Can sticking to a marketplace harm your online trade?

There’s no doubt that eCommerce has given businesses a new lease of life. Much of the overhead that the brick-and-mortar model carried with it has now been eliminated by eCommerce. Sellers have enjoyed a steady rise both in terms of online sales as well as the number of loyal customers on marketplaces. It is also a fact that few marketplaces are majorly responsible for this welcome thrust to the fortunes of several businesses.

While all of this seems to bode well for online businesses and nothing seems to be out of place when sellers rejoice their association with a marketplace, is there something that they should be wary of?

Yes, actually.

Even as sellers laud the growth in their sales figures on a single marketplace, is it advisable that they stick to it and not try other options? While some sellers might not see much strength in this argument, a few others might understand the inherent dangers of sticking only to a specific marketplace for sales and growth. This is because the tables can turn any time without warning and leave an online business gasping for breath.

Here’s why! For example, a marketplace can change its SLA any time to suit various purposes and if sellers are ill prepared to honor it, their poor performance can be a reason for their accounts being deactivated in no time. Also, marketplaces now get into MOUs with big brands and become sole vehicles and points of sale for their star products. If a seller’s product is in direct competition with a product from an enterprise biggie, their sale is bound to suffer, and with it, their bottom lines.

With the rapid pace of eCommerce and its unprecedented success, the industry is bound to experience change. This is because the industry thrives on change and adaptability and demands the same from sellers too. Considering this and other factors, it makes business sense for sellers to list and sell their products on multiple marketplaces. This move will not only keep them afloat, but will also confirm business continuity, in case a marketplace changes colors without much warning.

A few may complain here and reason that managing multiple accounts on multiple marketplaces brings with it additional cost of manpower, warehousing, and other incidental expenses. While this might be true for sellers who still invest their precious time and money in managing multiple marketplaces separately, for sellers using multi-marketplace selling software, nothing is farther from the truth!

Sellers using multi-marketplace selling software can manage multiple accounts on multiple local and cross-border marketplaces through a single platform with ease. Such software enables sellers to be responsive to market demands, helping them list and modify thousands of products on multiple marketplaces in just a few clicks. Further, sellers can actively create sales strategies and flawlessly implement them on all their marketplaces.

Hence, when sellers make their products available to a large variety of customers on multiple marketplaces that operate across geographies, their sales are bound to shoot up and their dependency on any single marketplace is bound to diminish.