While selling your products or services on a marketplace is a wonderful way to build a name for yourself, opening your own independent webstore is a natural and vital step toward continued growth. With your own store, you have the chance to establish your brand and take full ownership of your products. 

That’s why so many successful eCommerce sellers make the leap to running their own online webstore in addition to selling on marketplaces. Here are a few more reasons why:

1. Communicating with your customers

One of the most important parts of having a successful eCommerce business is being able to market directly to website vendors and customers. While Amazon may give various tools to connect with your customers, there is nothing better than the complete control that having your own webstore provides, and something that many other marketplaces do not give you. You will also have a harder time promoting additional products and retaining those customers for future sales.  

By communicating with your customers directly through your webstore, you’re in a better position to create your own brand and market specifically to your customers. In marketplaces, you can still brand your products, but the buyers are essentially the marketplace’s customers, not yours. Being able to establish brand loyalty and retain your existing customers is not only easier and cheaper with your own website, it’s also a necessary part of moving your business to the next level. 

2. Establishing your brand

Creating a brand while selling on marketplaces is extremely difficult because when customers purchase your products through such a platform, they often have no idea you even exist. Instead, you want consumers to see your products and instantly recognize your brand. That way, whenever they see similar products, your brand will immediately come to mind. You can ship your products in unique packaging or even send in special thank you cards with each purchase. The ways to ensure customers recognize your brand are endless.

3. Examine the data to understand your audience

When you have your own independent eCommerce webstore, there is infinite data to sort through in order to get a deep understanding of your customers. Learning more about your customers helps you in a multitude of ways and is the best path to continued growth for your business. 

If you know the traffic sources that bring the most customers, you can focus your time and money on those sources, instead of playing a trial and error game. The data will even clue you in on why customers didn’t end up making a purchase. Maybe the prices were too high, or the information about the products wasn’t clear. Or perhaps your website isn’t user-friendly enough for them to navigate. Regardless, having access to all of that information will help you market more effectively to your customers to drive additional revenue to your business.

4. Controlling your customers’ payment journey

Being responsible for how your customers can pay you means that you aren’t limited to which payment methods the marketplace is integrated with. You now have the freedom to give your customers the option to pay in a variety of ways and reach customers that might not otherwise have access to your products. 

A great checkout solution, not that we’re biased of course, is Payoneer Checkout.

As an online seller with Payoneer Checkout, you’ll be able to:

• Offer your customers a choice of payment methods
• Give your customers a seamless checkout experience with lower cart abandonment rates.
• Manage all your web store and marketplace earnings in one unified Payoneer account.
• Grow your revenue by saving on FX costs, better FX rates across a wide range of currencies, and generate more revenue due to superior acceptance rates.
• Control and easily fight chargebacks with advanced anti-fraud solutions.
• Get approved, onboard, and integrate your store easily and quickly through a variety of methods and customize your checkout solution as you see fit.
• Use your combined earnings to pay suppliers or advertising costs, withdraw to your local bank, spend online or in-store, and much more.

Many customers abandon their carts because their preferred method of payment wasn’t available on a specific marketplace, so ensuring that you have a variety of options will help avoid that for your own webstore.  Building an eCommerce website with an easy-to-use shopping cart is simple these days, especially if you use Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, Ueeshop or Shoplazza – all of which you can integrate with Payoneer Checkout.

 

These shopping carts provide users with a multi-store function, multiple shipping options, and a one-page checkout. If you want to open multiple different eCommerce websites, this will allow your customers to buy products from all of your sites at once. Some platforms make it even easier by providing a 360-degree solution that includes, shipping, email marketing, after-purchase solutions, and more, to generate sales. 

5. Be the driver of your marketing campaigns

Having your own website, as well as selling on marketplaces, gives you the freedom to not only make decisions about your brand, your products, and the design of your site, but it also allows you the freedom to create fun and engaging marketing campaigns.  

Of course, now that you have a brand, product, and a website, you need to bring in the customers. You can do this by driving traffic on social media, paid advertising on Google, developing SEO strategies, and by sending newsletter campaigns. 

Once you have the data from those initial marketing efforts, you can use that information to create marketing strategies that are tailored to fit your audience’s shopping habits. An easy way to start can be through Facebook and Google ads by incorporating keywords and locations of the types of customers you’re after.

Another strategy many eCommerce marketers use to drive traffic is through flash sales promotions for their products. 

According to Clutch, 37% of shoppers say discounts or coupons can attract them back to retailers’ websites. You can even retarget past customers by offering them a sale on another product to generate interest. Overall, there are many creative and fun ways you can attract more people to your website and brand. 

Final words

Having your own independent webstore is an important step in the development of your business and a great way to grow your brand, bring in loyal customers, and learn more about analyzing data to properly market your products. 

But of course, one of the most crucial elements is ensuring your customers have an easy, reliable and secure way to pay. So make sure you’re using the best payment solution that best integrates with your web store and gives you the flexibility and ease to manage all your customers’ payments from one unified place. Read more of our checkout articles here