The online marketplace is a platform that allows to buy or sell a diversity of products from multiple vendors, and the ability to bargain/buy the products at reasonable prices. The most prominent ones are Amazon, Ebay, and their peers. There are many different marketplaces, where goods are bought and sold, but the distinctiveness lies in the services offered to buyers and vendors, different business models and the market spheres they occupy.
A market place is an e commerce platform, but not all e commerce sites are marketplaces. So, what are the sheer differences between an ecommerce site and a marketplace? Here are the top ones to help you guide through your marketplace journey:
Top Difference Between an E-Commerce Website and a Marketplace Solutions
1.Small Investment, Big Platform
Ecommerce website: In order to start an ecommerce website, it is often required to invest a good amount of money beforehand to attract buyers with a large offering.
Marketplace: When it comes to marketplaces, you have an advantage of allowing the vendors handle their stock on their own, which remarkably reduces your initial investment. Marketplaces can index more products than an e-commerce site as the collection of products is from multiple vendors. While the cost of launching a robust marketplace is roughly the same as an e-commerce website, the simplicity of a marketplace is much more.
2.Massive Inventory
For Marketplace: With a large inventory in a marketplace the customers can easily find the product they are looking for. However, a large catalog would require more efforts into merchandising.
For E-commerce website: In e-commerce website, you need to get rid of some unsold products or lower down their prices at some point of time, as keeping them in stock would keep you from stocking something that is sold more.
While on a marketplace, you can easily disable a product that doesn’t sell with a single click of button. As you haven’t bought the products, there are no costs associated to it.
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Magento-powered Multi vendor marketplace solution from Rocket Bazaar
3.Big and Complex
A marketplace assembles lists of products from multiple vendors, but organized into one well-organized catalog, with more references than an e-commerce website. Hence, it demands a well-constructed navigation system and efficient search filters to let users refine their search more precisely.
4.Positive Cash flow
E-commerce: The ecommerce websites which have made larger investments initially, its revenues and resources will take longer to break up.
Marketplace : Marketplaces enjoy better profit margins since the revenue generated is made up from the percentage of transactions. Depending on the volume of
transactions, the money earned is usually re-invested into product development to accelerate growth.
5.Choice of products
A marketplace offers a large choice of products. As many different manufacturers sell on the same platform, there is a huge variety to choose from than in a regular online store with a small set of brands. Moreover, often small businesses use the marketplaces to sell the second-hand products, so the prices are also expected to be lower.
Today, there are numerous solutions used to build E-Commerce website available on the market, such as SAP Hybris, or Magento being the most popular ones. The marketplace trend is constantly evolving and its success is growing every day.
If you’re dreaming of a well-structured online marketplace with an effective shopping experience, managed logistical aspects, all the secure systems integrated, and a stellar customer support, all you need is a complete solution which comes with several modules that can transform any website into a multi-vendor platform, Rocket Bazaar being an ultimate solution.
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