What to choose: online store or marketplace?
On the pros and cons of unique sites and commercial platforms
According to e-commerce market operators, the revenue of Russian online stores in 2014 increased by 166% (in rubles), compared with the same period in 2013, and the number of orders increased by 130%. The category “Clothing, shoes, accessories” stably holds in the first three of the most popular goods. Buyers 'traffic is distributed between online stores and marketplaces - sites where in one place you can choose a product from similar ones and compare suppliers' prices, without wasting time exploring different sites. We understand the intricacies of online commerce with the head of the TIU.ru portal, Evgeny Ivanov.
According to the “Association of Internet Commerce Companies” (AKIT), the volume of the Internet retail market in Russia in 2014 exceeded 700 billion rubles. In 2015, sales of Russian online retail are expected to exceed
1 trillion rubles. Currently, 73 million people use the Internet in Russia, of which 40 million regularly shop online. 20% of buyers place orders using a mobile phone.
Today, the leaders in the online sales market are the USA and China. According to experts, after 2016 Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, Italy will also come forward, while the growth rate of e-commerce in China will remain the highest.
The trend emerging in recent years clearly indicates that the e-commerce sector will continue to grow rapidly, and companies that do not want to lose customers will have to explore the Internet more actively. Online sales channels increase customer traffic and opportunities to increase sales. But the owners of shoe stores are faced with a choice: create their own online store or use the capabilities of existing trading platforms - marketplaces?
A difficult choice
Before you begin work on creating your online store, you must clearly determine how you will create its website. Here you need to take into account the amount of resources (time, money, qualified personnel) that you have and your main goal.
The options for creating an online store can be divided into three groups:
- web studios or freelancers;
- existing platforms, for example, Bitrix, WordPress, Joomla and others;
- ready-made website builders for online marketplaces.
Each of these methods has its pros and cons, and when making a decision, you will need to decide which ones you are willing to put up with.
Ordering an online store from a web studio or freelancer will be the best option for those who plan to launch a unique and / or large project. The hired specialists will be able to create a site taking into account all the wishes and needs of the client, and if necessary they will tell you how best to do this, based on your professional experience. Collaboration with web-studios, as well as with freelance programmers, is an expensive and rather long pleasure. The development of a large project can last from a month to a year, depending on its complexity.
Website development by a specialist on an existing platform (1C-Bitrix, NetCat, UMI-CMS) will cost less than a unique development from scratch. With a certain dedication, you can create a website on your own, but professionals are skeptical about this: creating an online store website without being a programmer is a utopia when it comes to serious trade. An online store is the most complex system that is best left to professionals. Well, in terms of its status, a serious business, of course, needs an original website, not an economy version. After launching the site, it will take at least three months for it to be indexed by search engines, and about a year to reach the top 10, so you will have to attract visitors with contextual advertising and other methods.
Finally, you can create an online store using a ready-made website designer on one of the trading platforms (marketplaces) on the Internet; this option will not require deep technical skills. The budget for creating an online store on commercial platforms is several times lower than in collaboration with a web studio or freelance programmer. The site created on the marketplace is immediately accessible on the network and is quickly indexed by search engines due to the fact that all the mechanisms for SEO are already built into its constructor. The trading floors have huge attendance and a large number of registered buyers, but, on the other hand, the competition on the marketplace is higher.
For buyers, the marketplace is a convenient tool for comparing prices and checking the seller’s safety using ratings and reviews of other buyers. In addition, in addition to the guarantees provided by law, portals create their own system of protection for buyers from unscrupulous sellers.
Portrait of a consumer buying goods through marketplaces
More than half of all visitors to trading floors are men (51,3%), while the majority of buyers of goods and services portals (45%) are people aged 25 to 34 years. Mobile gadgets are increasingly being integrated into users ’lives, and now 18% of all purchases are made using smartphones and tablets. By the number of orders (B2C) through the basket, of course, Moscow leads. The TOP 5 regions also include St. Petersburg, Moscow Region, Sverdlovsk Region and Krasnodar Territory. The number of orders in a particular region is directly related to the possibility of purchasing goods on the spot.
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