaces, or building its own e-commerce website. Both have strengths and weaknesses, and for most brands the right answer isn't "one or the other" but using both in the right order and the right proportion. In this post we put the two channels side by side.

The strengths of a marketplace

Marketplaces are the fastest way to start selling. They offer ready-made traffic, an audience that is already in a buying mood, and established payment and shipping arrangements.

• Quick start: Opening a shop and listing products doesn't take long.
• Built-in traffic: Your product appears in front of large numbers of visitors who are already there to shop.
• Trust: Even if customers don't know you, they know the platform, so they find it easier to buy.

The limits of a marketplace

That convenience comes at a price, and it becomes more visible as sales grow:

• Commission: The cut taken from every sale hits your profitability directly. As revenue grows, so does the total commission you pay.
• Price competition: The same or similar products are listed side by side, and customers often decide on price alone.
• The customer isn't yours: Customer information and the relationship largely stay with the platform. Selling again, announcing campaigns or building loyalty becomes harder.
• Little room for your brand: You describe your product within the platform's template; there's little space for your brand's story, style and what makes you different.
• The rules aren't yours: Commission rates, listing rules and visibility depend on the platform's decisions.

The strengths of your own online store

• No commission on sales: As your sales grow, there's no growing cut going to a platform; only the payment provider's transaction fee remains.
• You own the customer relationship: You see who bought what and how often they come back, and you can build campaigns, newsletters and loyalty programmes around that.
• Brand experience: You design product pages, packaging, gift notes, box options and post-purchase communication in your own style.
• Flexibility: You can set up models a marketplace doesn't support, such as corporate orders, personalisation or sales flows unique to your business.
• Search engine visibility: Your product and category pages rank on Google in your own name.

The challenges of your own store

Traffic doesn't arrive at your own store by itself. Bringing visitors to the site takes effort and budget across channels such as search engine optimisation, social media, advertising and email. It's normal for sales to start more slowly than on a marketplace in the first months.

Using both together

For many brands, the healthiest model is to run both channels together:

• The marketplace works as the channel for winning new customers and volume.
• Your own store becomes the channel for brand, loyalty and profitability: repeat customers, campaigns and exclusive products live here.

The most common problem when running both channels is stock confusion. An integration that syncs stock and order data between the two channels prevents the same item from being sold in both places and coming up short.

How to decide

• Does your product or brand offer something beyond price?
• Do your customers buy again? How important are repeat sales?
• How does the commission you pay affect your profitability as revenue grows?
• Are you ready to bring traffic to the site through social media, content or advertising?

If your brand, repeat sales and profitability matter to you, your own online store is an essential channel in the long run. On our e-commerce website service page we explain how we build your own store, complete with product management, payment infrastructure and an admin panel. Tell us about your current sales channels and let's work out the right setup for you together.

We cover the first steps once you've decided to have a website built in I want a website built: where to start.