​Which sales channel is best?

In our latest post we discuss the difference between selling channels and the benefits and drawbacks of the major online players in the UK market.

Amazon

Amazon’s Marketplace for individual sellers has now grown to have 45% market share, from 41% in 2014. The competitive nature of Amazon product listings and the ‘Buy Box’ means that sellers have to offer their best price to buyers or risk missing out on sales. 32nd Shop have found that using Fulfillment by Amazon (which makes products available for Amazon Prime) is a massive help, especially in overseas markets such as the US, where customers expect their items in a matter of days, not weeks. One of the major drawbacks to Amazon’s system is that buyers that have issues are not easily handled, usually resulting in sellers losing out by issuing unnecessary refunds. There are also overly drastic measures for sellers who make any mistakes (e.g. sending the wrong item because of a picking error) including product removal, account suspension and even account closure!

Pros

• Increased sales
• International options
• Fulfillment by Amazon

Cons

• Poor feedback system
• Draconian seller measures
• Rigid sales detail pages

Ebay

Ebay appears to be on a downward spiral at this point in time, with both buyers and sellers deserting the once-prominent channel. Ebay has introduced a change in its product search engine and the new Cassini engine is still somewhat of an erratic beast! This means that items that are top ranking one day can be shunted to page 2-3-4 the next; this lack of consistency is bad for both buyers and sellers and has reflected in Ebay’s poor performance over 2015, leading to the split from profitable Paypal.

As far as selling on Ebay goes, they are trying to encourage more professional businesses rather than individual sellers, which is where we believe another problem lies. By abandoning their core market, customers who used to try Ebay first for anything now treat it as second or third choice. Ebay’s dereliction of private sellers will likely be its downfall, and if they wish to regain customer confidence they need to work fast.

Pros

• Sellers can create their own product templates
• Broad inventory
• New and used goods available

Cons

• Poor search result consistency
• Have abandoned their core market

Rakuten

Why Rakuten disposed of the successful Play.com franchise in favour of the unmemorable Rakuten.co.uk we are still yet to find out (although our suspicion is that it is something to do with Google Play). The monster Japanese brand has continued its international expansion, buying local channels across the world and converting them to the Rakuten brand.

Sales are slow and steady, and the marketplace nature of Rakuten.co.uk is a bit messy for us, but seems to work for some smaller sellers.

Pros

• Big brand backing
• To accept Bitcoins as payment

Cons

• Messy and cluttered layout
• Difficult to find specific products

Game.co.uk

The latest attempt at an online marketplace comes from video game specialists Game, who launched the Game Marketplace in 2014. We think this one’s probably best left to those selling games, as the name suggests!

BigCommerce

Our own website www.32ndshop.com is currently hosted on BigCommerce, and has been since late 2013. Easily customisable with many different Store Designs available, we have always found BigCommerce to be reliable and relatively simple to use. It also links well with our inventory software to handle all incoming orders.

Pros

• Customisable store design
• No sales channel fees!
• Complete control of look and usability

Cons

• Hard work to attract customers
• Need to know code for changing layouts etc.

We hope this guide has been informative for you and gives you some insight as to how 32nd Shop runs. Feel free to share and comment on our social media to let us know your thoughts.