Choosing where to sell your products is one of the foundation stones of your print-on-demand
seller journey.
Let me help you with that.
Ecommerce Platforms vs. Online Marketplaces for Print-on-Demand
Hey, it's Nora from Printful!
Both ecommerce platforms and online marketplaces have their pros and cons.
But, if you want to go from beginner seller to advanced entrepreneur, you have to know
how to make the best of both to sell your products.
In this video, we will go through the pros and cons of both ecommerce platforms and marketplaces
and show you how to use multichannel selling to your advantage.
Check out the link in the description to see our ecommerce platform & online marketplace
comparison page.
There you can take a short one-minute quiz to find out which platform is best suited
for you.
And while you're down in the description section, don't forget to subscribe to our channel and
tap on the bell icon to get notified about our latest videos.
That way, you'll never miss out on useful tips on how to run a successful ecommerce
store!
ECOMMERCE PLATFORM PROS AND CONS
PROS
Using an ecommerce platform means that your store is built as a standalone website.
This has a number of benefits.
First, having your own website means you can personalize your store as you see fit.
Store design is almost entirely up to you and your preferences, and you can choose what
features to add to your store.
You basically start from zero and build your way up.
This is why ecommerce platforms are ideal for sellers who are looking to grow their
own brand.
With a standalone website, you can have a strong brand presence, if you choose to build
it.
From store design to transactional emails, you control how your customers see you.
Next, an ecommerce platform is a gold mine for collecting customer information.
While marketplaces often keep a lot of details to themselves, with ecommerce platforms you
can use Google Analytics to find out exactly who your customers are,within the realms of
data privacy, of course.
You can also set up features like Facebook Pixels to run retargeting campaigns for your
Facebook ads, as well as set up email sign-up boxes, pop-ups, and more.
And, while it is never completely free to launch your online store from scratch, with
ecommerce platforms you can find a lot of free tools and features to use, keeping transaction
and order fees off your mind when building your product prices.
CONS
However, one of the main drawbacks with a standalone website is that traffic to your
site comes only from your marketing activities and search engines.
This means, if you stop your marketing efforts, you may not get any traffic to your site.
Low traffic can also point to high competition.
When you compete in search engines as a standalone website, you have the whole internet to fight
with for your potential customer attention, not just a select marketplace with a finite
number of items.
Both of these cons mean that starting up and getting your customer base is more of a challenge
than it is with a marketplace.
And finally, payment processing.
While most platforms offer apps or add-ons for this, it is something you need to set
up yourself, and that may come with some extra costs.
ONLINE MARKETPLACE PROS AND CONS
PROS
When using an online marketplace, your store is an account on the marketplace's website.
The main advantage of this set-up, and the reason many people choose marketplaces over
ecommerce platforms, is that each marketplace comes with its own search engine that offers
an additional source of traffic.
Marketplaces also come with their own trends you can follow and lean on.
Specific products or designs might be more on-trend with the specific culture accumulated
there.
If you have a product, message, or a brand that goes well with a certain marketplace,
take advantage of that and make your presence known.
With marketplaces you also don't have to worry about a lot of the technical stuff.
Once your store is set up and products are added, purchase information is handled by
the marketplace, including payment processing—for a fee, of course.
CONS
However, marketplaces do have some disadvantages when compared to ecommerce platforms.
The main one is that each marketplace has its own rules you have to comply with.
Sometimes this means you can’t brand your store the way you’d like, or you might not
be able to sell the products you want.
It can also be a bigger hassle adding products, because they have to meet a lot of criteria
that don't apply to products on ecommerce platforms.
Then, there's the cost.
Many marketplaces will require you to pay fees.
These can range from monthly subscriptions to a percentage of each sale.
As I mentioned before, it's never completely free to launch your online store from scratch,
but ecommerce platforms generally allow for a higher profit margin than marketplaces do,
when you add up all the fees and expenses you have to deal with.
And finally, you just have a lot less control over your brand and customers—there are
limited options for personalization determined by the marketplace and the communication about
purchases is generally taken care of by the marketplace.
MULTICHANNEL SELLING
Now that we've gone over the pros and cons of both ecommerce platforms and marketplaces,
let me tell you a secret: there is no clear winner.
Both options have their advantages and drawbacks, and the best way to choose between them is
to not choose at all.
That's where multichannel selling comes in.
Multichannel selling is the strategy of listing your products on more than one platform, to
reach a larger audience.
The more space you carve out for your products online, the more potential sales you’re
gaining.
Plus, the sooner you do it, the more potential revenue you get for the future.
Here are the main advantages of multichannel selling:
First, it increases your customer reach.
You can have a beautifully designed website and offer top-notch quality products, but
if nobody stumbles upon your store, you’ll have a hard time making more sales.
However, if you sell your products on your website and also list them on several marketplaces,
your brand and product reach can increase significantly.
And you can always send your repeat customers from your marketplace to your website, where
you have more control over your brand and communication.
Second, it means you have a backup plan if anything goes wrong.
No one wants to think about the worst case scenario, but some things are out of your
control.
If something happens with your website or your marketplace account, it's good to have
an alternative channel to send your loyal customers to!
Third, you can offer your customers a convenient shopping experience.
People are creatures of habit.
If they're used to shopping on Amazon, then placing an order on your website might seem
like too much work.
By being where your customers are, you’re making their shopping experience easy and
more pleasant.
Fourth, it can help you understand your audience better.
Selling on multiple sales channels gives you a chance to gather more information about
your customers and their shopping habits.
You can later use this knowledge when crafting your marketing or sales campaigns, or when
deciding which sales channel should be your next target.
And lastly, you can multiply your sales during peak spending days.
These peak days fall throughout the year; Black Friday, Boxing Day, back to school and
more.
Multichannel selling in this sense is like hitting a double-word score in Scrabble—add
more channels to multiply your sales.
Of course, more channels mean a lot more stuff to deal with.
From setting up, dealing with inventory, keeping track and managing taxes on multiple platforms,
it does require more work and attention from you.
However, there are more bonuses than drawbacks with this business model and, if you’re
a Printful customer, another big reason to sell across different channels is that Printful
makes the process streamlined.
Managing several stores connected to Printful is made easy by our Product templates feature.
A product template is a reusable template for a product: a Printful product + a print
file combination that exists independently from any of your stores and is saved only
on Printful.
That means you don’t have to worry about creating new products for each store—you
can start creating a product with a premade template, add the remaining info, and push
it to any store with ease.
You can also manage all of your orders from several stores in one place in your Orders
tab, and take advantage of our discounts with all of your sales combined.
These discounts are applied to your Printful account, not just one of the stores you have,
making it more likely you'll hit that monthly sales mark and get a discount!
You can learn more about Printful discounts by clicking on the link I left the description
below.
The thing is, multichannel selling is the future of ecommerce.
Join several marketplaces or start selling on your social media accounts by adding buy
buttons to your profiles and posts.
And don’t forget the opportunities brick-and-mortar can bring—think of ways to take your brand
offline, like opening up a pop-up shop or attending a craft fair.
Without a doubt, expanding your selling channels may be a challenge, but it’s definitely
worth a try.
So pick your sales channels wisely and be sure you can handle the increase in sales.
Do you have any multichannel selling tips?
Which ecommerce platform or marketplace do you think is the best?
Let us know in the comments below!
Hey!
I hope you enjoyed that video.
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And check out other videos on our channel to help your store become more successful.