E-commerce retailing caters to the business needs and personal needs of billions of buyers every day since it is one of the most reliable and fastest ways of selling online yet. Marketplaces are the current centres of retail action. Any financial guru would suggest that new businesses be launched through already established online selling platforms rather than proprietary websites due to their high traffic. For one, the processes are legally systematised and automated at e-marketplaces. Secondly, right from packaging and quality-control to logistics and customer grievance management is centralized and handled hassle-free by these E-marketing platforms.
Here are the 4 compelling reasons to sell at Online Marketplaces
- Maximum Product Visibility
- Global Reach, New Customers and Low Marketing Costs
- Multi-Category Selling at E-marketplaces
- Centralized Multi-Channel Management Systems
Let us look these four reasons in detail and try to find why it is advisable to set your foot into the magnificent world of E-marketplaces.
Maximum Product Visibility
Whether it is a newly launched product or a revamped product offering, sellers are always looking for innovative ways of making these products visible and viable for potential customers. Search engines contribute to retail fulfilment of customers since most of them look for alternate availability of sellers through these tools. Keeping this in mind, online sellers should target to capture selling opportunities and obtain permanent customers at these potential access points. Making the product visible to a maximum number of customers includes the following which is taken care of by E-marketplaces:-
- Product keyword search done by customers and exact or nearly matched mapping to registered sellers products at E-marketplaces if relevant will be displayed on the search page and the search engine optimised result will have a link to the landing page of the seller’s product on the E-marketplace portal.
- Pricing based search will land the customer on the seller’s product page if he offers the least price as compared to other sellers. E-marketplaces do an internal comparative analysis and redirect the result to the search engine thus giving the seller’s product maximum exposure.
- A seller can even list the available colour or size variation options in products on a single page at E-marketplace which increases the chances of purchase by customers due to their visibility.
- Some E-marketplaces offer recommendations of alternative product availability or collaborative purchases on check-out pages thus offering visibility to other products sold by the same seller or a different seller.
- Customer reviews and product rankings on E-marketplace pages provide direct visibility to sellers and their products since customers are always looking for best selling products among their desired products.
Global Reach, New Customers and Low Marketing Costs
E-commerce marketplaces are a global seller’s playground. They attract buyers and sellers from all over the world, with different buying and selling requirements and offer the best possible multi-channel retailing management platform under a single roof at lower costs. For example, TrueGether Marketplace handles many product categories but predominantly appeals to tech-savvy customers who have interests in products like DIY electronics, laptop accessories and home automation. Most consumers have certain marketplace preferences and always stick to these preferences, sellers can expect to reach a unique set of core customers on each marketplace.
- The growth potential of cross-border commerce through E-marketplaces is significant for sellers because of their networking capacity.
- Faster global scalability in a very cost-effective mode can be ensured through E-commerce marketplaces by providing centralized and localized order-fulfilment processes along with reliable payment gateway management, expanded marketing and customer management tools.
- Sellers can leverage online marketplaces to not only win new customers but build their global brand.
- Personal marketing will involve a lot of overhead costs and unnecessary expenses. At E-marketplaces, with all processes in place, marketing a seller’s brand is faster, easier and very easy on the seller’s bank.
- Sellers can capture the market in the geographic region that is promising and offers great potential for selling their products and also focus on such markets through E-marketing platforms without physically being there or spending a fortune for personal marketing.
Multi-Category Selling at E-marketplaces
If you are a seller who is multi-faceted when it comes to handling product listings, then E-marketplaces are the best bet for you. For example, if you have distributors of mobile accessories and also a consistent supply of distinct laptop accessories, you can feature the products under their respective categories at an E-marketplace and reap the benefits of both. The platforms will also feature seller name for a product which will help in shifting focus to the seller and ultimately other products the same seller happens to sell online.
Similarly, the sellers dealing with fragrances and medical supplies can have a recommendation scroll on their product page that will feature most of the products sold by the seller based on the customer’s search.
Also, re-stocking under multiple categories can be done promptly with automated systems that monitor buyers’ buying patterns and by getting product inventory updates from the E-marketplaces’ centralized inventory management team in the form of notifications.
Dealing with multiple categories under the same roof will balance-out your profit-loss ratio, since if products under one category do not perform well in one season, then you can always use in-demand products in another category to balance out the equation for you. Also, since a seller’s business is managed under a single centralized system, streamlining processes will be a cakewalk and would involve lesser efforts from the seller.
Centralized Multi-Channel Management Systems
Most of the Multi-Channel retailing platforms today have the cutting-edge scalable software, that is multi-vendor compatible, portable on most devices and user-friendly. They offer cinch user interfaces that would prompt sellers to go digital to sell their merchandises. These seller-centric software tools offered by E-marketplaces not only help in product listings but all of the following:
- Product Pricing based on pre-set standards.
- Discounts and offers can be managed laterally through all interfaces in synchronised with multiple E-marketplaces.
- Page layout and image quality are centrally controlled
Information display format and content monitoring is done centrally. - Liberty is offered to sellers to edit product related information through their active account and user privileges.
- Any content or functionality flaws or setbacks are rectified immediately by the E-marketplace administrators.
- Stock updates online are updated automatically in sync with warehouse inventory management system.
- Product Quality checks, logistics, shipping, handling and warehouse management systems are centralized and synchronized thus giving sellers a stress-free setup.
- Payments are made on a timely basis to sellers and are well-coordinated.
- Customer grievances, queries and feedback systems are well synchronized with sellers’ intimation and response systems to provide timely responses to customers.
- The security and safety aspects of physical goods in warehouses and seller information online are centrally governed and controlled.
- Troubleshooting of any kind on product display pages or action pages are handled by a technical team of the E-marketplace which takes the burden off of sellers’ shoulders and lets them focus on other important business actions.