Why Sell On Multiple Platforms Online?

With the beginning of eCommerce, online moments have become a normal thing and in fact a necessity. When you know that more and more customers are going online for products and services, the obvious is that more exposure on various platforms will avail the chances of higher revenues. Selling on multiple marketplaces is going to walk you through the goods and bads but this will surely be something worth doing and make good profits once the store starts operating orderly. 

Customers are everywhere with the daily usage of the internet and being available for them on all those platforms is important. With selling on multiple platforms online, you will be reaching customers where they will be and with the expanded reach, the product distribution will increase too. 

That's exactly how you feel when you have all the possible efforts in increasing your conversions but the revenues are not still enough. That's when selling on multiple channels online comes into the frame. 

Research from Stitch Labs documents that retailers selling on two marketplaces realizes 190% more revenue than those that sell on only one. 

That’s right. Selling on multiple channels leads to better revenue. While it aids the sellers in numerous ways helping them expand their businesses, it also paves a way towards the development of brand awareness. There are reasons contributing to the fact that selling on multiple channels can add to your revenues.  

When you have your business on various online platforms, your customers are sure to be multiplied. Though these marketplaces cannot generate leads, it sure can increase customer reach, proliferating your customer base. 

On marketplaces, customers usually compare the price and quality of various products, ensuring they get the best of bests. And in most cases, customers are even ready to pay more if your products and services are better than others’. When initially, all of this might come upon as difficult to manage, this might help you know the customers on different platforms and figure out their shopping pattern which induces remarketing as well as targeted marketing later.

Initially, selling on multiple channels might seem frightening with all the complications, managing inventory, and fees but once you are familiar with the multichannel environment, you yourself will want to expand your business with different strategies.

The obvious is multichannel increases visibility. More the visibility, the more the reach, and the more the reach, the more the sales. When you have your products on multiple platforms online, your products reach maximum shoppers augmenting the possibilities of them shopping it. 

In a Raymond James study published in early 2017, 52% of people said that Amazon is now their first choice for product searches. 

Amazon is doubtlessly one of the strongest platforms to sell your products on. And like Amazon, there are other platforms where the customers shop their products from. When you plan on selling your products on multiple platforms or marketplaces, it caters to the diversified needs of you as well as your customers.

To keep your customers satisfied, it’s important to know them. And although good marketing research will give you great insight into what they want, having actual customer feedback is the best way to ensure you're using the right strategy. Surveys allow you to get your customer's specific point of view and opinions - that is if you can get them to actually complete the survey. And writing a survey that customers will take the time to fill in is a hard task. 

With the help of platforms like these, getting in the radar of customers becomes easier as these marketplaces are known for availability of all categories of products, saving the time of the customers, making it a win-win for the seller and the customer. 

Selling on a single channel selling can be quite dangerous for sellers. Imagine one day, you wake up to know that your account from the only platform you sold on, is canceled. All the hard work you did on that site, all the time you spent on it, all the energy you devoted to it, turned into ‘It was’. What a nightmare right after waking up! 

This might happen if some website changes its policies and terms. If your account does not comply with that, it is deemed to get banned.

In order to avoid that situation, you need to sell on multiple channels. Selling on multiple online platforms not only facilitates increasing brand awareness or customer base but also saves your business. Try selling on multiple platforms once and experience the highs and lows of different online platforms.

When you plan to expand your business on multiple platforms, you need to make the choices wisely and meticulously and decide on everything because, more the power, more the responsibility. Multichannel selling will bring along multiple tasks and for managing those you will require efficiency along with some facts and figures. 

With the availability of hundreds of platforms to sell your products online, you need to choose wisely the platform you sell on. When the choices get wider, you need to focus better on choosing the website. With so many options for selling your products online, you need to narrow down the options to make the most of your online website. If you are selecting social media as one of your marketplaces, then you need to narrow down deep and select the social media channel carefully as per your product, industry or service. 

With more number of choices, you need to focus better. 

Channel you sell on should be in compliance with your objectives. You need to consider a few important points like: 

When you opt to sell on multiple platforms online, you pay a price which is an aggregate of different fees including the annual fee, shipping fee, Listing fee, payment processing fee, etc. Along with the fees, you need to make sure that the commission you pay is worth it as the commission varies in accordance with categories. If the expenses you incur on your online website bring you gains, only then selling on multiple platforms is wise.

Online platforms are virtual marketplaces and you cannot generate leads or increase your market share. What you can consider are the profit margins. If your profit margin on the goods you sell and goodwill boosts up, then it is advisable to sell on multiple online platforms. When earning good is the primary thing, you cannot afford to miss on considering the amount you earn by selling online. 

As a seller, you need to be thorough with the competition in the market. The level and intensity of the competition will help you determine the price of your products because pricing your products in correspondence to the competition is crucial. As an eCommerce entrepreneur, analyzing the competition can also help formulate strategies, ensuring you will stay in uniformity with the market and other sellers.

Evaluating the trends can help big time. When trends keep changing, you can identify the loopholes and add the products accordingly. Adding products which have a branding potential, those which solve problems, those about which people are passionate about and those which fulfills the needs and requirements can help you get to the top of the competition.

In this rat race, growing your business is the next thing, even the survival will become difficult at times if you do not opt multichannel ASAP. Though selling on multiple channels has not yet been the focus of attention, but with the growing usage of online shopping, selling on multiple platforms online will soon become a requisite. 

Let’s not reiterate the fact that selling on multiple channels online can not only help you build a brand and bring you millions but also helps you increase your reach and multiply your existing network for a greater advantage.