Over the past few months, tens of thousands of traditional high street retailers have started selling online and on marketplaces for the very first time. If that is you, then read on… GFS have produced a dead easy to digest 8 Tips for growing ecommerce Sales through online marketplaces primer which will give you pointers for everything from choosing which marketplaces to sell on to planning, researching your competition and organising your operations to more sophisticated engagement on marketplaces to win repeat business.
There are literally hundreds of marketplaces out there although of course you can’t ignore the giants, eBay and Amazon – We recently published data on the performance of some of the top UK marketplaces so for instance if you’re a food retailer you’ll soon discover the top foodie marketplace in the UK is Yumbles and that’s just one example of a specialist marketplace for a particular vertical that could suit your business.
Perhaps you don’t operate in one particular vertical in which case you should be considering OnBuy as they’re the fastest growing ecommerce site in the UK and Fruugo to get you started selling overseas without having to worry about translation and currency conversions – Fruugo will do this for you. If you’re wondering just how many marketplaces there are out there, we have a whole section on marketplaces in the Tamebay Guide to get you started.
It can be daunting for a retailer accustomed to selling on the high street to not only pivot to online selling but for many to be forced to do so as they start to slowly reopen their physical stores. With social distancing likely to be in place for the foreseeable future, the number of customers in a store at any one time will be limited and that in turn will hit profitability. Getting your products online as quickly as possible is key and the ability to ship from store to local customers combined with selling across the entire country and indeed the world will be the only way many businesses survive.
However there are a ton of resources to assist you. Firstly download the GFS 8 Tips for growing ecommerce sales through online marketplaces (for free) and then if you have any questions feel free to ask by adding a comment below.