There are many platforms to sell your products and expand your business. The two most popular platforms of trading are a conventional marketplace and an online store. Before jumping into the decision of declaring the best choice among the two, let us have a close look into the various aspects of each of them.

However, the choice between the two is the most common dilemma among traders. This blog will help you to overcome the confusion bearing the choice between an online store and running a marketplace.

Difference Between a Physical Store and an Online Marketplace

A detailed difference between a traditional brick-and-mortar store and an online store is illustrated below:

Multiple Vendors Zone

An online marketplace helps showcase multiple vendors while a traditional brick and mortar store is limited in terms of its product display. It can therefore only function as a single seller oriented platform, the access to which is set to a limited audience. On the other hand, an online marketplace has multiple sellers to tie up with various businesses and gets paid for advertising the businesses as per their search.

Number of Parties involved

Online store provides the involvement of merely two parties i.e., seller and buyer to complete the process of selling. There is no indulgence of other agents. Whereas, a traditional marketplace involves several middle men where different businesses come together to sell their products, involving a huge number of parties.

Mode of trading

The mode of trading of the two is ought to differ. An online marketplace is a business model that deals with the collaboration of similar business websites into a single unified platform.

What could be the best choice for your business?

Whether it is an online marketplace or a traditional store, both need to be accessible to their targeted customers. But when the question of profitability arises, several factors contribute to making a difference between the profitability of the two. A clear picture of the advantages and disadvantages of these two will do the needful in stating the right choice:

Advantages of the online marketplace over the traditional store

Limited Competition

Competitors in the market are the biggest threat to a business. Selling your products in an online marketplace can insulate you against stiff competitors. There is minimal indulgence of third parties thereby making online marketplace free to sell its own product as well as showcase products of other businesses.

Lower Investment – Cost Efficiency

Selling your products through an online marketplace costs relatively less owing to its ease of use and the number of options it presents with. A physical store incurs costs of maintenance and rent that are not typically needed for an online marketplace.

No Geographical Limitation

Obviously an online store saves you the hassle of having to physically visit a place and making purchases. An online store is not bound by any geographical limitations and you can carry out large scale transactions well within the comfort of your homes. This way you can also eliminate travel time and associated costs.

Easy Search Engine Visibility

Equipped with strong filters to help facilitate search operations easily, an online store helps users track down what they want easily as opposed to a physical store where categorization of goods is rather difficult.

Abundance of Information

An online store typically arms users with adequate product information to help users make an informed purchase or selling decision. This may not always be the case with a physical store.

24 Hours Availability

An online store is not bound by time in that it typically supports the feature of 24/7 availability. This way users can carry out their operations according to their convenience.

Instant Feedback & User Reviews

With the facility to gather instant feedback through user reviews, the time to access information about a product is less and is therefore helpful for users to make evidence-based decisions without losing time. This is unique to an online marketplace as opposed to a physical store.

Summing up

The above points are enough to prove the growing relevance of the online marketplace over the traditional store. Thus, e-commerce selling has many advantages for a long-term strategy to win over customers. If you are looking to build an online marketplace for your business, feel free to reach out to us.

Author bio:

Jainish Vora contributes regularly for Phoneier. With a passion for reviewing gadgets, Jainish is also keen to expand his knowledge on the latest technology and its related functions.