Building a website store, to move off of Amazon and other Marketplace platforms

We’ve recently talked about the top eCommerce platforms in both the UK and EU, but today we’ll be discussing how to move away from these entirely and the benefits that come with using your own website.

I’m going to use Amazon as the main example here just because it is the most prevalent eCommerce platform people are on however there’s a whole load of alternatives that this also applies to, from eBay, OnBuy, Wayfair, Fruugo, BOL, OTTO, Etsy and many more. Amazon is amazing as a launching platform, but to successfully expand and to be relevant forever, actually having a solid website of your own is actually the keyway to go.

That doesn’t mean to say that you should move off Amazon completely right away even if that is your end goal. The idea here being that you’re not going to just cut off your revenue source from Amazon and throw everything into your website. Amazon is going to give you that steady stream of income whilst your website starts to gain that traction and you can start taking your brand to the next level and start bringing in additional income from your website. 

Why is your own website store better than an existing platform?

Having a website gives you more control over things like your fees, sales and customer data, which is key to really growing your business and reaching your full potential as a company.

Amazon have very much of a strict policy on not really giving out customers personal information so you can’t follow them up with the emails or remarketing or anything like that. But if you’re off you’re selling on your own store and somebody buys from you the information that you have in the purchase form is yours to do with what you want obviously within the use of data protection act but if you want to create a newsletter and market to these people and create lists from this, you’re totally free to do so. And that power is impossible on Amazon. And that’s really powerful when we talked about several webinars ago the power of social and pushing traffic to your websites from social using a voucher codes to give specific audiences discounts and things like that.

Again, talked about the lowest selling fees in comparison to Amazon. Everyone knows the fees that Amazon are renowned for with their fulfilment fees and storage fees, PPC fees, voucher fees, sales fees, they vary depending on the platform you choose, but as a whole, selling through your own store allows you to really retain more of the revenue from a sale and really grow your business much more exponential rate.

You also get more freedom with policies, with Amazon there’s a lot of policies you kind of have to adhere to the 24 hour rule for replying to customers messages. Well, I don’t suggest that you leave it for much longer than that on your own store, you’re allowed to create your policies, you’re allowed to create your own rules.

There’s a lot of products that are banned on Amazon. And you all you have to get approval to sell in certain categories. A lot of this is a lot more simple and easier to do on your own platform, as you kind of create the rules, so to say.

So that’s the benefits, now how do you go about creating a store?

In an ideal world, you’d build your website, list all of your products, press go and get hundreds of sales. But realistically, that’s not very likely to happen unless you have a big following of customers who already know who you are.

So we’re going to move on now to talk about the top three platforms in that are available. So you can get started, now these aren’t the only options out there, but are generally the most popular.

So starting off with Shopify.

So out of all the three websites that we can talk about Shopify is the pure e-commerce platform. Which was created purely for an online shop. Therefore it does offer more advanced ecommerce capabilities. By default, it is the most expensive out of the three, but it does have more features, for example, the app integrations that you have. So you can get integrations for conversion optimization tools, such as lead generation pop ups will offer coupons, or free value in exchange for the customer’s email address, which will help you build your email list. You can get things like an upsell pop up integrated with your page that will offer your customer additional items what’s they’re on the checkout page. The list is really endless. The Shopify App Store is huge. So there’s some great apps to entice new customers encourage repeat, purchase and meet your customers’ needs when they come to your website. So Shopify is probably the main platform. 

We’ll move on to Wix

This is the cheapest platform out of the three. It’s really easy to use and design your storefront it’s a drag and drop type website builder, which offers you loads of templates to choose from. It’s generally better for the smaller businesses as it doesn’t hold as much as Shopify, it does have an app store though again, not as many options as Shopify. So it just depends on what how, how many customers you’re likely to get.

And then last but not least, we’ve got Squarespace

Which was actually originally designed for blogging, but now allow selling products. It’s probably the most powerful creative tool out of the three website builders has a massive range of templates and designs available. And again, users that drag and drop type design. Unfortunately, Squarespace doesn’t have an app store. So if the feature isn’t already included on the platform, you can’t implement it, which isn’t ideal is slightly more expensive than Wix, but it is still cheaper than some of Shopify. Shopify is more premium packages. So again, it really does depend on your business and what you want out of your website.

Hopefully that gives you a crash course on why you might want to consider creating your own website store as well as some of the options available to get started. Let us know if you need any help setting up these platforms and as always we wish you the best in your expansion journey!