If you have an e-commerce, want to start selling online or are thinking about starting your operation in marketplaces, first of all it is important to know what marketplaces are and what are the advantages and disadvantages of selling your products in this online shopping mall. .
WHAT ARE MARKETPLACES
The most interesting association to make with marketplaces is to compare them to virtual malls.
When you are going to buy something and want to take a look at the options or search for a price, you can go to a mall and enter several stores (which even sell the same products), look at the products available, check the price and leave without buying anything.
The same happens with marketplaces, basically they are sites where several shopkeepers advertise their products and wait for a visitor to find them and make a purchase.
Sounds simple, does not it?
And indeed it is, but it is always good to know the advantages and disadvantages of advertising your products on marketplaces:
ADVANTAGES
Court hearing:
Marketplaces have a huge audience, millions and millions of visits every month, so if you start selling on marketplaces, you will count this huge audience.
Logistics:
In most cases, marketplaces take care of the logistics of delivering their products or provide a fulfillment service (a process that involves everything from the customer's order to the receipt of the order) that will carry out this activity.
They choose to carry out this activity, as the consumer who buys on the Americanas marketplace (for example) and receives their product in arrears, complains about Americanas and not their store, so they are responsible for delivery, one less concern.
Marketing:
To get this audience, marketplaces invest a lot in marketing, so this investment, which aims to make the site found on the first page of Google, is their responsibility.
Payment options:
Generally, marketplaces also already have a partner to process all payments that take place on the site, leaving this activity under their responsibility.
And in addition, their rates are much more advantageous with acquirers, as they have a high financial volume transacted.
It's time to multiply your sales
DISADVANTAGES
Fees:
Despite the advantages mentioned above, selling on marketplaces also has its downsides and one of them is the fee, which is nothing more than a commission they receive for each sale they make, fees vary on average from 10% to 25%, all of this it depends on your volume and the scope traded with the marketplace.
Bargaining power:
At the end of the day, the marketplace is in charge of the site, so any changes that it imposes you either accept or stop selling your products, and this can range from raising rates to choosing whether or not you will sell a certain product, so be careful .
Competition:
For marketplaces, the more sellers on their platform the better, as it increases diversity for end consumers.
And that means that there will be several companies that sell the same products as you, that is, the competition in the marketplace becomes price and service, as delivery, payment, shipping will all be charged or carried out by the marketplace.
Privileged market information:
From the moment you start selling on the marketplace, they have a lot of market information such as which store sells the cheapest or which products sell the most and what the price is, among other information about everything that happens on their website. and they can start selling these products, because they know it's worth it.
The main point we can take away from all this is that, like everything else in life, marketplaces have their good and bad sides.
And the big secret is to minimize the risks of the disadvantages and take advantage of the advantages, that is, you must sell your products on marketplaces and take advantage of their audience, after all it is better to sell by paying a fee than not selling (but do the math before see if the fee doesn't reduce your margin to an unfeasible level).
Also, don't forget that your main operation should still be your e-commerce so keep focusing on it, because if you start to depend on marketplaces you know that the rules can change at any time.
