How to increase sales on marketplace platforms?

  • Last update: 23.02.2024
  • Published: 24.08.2022
  • Read in: 7 min

In an era of tremendous competitiveness in the e-commerce industry, diversifying sales is one of the basic steps not only to grow a company, but also to increase its profits. That’s why it makes sense to tap the potential of marketplace platforms, which are currently the most dynamic branch of e-commerce. Learn how to optimize your sales strategy on marketplaces and take your business to a new, higher level.

 

How to increase sales on marketplace platforms?

Multichannel sales as a recipe for e-commerce success

Market research shows that by 2024. The share of marketplace platforms in the Polish e-commerce sector will reach more than 55 percent. In contrast, over the past few years, the number of online stores has increased by nearly 60 percent. So you can see that both channels give the entrepreneur the perspective to scale the business.

If you want to realize the full sales potential, the best solution is to combine both distribution channels, using an omnichannel strategy.

This is how you can reap the benefits of both your own online store and sales platform. By listing your products in any marketplace, you gain access to a huge pool of new customers. Consumers are eager to take advantage of this convenience because it gives them access to a wide assortment.

The most popular platform in Poland is Allegro, with nearly 22 million registered users.

However, you should not give up running your own online store, so that control of all image and strategic aspects remains in your hands. Creating a personal brand image is key, and remaining anonymous on the Internet is a simple path to failure. Exposure of the company in multiple distribution channels has a positive impact on increasing customer awareness of our brand, and thus to building a base of loyal and returning customers.

In conclusion, the introduction of an omni-channel sales strategy provides the entrepreneur with many tangible benefits:

  • Building customer engagement on multiple levels,
  • Reaching consumers everywhere they expect,
  • Increasing brand value and creating a consistent brand image,
  • Increasing the likelihood of making a purchase,
  • higher efficiency of internal processes (gathering customer information from various sources is extremely valuable for internal business analytics).

Make your offer stand out from the competition

The sites strive for maximum unification and standardization of the appearance of the presented offers. One of the challenges for an entrepreneur looking to do business on sales platforms is to differentiate his or her offering from the competition.

Some of the marketplaces offer various forms of paid promotion inside the service itself. However, you do not need to invest additionally in advertising to carry out effective activities. Start by optimizing the elements that you have a real influence on already when you put up an auction.

What affects the position of your offer?

The position of products in the internal search engine is extremely important. Each marketplace platform positions products according to different factors, and the performance of the algorithm itself is not made public. However, there are several qualifiers that have a key role to play in the battle to rank your products high. First of all, it is an attractive presentation of the offer – a factual, linguistically correct description containing specifications and the most important information about the product being sold.

Remember that nothing attracts attention like an aesthetically pleasing photo. Wysokiej jakości fotografie produktowe podniosą jakość Twojej oferty. Always create offers in accordance with the guidelines of a particular marketplace. For example, Allegro requires that captions and logos not be included in product gallery images.

In addition, the position of products can be influenced by the seller’s rating, order fulfillment methods (fast shipping and number of delivery methods), availability of goods and overall customer service. It is worthwhile to ensure quick responses to customer messages.

Some portals e.g. Amazon give you the ability to monitor the health of your account by checking the rate of defective orders, the rate of canceled orders or the rate of shipment delays. In order to win a position in their Buy Box (currently as much as 82% of all sales are made through it), prices must also be dynamically managed.

How to write a winning description?

We have already mentioned the need to create interesting and inviting auction descriptions. At the very beginning, it is necessary to determine the target audience, that is, who you are targeting with your offer. Preferences change over the years, and the shopping habits of men and women are quite different. Defining the buyer persona will allow you to tailor the type of message, and this will shorten the communication channel between you and the potential customer and arouse commitment in the recipient.

Use benefit-directed language – instead of writing about the fact that the cordless mower weighs only 9 kg, write that the mower’s light weight makes it easier to control and allows it to be driven comfortably without effort.

Technically, the description should be between 1,000 and 2,500 characters with spaces. It should be divided into shorter paragraphs, use highlighting and bullets. To make the text more readable, it is a good idea to present the typical technical data in a table or box. Insert pictures of the product for variety, but do not replace the entire description with a graphic, as it will be invisible to search engines.

Choose keywords for each description, keeping in mind that too much saturation with key phrases can be counterproductive. Help is provided by keyword search tools, free ones include AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest and Keywordtool.io. The most common mistakes in descriptions made by sellers include low-quality photos, content copied from another auction, a wall of text without sectioning, and descriptions that are too short.

Create a pricing strategy

The high level of competition on sales platforms and the need to standardize offerings means that for many consumers, price has the greatest influence on purchasing decisions. In order to stay afloat while making sales without losing out

Revenue Enter a well-thought-out pricing strategy that will allow you to not only improve your sales performance, but will allow you to know the level of interest in a product

What strategy will help you increase sales on marketplace sites? Monitoring the competition! Nowadays, some platforms provide tools to track and check price competitiveness inside the service. Allegro has implemented a solution available to all sellers on their site. The information is based on both price data from the platform itself and other e-commerce sites (Ceneo, Amazon). The tool will tell you, among other things, the most popular selling price of a product, its price range, the cheapest offer or the number of people selling the product. In some product categories, lowering the price by as little as 10 cents can bump a listing to the front page.

Give yourself a hand, or automation in e-commerce

The solutions we presented, while effective, create certain risks for a company betting on dynamic growth. If not properly implemented, a multi-channel sales strategy can have a negative impact on delivery times due to the need to handle orders in multiple administrative panels.

A Gemius report describing Poles’ online shopping habits clearly indicates that as many as 61% of respondents expect delivery within 24 hours, and 32% say faster delivery would encourage them to e-buy more often. Efficient, fast and hassle-free order processing is now the standard, and any stumble results in lost customers. Another problem may be the lack of control over storage resources. This leads to discrepancies in quantities and prices, and this exposes the entrepreneur to monetary and image losses.

To minimize the scale of these risks, it is worth thinking about introducing a sales management system along with automating some of the processes. The market leader in this type of system, which has the largest number of facilities, is BaseLinker. The integrator allows you to handle orders from multiple sources in a single, intuitive panel.

Two-way communication between the marketplace platforms and the e-commerce site allows you to retrieve and transmit orders, mass listings with a few clicks, control prices and inventory, and create and send invoices.

The extensive Marketplace Manager will allow you to add auctions from different warehouses (ERP system or wholesalers), you just need to connect them in the BaseLinker panel. The system not only allows you to fully control sales on marketplace platforms, but also to make bulk changes to products and set up auction templates.

The tool automates many processes, so employees do not waste time on repetitive tasks and can focus on more demanding tasks. A study conducted in cooperation with one of BaseLinker’s customers showed that implementation of the tool resulted in a 7-fold reduction in order processing time.

Katarzyna Zdziech Online Media Manager at BaseLinker, fascinated by everything that is hidden under the words digital marketing. She is constantly looking for new knowledge about SEO optimization and the e-commerce market.