What is the difference between an eCommerce and a marketplace?
A measure of size: not so much in relation to the volume of business , but rather to the "warehouses", or rather the type of products that the digital store manages or the quantity of suppliers that it groups together. Usually an eCommerce manages only one or a few suppliers and generally the products belong to a very specific sector, often even to a single brand. In addition, eCommerce is usually managed by a staff or an agency that directly manages the transactions, promotions, advertising and even the warehouse if necessary.
A marketplace, on the other hand, groups together many independent sellers cell phone number database and often, as in the case of eBay and Amazon, products or services belonging to very different product sectors. Usually it does not directly manage the transactions which instead end up in the accounting of the seller. The marketplace is essentially a manager, who has the power to enable the buying and selling mechanism but does not act on it, that is, does not create everything that distinguishes the sale.
The main advantage of a marketplace is undoubtedly linked to trust: the average customer has fewer problems buying on a marketplace rather than on a newly born eCommerce. The big “name” seems to be a guarantee of data protection, security in transactions, even if in the case of the marketplace this has less to do with what one might think. Therefore, for us, relaunching products on a marketplace is a strategy that must absolutely be implemented in the first years of life of an online business.
But it is also true that all this can make you quite anonymous, one of the many sellers present on the portal. Furthermore, you cannot choose the template and you will not have your beautiful brand highlighted as on your site. Do you remember the name of the seller from whom you made your last purchase on Privalia or Zalando ?
Finally, being on a marketplace, as well as having your own eCommerce, does not automatically mean selling. It is true that being on a marketplace allows the new seller to access a large amount of traffic but it is not a given that those who land on these platforms are looking for your product, often they will not find you and you will always be close to brands more famous than yours. In this regard, there are visibility packages within the marketplace or specific types of Adwords campaigns, as in the case of Google Merchant Center , a tool that allows you to upload the data of your store and your products to Google and make them available in the SERPs.