One of the main advantages of starting an online business is that this approach requires a minimum of investment. As a general rule, it is necessary to develop a website, conduct research on the target audience, draw up a marketing strategy and start attracting the first buyers. If you compare this with the launch of a physical store, then the costs are actually minimal. However, there is a way to save even more while receiving a maximum of useful functions.
At the start of an online business, the marketplace is one of the best solutions for most entrepreneurs. Indeed, such Internet platforms solve many fundamental problems at the same time. Therefore, in this article, we decided to tell you why you should consider online marketplaces as the first step to developing your online retail business.
Quick Start with Minimal Resources
The marketplace offers sellers a ready-made online store on the site, where thousands of customers already go daily. You no longer need to spend money and hire developers or spend time to master all the intricacies of creating a site yourself. Everything is ready for you, and as a rule, marketplaces provide the opportunity to work with the basic set of functions for free or offer trial access to the full functionality of the online store for a certain period, sufficient to understand whether this approach suits you. All you need to do is a little customization, plus fill your store with goods and add selling descriptions.
A Lot of Loyal and Active Buyers
The main advantage of placing on the marketplace is direct access to the audience of the site. Most of your potential customers have long known the names of major marketplaces and visit them very often. You no longer need to try to launch contextual advertising or advertising on social networks, as your products immediately appear before the eyes of a potential target audience. Plus, this method is ideal for testing the demand for a specific product among buyers, because you can simply take an observer position and track activity.
Technical Issues Are Not Your Pain Anymore
Developers are constantly improving the technical capabilities of the marketplace, which can significantly facilitate the life of the owner of the online store. Thus, the page loading speed, which directly affects the likelihood of a purchase, the presence of 404 errors, server load issues, backups of your site is no longer your headache. All these issues are resolved by the marketplace support service, which, as a rule, remain in touch with users around the clock.
Good Ratings Through Real Customer Reviews
Ratings and reviews are strong social evidence that very often becomes the main decisive factors for making a purchase decision. As we have already said, the audience of marketplaces is active shoppers, and they are happy to read reviews from other customers and write their own as well. Marketplace helps online stores earn more reviews thanks to the high traffic of visitors. Therefore, if your product and related services are really good, very soon your customers themselves will begin to help you sell more leaving their feedback for you.
The Ability to Build a Good Customer Base
If earlier it was possible to simply buy a database of email addresses, today this approach no longer works. The more addresses you buy, the greater the likelihood that some of them will be invalid, and the second part will not be interested in your offer. In other words, these are not your target users.
Starting to develop with the help of the marketplace, you can begin to collect a high-quality contact database of your potential and real customers. In the future, you will be able to work with them by creating your own personal website and launching an email marketing company
Only Fair Competition
All companies that place their goods on marketplaces are on an equal footing. And this makes the competition as honest as possible. Working with marketplaces, merchants are deprived of the opportunity to lure customers with deceptive and attractive offers, since everyone develops within the scope of the opportunities provided by the marketplace. The only way with which you can compete while remaining honest is to offer the best assortment of goods, at the best price, with the best service, plus with more favorable delivery conditions.
A Lot of Available Services Inside
Selling their products through the marketplace, users can also take advantage of additional services to improve SEO, configure contextual advertising, and develop an e-mail marketing strategy. In practice, it is very convenient and profitable to get all the services in one place. For you, this means access to a professional team consisting of specialists of each profile, plus the lack of the need to look for and hire them yourself. Prices for additional services within the marketplace, as a rule, also remain at an adequate level, since the marketplace offers and sells them to a large number of users.
A Chance to Boost Your Business with Government
There is a special type of e-procurement marketplaces that are used by governmental agencies to order goods and services necessary for the realization of the state’s goals. This is a win-win option since the government can choose the best quality at the best cost along with saving local or state budget. And the start-up business can become more profitable and make a significant contribution to its reputation by obtaining and performing governmental orders.
A Good Start for a Global Brand
Successful marketplaces are gradually becoming global and expanding their audience, becoming famous throughout the world. And you can do the same. The development of a marketplace means the simultaneous development of companies that work with it. For you, this means access to new target audiences and new markets. By the way, this also eliminates the need to create several language versions of your site, since, as we have already said, this will be the task of the developers of the marketplace itself. All you need to do is to localize the content and descriptions of the goods, but this can easily be done using the translation service The Word Point, for example.
Conclusion
As you can see, the marketplace gives every chance to grow your business from an idea to global development. Do not ignore this all-inclusive feature. Most of the work has already been done for you and instead of you. All you need to do is find a unique product and a suitable marketplace for its promotion.
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