Earlier this week, my attention was brought to a Huffington Post blog concerning the use of third-party retailers like Amazon and Etsy to drive traffic for online stores.
The author warned against using these sites for anything beyond product discovery and recommended trying to direct traffic to a business’s independent ecommerce retailer as an alternative.
While there are no flaws with the logic exhibited in the article, there are benefits in the sustained use of a retailer like Amazon for your business.
The Conversation Rates of Big Retailers
It’s not a secret that Etsy, Amazon and other ecommerce giants have figured out the formula to turn page views into sales; in fact, Amazon is credited with the highest conversation rate in the industry.
This is likely the reason why the HuffPost blog article praises these sites ability to generate the benefit of product discovery for small businesses marketing through multiple channels.
The blog points out that these sites are also experts in getting customers to click to other pages, diminishing the potential for brand loyalty to an individual seller.
The idea is that once a product or business is established in the market, more energy should be spent directing traffic to an unique site in hopes that they consider only that seller in the future.
According to Forbes, however, expansion in the ecommerce sector may be reducing the existence of true brand loyalty.
When you can’t ensure that page visits will lead to a continued consideration of your products, it follows that sustaining use of Amazon as an additional retail channel is wise choice to capitalize on conversion rates.
Big Retailers Add Value Intrinsically
Most retailers, when considering when and how to use bigger sellers to push their products, are not large enough to have name recognition.
Companies like Amazon have lengthy and established agreements in place between buyer and seller, making the consumers less wary of fraud and online security threats from a site on which they enter payment and identity information.
Amazon, Etsy and the like, bring a familiar brand to an online store, so that new customers can feel more assured about making purchases, adding a value that is most likely unseen in the analysis of marketing strategy.
These concerns must be considered when deciding how to shape the retail channels that are best for your business.
What do you think?
Let me know in the comments section below.
