Marketplaces are the ecommerce of the future

The popularity of marketplace ecommerce keeps increasing, and it’s easy to understand why. From the buyer’s perspective, marketplaces offer convenience and security. They gather all your options in one place and make it easy to find and compare different products and services. When you use the same marketplace frequently, it becomes effortless to navigate, and often you can save your payment details, facilitating one-click checkout. In short, marketplaces remove a lot of friction.

From a vendor’s perspective, there are plenty of benefits as well. Marketplaces come with a built-in audience that would be very expensive to acquire through paid advertising. They also come with built-in trust, and as a consequence, the threshold for first-time purchases from new brands is lower.

Marketplace ecommerce refers to online multi-brand marketplaces. These are venues where multiple vendors or suppliers can connect with buyers and sell their products and services. Transactions take place in the marketplace, as opposed to through the individual ecommerce sites of the vendors.

30%

of all global online B2B sales are projected to be on marketplaces by 2024

47%

of online purchases are generated through digital marketplaces

59%

of the Top 500 US online retailers are selling on marketplaces

66%

of distributors say they are losing revenue to marketplaces

Designing an ecommerce marketplace

Two primary means to grow your business via the marketplace model could be through marketplace syndication or marketplace creation. We’ve been fortunate to have experience in helping hundreds of businesses take steps in both directions. From strategy to operations, whatever it takes to succeed in selling your products or services online, we can advise on every step of this journey.

Learn more about our Quick Launch Accelerator

Marketplace commerce benefits

Whether you’re selling products or services, adding a marketplace as one of your sales channels comes with many benefits.

Visibility and SEO01

Many marketplaces have existed online for years, and during that time, they’ve climbed in the search engine rankings. They usually have several sites linking to them, strengthening their SEO even further, and they hold more content than one single website could ever aspire to.

A presence on a good marketplace will make your products easier to find. You will get “free traffic” to your products that you would otherwise have had to spend your ad budget to acquire.

A captive and relevant audience02

Building an audience takes time, money, and effort, but the audience is already there with a marketplace.

Especially for smaller players, this is an advantage that can propel your growth at a rate that would be hard to achieve through your own ecommerce experience.

Controlled acquisition costs03

Marketplaces receive payment when and if your products are sold. This sometimes means you can reduce your marketing spend and helps you calculate and predict your acquisition cost.

Trust and risk control04

Marketplaces can help you reduce risks, both for you and your customers. Marketplaces set up robust protections against unpaid bills, fraud, and disputes, protecting vendors from loss. By customers, they’re often perceived as safe and trustworthy, which removes friction in the buyer journey.

A global audience05

Through international marketplaces, brands can expand internationally with minimal upfront investments. Some marketplaces even provide the infrastructure through the automatic translation of product descriptions and references, further facilitating expansion.

Also, as you only pay for your conversions, you can multiply your reach and audience by integrating multiple marketplaces in your mix of sales channels.

Marketplace development

With the success of marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy, it’s no wonder that entrepreneurs are seeking new ways to launch their own successful online marketplaces. The internet offers a unique opportunity for business owners to open up worldwide markets with relatively low overhead costs.

Whether you’re already operating an ecommerce site and want to branch out, or you want to launch a marketplace from scratch, Vaimo can help you do so. We bring tried-and-tested playbooks and strategies that can help you launch in a fraction of the time it typically takes.

Understand your digital maturity

grey building

Niche marketplaces – the future of ecommerce

The niche marketplace is quickly gaining ground. Building your marketplace around a specific niche and audience will help you gain traction quickly, and if you’re selling your own brand as well, a niche marketplace is perfect for cross-selling and up-selling.

The more narrow the niche, the quicker you’ll be able to climb in the search engines so that your audience can find you.

man on the stairs

B2B marketplaces are on the rise

B2B marketplaces are online platforms that bring together buyers and sellers of B2B services. They match companies that offer specific business products or services to other businesses that need them, making it easier for all involved to find suitable partners. The popularity of B2B marketplaces is growing quickly, and they have become a key place for B2B buyers to do research and get access to multiple brands and products at once.

B2B ecommerce apps and websites allow companies to provide services and sell goods to each other. By allowing, for example, integration partners to sell their services through your marketplace, you can both expand your audience and piggyback on their brands.

If you have an idea for a B2B marketplace that will allow the enterprises to connect, Vaimo can help you build it into a scalable online marketplace that supports your business goals and wows your clients. Launching a B2B marketplace will create new opportunities for both your own business and for your customers.

See Quick Launch Accelerator

Benefits of B2B marketplaces

Adding marketplaces to your sales mix will allow you to drive new leads in a cost-efficient way.

Selling through marketplaces means you get access to their existing audience and reach people who you would not have reached on your own.

Marketplaces that have been around for a few years have built a strong SEO foundation and will rank significantly higher than individual brands do.

woman browsing on tablet

Build a marketplace to scale your growth

An ecommerce marketplace can transform your business and allow you to scale and increase your revenue quickly. But to succeed and reap the benefits of this business model, you need a solid technical foundation.

We’ve helped hundreds of online businesses set up their web and data architecture and implement profitable, scalable ecommerce and marketplace sites.

Marketplace ecommerce is the business model of the future. Brands that share the same audiences can help each other grow and provide better customer experiences at the same time.

Our team can provide strategic support to increase your success in a multi-channel world and the hands-on skills to execute your strategy.

To learn more about how we can help you, reach out to our team today.

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