What is better to choose: a marketplace or an online store

The world of e-commerce is growing every day. Many stores want to expand the segment of customers and increase sales. To do so they go to the Internet, because the Internet users are active and the amount of users growing instantly.

Both beginners and owners of existing stores may face a difficult choice, entering the e-commerce: create your own store or use the ready-made trading platform - the marketplace. It is not easy to make a choice.

The first thing is to assess the initial resources: finances, time and staff. Then choose the option to create an online store that fits best. Before making a choice, you need to clearly understand the difference between using marketplaces and creating your own online store, as well as their pros and cons.

So, the marketplace is a ready-made trading platform. Its task is to cover all areas of sales. The market can sell everything: from children's toys to forged benches and antique furniture.

On the marketplace you can create your own mini-website or profile, where you briefly describe all the information, that is necessary for the buyer. Sometimes, you can provide this information to marketers and they will fill all the forms for you. Your task remains only to wait for a call or an order.  Here are the advantages of selling through the marketplace:

•  Your product is available to a fairly wide audience;
•  The buyer can view information about the company and its statistics. If you have a good attendance on the market, then there are more chances of getting a buyer;
•  Broad audience coverage is beneficial to several companies at the same time. One company sells the product, and the other offers related services;
•  Creating an online store on the marketplace does not require large investments of money and time.

But not always things are so smooth with the trading platforms. There are some limitations:

•  The user can easily get lost on this website. Even if the buyer originally came for your product, there is too much advertising and related products around. Thus, the buyer can buy another product or do not buy anything at all;
•  The reach of the audience is broad, but often not targeted at all, which is bad enough for sales;
•  Noticing your page on the marketplace is not so easy. Statistics of views will grow on only with a direct transition to the company's mini-website, and buyers don't do so very often.
•  Limited functionality. Marketplace is imprisoned for a wide audience of sellers, so there are only most common functions of the online store.
•  Difficulties with customization. You can not make a website for your requirements, add a specific module or arrange somehow in your own design elements.
•  Advertising in free versions. If you do not pay a separate amount of money, then the marketplace will necessarily show on your page other people's recommended products, or a signature with the name of the marketplace and other hints.
•  Low chances of profitability in free versions. Usually, marketplaces exist in order to earn money from sellers and buyers. Therefore, if you are hoping for a free version, then you are unlikely to attract customers. Most likely, the marketplace will offer you additional "packages" that will help raise your goods in the total mass of millions of goods.
•  Limited opportunities for promotion. The search engine is much more loyal to a particular website than to a page or section on a huge portal.
•  A waste of money in promotion. When you use advertising for your page placed in the marketplace, you are 70% advertising yourself, and 30% - the marketplace itself. So in fact they are spinning at your expense.
• Impossibility to "jump" off the system. If you filled your store in the marketplace, and you have a lot of goods, categories, orders, and at the same time you want to copy this site and move it to another place - this is not possible with any marketplace. This nuance should appear in mind even before the creation of the site in the marketplace.

The second option for creating an online store that requires the same amount of time and money spent as marketplaces is the development of a site on an already existing platform. It's much cheaper and easier than creating an online store from scratch.

In order to earn a good reputation it is better to have your own website where the entire audience will be just yours. For example, on the SoloMono platform you get an online store ready for launch on the day of the order and it will only belong to you. You can learn more about the advantages of the platform here.

Online stores created on existing platforms are easy enough to promote to the top search engines. The audience will be absolutely target, because the link to the store will knock out users in the search for keywords. You will have the opportunity to modify the design, add different modules and widgets, for the convenience of the buyer.