The marketplace graph is in perpetual ascendancy, opening up the platform for numerous online stores. The marketplace channels customer attention towards the store and helps enhance your eCommerce sales.
Renowned marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, and eBay are sought to provide the right impetus to explore your potential. In addition, tools are aplenty helping eCommerce businesses realize their objectives riding comprehensive services software.
For example, a Zaakpay integrated payment gateway helps complete the purchase lifecycle to benefit the merchant and customer. So let us dig deeper and find out what makes an attractive marketplace.
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Factors Influencing the Choice of a Marketplace
It is good to scan the influencing factors in the online store’s decision to join a marketplace. Moreover, it is still better to showcase their eCommerce ware before breaking down their upsides and downsides. So, here are the most critical factors to consider.
- Seamless Entry: Online stores are inhibited from joining a marketplace where registering is overly complicated. On the contrary, eCommerce stores look for an easy sign-up while cataloging their products on the site.
- Affordable Fees: Online stores are comfortable paying affordable fees to the marketplace for their eCommerce business. After all, the lower the cost, the higher the profit.
- Fulfilled and Shipping: Online stores prefer marketplaces that provide shipping services on their behalf for converting sales successfully.
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- Growth Potential: Popular and dominating marketplaces are ideal for the online store to realize their potential in the eCommerce business. In addition, it maximizes profit and triggers customer confidence.
No wonder the best payment gateways in India are bundled with Zaakpay’s comprehensive services boosting the marketplace’s standing. And it is the recipe for enhanced sales growing into the future.
Getting Started with Online Sales
Joining a suitable marketplace is just the stepping stone in the eCommerce business. Focusing on the following gets you moving on the eCommerce bandwagon, chasing perpetual growth with the right tools. Check out the tips below..
- Product Sourcing: You need a product inventory matching your business goals. Tap wholesalers, B2B stores, and manufacturers for strategic sourcing and replenishments to keep your online store well-stocked while creating a brand.
- Craft a Business Model: Choosing the products and ways to sell them are two significant aspects of building a niche presence in the marketplace. How you go about your eCommerce business is best figured out well in advance.
- Choose the Right Tools: Your business viability and profit are substantially dependent on the software you choose to run your operations and tap potential growth areas. AMZScout’s PRO Extension and Product Database are two such tools that will propel your operations upwards.
- Create a Catalog: Selling on the marketplace is based on an optimized listing that attracts the customer’s attention. Hiring professionals and freelancers specializing in product listings make the catalog a showpiece.
Selling Online in Marketplaces – Pros and Cons
The eCommerce bandwagon is dominating the online shopping landscape keeping pace with the internet penetration, which paves the way for entrepreneurs to make money. And online marketplaces are providing them with the right platform for product listing to harness business opportunities in an ever-increasing audience.
However, before tapping their extensive reach, understanding the advantages and disadvantages helps you grow in the competitive environment. So, let us first check the pros followed by the cons.
Pros:
- Extended Reach:
Millions of Indians are shopping online, making marketplaces the right platform for retailers to reach them. Established Amazon and Flipkart assure a captive audience to showcase your brand. In addition, the marketplace’s trust and loyalty are carried over for return purchases.
- Technical Excellence:
The global eCommerce giants are technologically sound, capable of handling massive traffic any time with negligible downtime. Thus, you are on firm ground without technical issues marrying your sales and business operations.
- Customer Loyalty:
A well-appointed marketplace helps retailers manage their sales seamlessly, including billing, payment, shipping, delivery, returns, and refunds. The safe process is followed up with an acknowledgment communication. In turn, the rewarding experience engenders customer loyalty.
- Dedicated Customer Support:
The key to customer trust and brand promotion is a dedicated after-sales service for both the merchant and the customer. Zaakpay’s comprehensive service integration includes a 24/7 uninterrupted customer assistance mechanism. In other words, retailers are free from managing customer-related issues backed by an excellent support system.
- Delivery Management:
Logistics are intrinsic to eCommerce platforms. Retailers are saved from the hassle of managing post-sales services bundled in the marketplace infrastructure. All the retailer does is stock their brand products and sell for the marketplace to take over for a successful transaction.
Cons:
- Tough Competition:
Many retailers list similar products competing with each other for selling space. Some retailers offer discounts and rewards to enhance sales. It is difficult for new retailers and startups to find a toehold in the highly competitive environment. In turn, it inhibits business scaling to the desired levels.
- Delayed Settlement:
Although payments for online sales are instantaneous through the best payment gateways in India managing the show, the amount is lodged in the marketplace account. The final payment is settled with the seller after deducting the fees, for which the turn-around time is 7 to 14 days. Such a delay hampers cash flow until an Instant Settlement for Marketplace Sellers is integrated into the payment gateway. Ask Zaakpay for a solution!
- Cost Considerations:
The marketplaces charge fees for using their platform, and payments are settled post dues adjustments. If the commissions are high, it eats into the retailer’s profits and hinders upward business growth.
- Product Focus:
The bane of online sales in the marketplace is that multiple retailers peddle similar products. Customers are often baffled by the product ignoring the brand properties. Thus, many retailers lose out on sales in this confusing landscape.
- Social Media Cost:
Social media promotion is essential for enhanced online sales in the present times. However, the cost for marketing on social media channels deters retailers from advancing business, especially payment settlement. Thus, the pain points are:
- Impaired cash flow during growth seasons
- Delayed customer order processing
- Missing billing due dates despite meeting sales targets
There are no two opinions about the eCommerce marketplaces dominating the online shopping space. However, the payment gateway plays a significant role in straightening the creases for a mutually beneficial equation with retailers. Zaakpay is a one-stop service provider integrating the software space providing comprehensive solutions in an ecosystem where online retailers thrive and grow regardless of the downsides outpaced by the upsides.
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