Advice for e-commerce website

[Elisacarter]

I'm selling fitness clothes on ebay and amazon but some of my friends told me that I should build my own website. Do you think e-commerce site is required? If I want a website can I manage these two marketplaces and my website with not much effort?
Thanks in advance

 

[Paul Norman]

There is not an absolute answer.

My personal opinion - as an ecommerce retailer who has been going for 8 years - would be that you do need an online store of your own. In fact, over the years, more than 90% of my sales have been through my own sites.

But that is not true of everyone. I guess the question is whether or not you are doing ok as you are, and how much are you able/willing to invest in a site - it will require some marketing to make people aware of it.

 

[Cart2Cart]

It's not a must, but a stand alone online store is definitely a good thing to have. Consider it as a chance to go more versatile in terms of multichannel eCommerce. And, definitely, it's a good investment into your brand - having your store with a unique design on a separate domain makes you stand out.

As far as I know, Shopify has been offering very solid integration with Amazon for quite a while and recently introduced the one with eBay. It basically lets you manage and sync inventory with both Amazon and eBay accounts within Shopify admin panel.

 

[antropy]

Have a look at OpenCart with OpenBayPro which connects it to Amazon and Ebay.

 

[arnydnxluk]

You don't know what changes Ebay or Amazon may make in future. Personally, I would try not to leave my entire business in their hands. By building your own website and brand, you potentially have something you can at least fall back on should, for example, Amazon suddenly decide they don't want your business. Use the platforms available to you but don't make yourself exclusive to those platforms if you can avoid it ‒ retain as much control as possible. Ideally you also want some customers to recognise your brand and decide to visit your store's website directly, cutting out the "middle man".

 

[finleydesign]

Hi, we deal with a number of clients who upgrade from Ebay to Ecommerce, some of which switch altogether as they have had enough and some use our integration modules to keep everything linked

 

[TLT Property Management]

opencart has 3 party plugins for stock management and product integration

 

[Iain_Henderson]

Hi, I've done exactly what you are asking! Happy to offer my advice if you want to send a PM.

Cheers

Iain

 

[webmto]

Definitely you should have your own identity. Then is easier to integrate your website with ebay, amazon, etc.

You need something easy for the beginning and you need someone to help you with the website because I believe your ebay business is eating all your time.

If you want a simple and very affordable solutions, it can be done in 2 days.

CC

 

[WebshopMechanic]

I agree with @arnydnxluk. Build something that you own and can control.

Margins are being squeezed on these marketplace platforms, especially now the Chinese are selling direct. The only way is down in terms of pricing and that will put lots of people out of business.

If you have your own online store you can control the product delivery and the user experience. MOST IMPORTANTLY, you get to collect email addresses and start to build a mailing list of people you can contact and sell to in the future.

A customer mailing list will help to future-proof your business and give you a more stable platform so you won't be affected by changes in Amazon / eBay pricing changes.

Shopify is great, quick and simple. Although it's probably not the cheapest once you've bolted on all the apps.

Good luck

 

[ava30]

It is important to diversify your sales channels. The more you have them, the better for your business. Your own online store allows you to use this strategy.

 

[webmto]

It's not so much about the variety of sales channels as for marketing tools that can be implemented on your site, where you control everything that's going on.

You can manage campaigns, attract customers, apply any sales strategy that brings profit at the lowest cost.

 

[Page]

As always it all depends

The channels like Amazon are like the old fashioned high street and where the shoppers are

It does not mean you cannot make it work in a secondary position - but you do have to have something to offer and be good at what you are doing

Or you may lose a lot of time/money

 

[MOIC]

If you are selling your own branded products, it's essential to have your own website.

If you are selling generic or other brands, then the choice is yours.

For what it costs to have your own website these days (a few hundred pounds), it's a no brainer.

 

[bgnovuc]

try it but you will certainly need money for ads to bring traffic.

 

[sharonjones]

I think you should make your own ECommerce website and that try to get your sales through your own website. It may take some time but it will surely happen.In the meantime, you should keep selling on eBay and Amazon.

 

[webmto]

You can have you own e-commerce shop starting from £100 (hosting included). Is not much compared with the benefit the website can bring to you.

 

[janekbar5]

stupid question of course YES, considering how much money ebay and paypal ripping of you. Having own shop could save you hundreds

 

[Mr D]

stupid question of course YES, considering how much money ebay and paypal ripping of you. Having own shop could save you hundreds

Just so long as you don't use paypal as a payment method and your site fees including advertising are lower than ebay.

People tend to miss the buyers that ebay has. Can set up own site, getting the level of buyers that you have on ebay and in the meantime spending less to do it than pay ebay.... can be a struggle for some.

 

[SnapchatJosh]

There are more margins online

 

[InterCultural Elements]

Hi, having your own site is definitely beneficial in the long run. Like all previous comments point out, nothing beats having a 100% control of what you want to do, and having your own site is also a great way to create your own brand and make your store stand out.

But like others have mentioned as well, there it will take some investment at the beginning to set up the site and for marketing campaigns to bring traffic. Another thing you could do is to start selling in some other marketplaces other than Amazon and ebay. This way you increase the exposure of your products and potentially open up to a bigger buyer base and could lead to more sales.

 

[Thomas J. Vosper]

Traffic is the biggest challenge for your own site. The commissions to the marketplaces are your cost of acquisition. They take care of the users.

If you're going to create your own site you need to get as many people to it as possible, not just for sales, but so that you can understand the user experience, conversation rate and adjust accordingly.

 

[Will Wright]

Third parties are good for building sales, but if you want to build a brand I suggest you have your own website. As mentioned above it should also help with your margins if you choose carefully

 

[Christopher Day]

Try Shopify, very cost effective for small business owners