To Infinity and Beyond: Make the Move Beyond Online Marketplaces

When you’re first starting an eCommerce business, it’s easy to see why online marketplaces like Lazada, Shopee, or Amazon can be so attractive. Any multi vendor eCommerce platform like those options offers immediate access to a massive pool of international customers, and is already fully equipped with everything you need, including payment gateways, marketing functions, and in-app customer service channels. Setting up shop can be as easy as uploading your product information and clicking “Sell”—perfect when you’re just getting started!

But as you grow, you’ll also face certain limitations, including high marketplace fees and commission charges, restrictive terms and conditions on communicating with customers, and a lack of branding options.

So, while multi-vendor marketplace platforms are a great way to help you build awareness during the early stages, once you’ve reached a plateau, it could be time to start thinking about creating your own website or app to scale and grow your business. It might be daunting, but here are some strong reasons why it’s important to expand beyond marketplaces. Before diving in, consider using a website evaluation checklist to ensure your site meets all the essential criteria for success and growth.

Diversify your sales channels

At the very least, build your own eCommerce store protects you from being at the mercy of any single marketplace—and its ever-changing rules. Expanding onto multiple platforms increases your sales channels and decreases the risks of being over-reliant on any one platform for most of your sales. In fact, many industry resources are saying that omnichannel will define retail. Target is one such example. In a study of 46,000 shoppers, Target discovered that multi-channel consumers spend four times as much as store-only consumers, and 10 times more than digital-only consumers. The best part is that because you’ll be saving on marketplace fees, selling via your own website or app can reduce costs per sale and boost margins. As businesses scale and flexibility increases, the need for structured financial records arises. Ensure efficient transactions by utilizing a download invoice template to maintain consistency in billing procedures.

Build a stronger brand

Moving away from third-party platforms also gives you better control over your brand, which gives you more opportunity to grow brand equity and recognition, and therefore instill customer trust and loyalty. And in today’s highly competitive retail landscape, branding matters more than ever. Did you know that 59% of shoppers are more likely to purchase new products from a brand they recognize and like? Successful branding has also shown to increase sales revenue by 31%—kaching!

Own your customer data

Marketplaces have strict data privacy policies that prevent sharing of customer data. That’s great for customers, but not so great for retailers. Having your own website or app allows you to collect and track valuable customer data to help you truly get to know your customers—and what they want. Did you know that 73% of shoppers prefer personalized experiences? With access to your customers' data, you can deliver exactly that.

Improve your search marketing

With your own eCommerce website or app, you’ll be able to conduct a range of marketing activities that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do with an online marketplace. The most important of these are retargeting strategies, search engine optimization (SEO), and search engine marketing (SEM), all of which make it possible to increase brand exposure and trustworthiness, and therefore generate more business. If you want to make sure you're doing everything right, you can outsource your marketing tasks to experts, for instance working with an amazon marketing agency if you have an Amazon store.

Guidelines for eCommerce retailers moving beyond marketplaces

Expanding your customer journeys beyond online marketplaces and building your own eCommerce store through Experro. But it also requires that you deliver the same (or better) standards that customers would enjoy when purchasing from a marketplace.

Here are three ways you can do that with 8x8:

1) Secure payment gateways

Secure payment is a non-negotiable for any eCommerce retailer, and a key ingredient to building customer trust. There’s nothing more damaging, financially, legally, and reputation-wise, than a cyber security breach or data leak. You can choose a payment gateway (like PayPal, Apple Pay, or Stripe), an online payment system, or both, depending on your needs. Additionally, incorporating ecommerce site development cost considerations into your security investments ensures a robust and financially viable platform. To add an additional layer of security, it’s also recommended that you set up two-factor authentication (2FA) for all your customers by sending one-time passwords (OTPs) via SMS or Voice Messaging.

2) Provide privacy policies

With greater scrutiny on data privacy in Southeast Asia, it’s important that you draw up a robust Privacy Policy for your website or app to ensure that you comply with any laws and regulations governing personal data. This is especially important if you intend to use any data you collect for advertising or marketing purposes.

For example, Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and Indonesia’s newly drafted Personal Data Protection (PDP) bill both require that companies seek explicit consent from individuals before collecting any personal data, so be sure to keep this in mind when developing your store.

Another means of privacy protection is allowing customers to call in to your customer service team via app-to-app calling. Learn more about 8x8’s app-to-app calling solution, which comes with in-built call masking to keep contact information private.

3) Omnichannel engagement

One of the perks of selling on marketplaces is that they have customer service and engagement channels, such as in-app live chat, ready-built on their platforms. They also tend to take care of other forms of communications for you, such as sending customer alerts on delivery status, or handling any requests for returns and refunds.

So, when building your own store, you’ll need to ensure the same high-quality, real-time communications, especially if you want to deliver outstanding digital customer experiences that keep your online buyers coming back for more.

To truly engage customers, consider sending customized content, personalized product offers, and exclusive discounts, or opening two-way conversations seeking feedback via chat apps. At 8x8, we make it easy for you to reach customers across multiple channels at once, including WhatsApp, Viber, Zalo, Facebook Messenger, KakaoTalk, and SMS.

Grow with embeddable communications

To get started, a hybrid approach working in synergy could probably offer the most robust model for growing your sales—engage customers on online marketplaces, introduce them to your branded website or app, and keep them coming back for more with personalized communications on the right digital messaging channels.

Yes, omnichannel engagement is one of the best ways to build long-term, high-value customer relationships. But we also understand that, as a growing business, you don’t have copious amounts of time and manpower to manage multiple customer conversations across different channels.

That’s why 8x8’s embeddable communications APIs were designed to be easy to integrate and use, while still enabling the rich insights that you need to personalize engagement (read more on 8x8’s APIs). To reap the benefits of moving beyond online marketplaces, 8x8 can help you to integrate, analyze, and streamline your communications workflow on a unified platform. As a result, you will be well-equipped to scale your customer engagement without compromising on quality—and grow to infinity and beyond!

We would love to support you on this journey and to see you reach greater heights. Reach out to us at hello-cpaas@8x8.com to learn more about embeddable communications and how they can be customized to meet your growing business needs.