You’ve come up with a distinctive product that you know people will love to get their hands on. Maybe it’s handcrafted, one-of-a-kind jewelry, sustainable sportswear, or innovative electronics. There’s a whole online world of shoppers out there, just waiting to buy from you.

But there are so many sales channels to choose from that you’re not sure where’s the best place to actually sell your products. Sound familiar? 

Should you dive headfirst into Amazon—or will you end up drowning in competition? Or should you try a combination of approaches?

Choosing the right ecommerce sales channels is crucial to finding your sustainable customer base and achieving great sales. But you need to know how to make those choices wisely.

In this article, we’ll explore the different types of online sales channels and how they work, why you should take a “multi-channel” approach, even as a small business, and how to use technology to support you along the way. 

Let’s get going! 

What are ecommerce sales channels? 

Ecommerce sales channels are any online spaces where you can offer products or services for your customers to buy. They include everything from giant marketplace sites like Amazon or Etsy to small company websites and online stores. 

Choices, choices…

But not every sales channel works for every business. To find the most profitable avenues for your business and your products, you need to understand each channel, if your target market even shops there, and how to entice them to make a purchase. 

Let’s look at the pros and cons of main ecommerce sales channels, and some best practice tips to make them work for you.

What are the top ecommerce sales channels for small retailers? 

So, now we’re clear on what we mean by “ecommerce sales channels”, let’s dig into some of the best options for smaller online retailers — including the pros and cons of each:  

Direct-to-Customer (DTC) online stores

Your own online store lets you sell your products directly to your customers. You control everything — design, user experience, pricing, and customer data. With platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and OpenCart, you can create a user-friendly digital storefront and checkout to serve your online customers. 

Pros: 

• You get to keep all the profits. 
• You can engage directly with your customers and build loyalty.
• You can customize your store to the look and feel of your brand.

Cons: 

• You need to find your own customers and drive traffic to your store yourself.
• Domain registration, hosting, and platform fees can be costly.
• You’re responsible for inventory, shipping, customer service, and returns.
• You’re also in charge of handling site security and data protection compliance.

Is an online store right for you?

If you want your sales channel to reflect your unique identity, and to control your branding, customer experience, and website design, then you should consider an online store. It’s also a good option for cultivating customer relationships and scaling as your business grows. 

Best practices for selling through an online store 

• Make your store easy to navigate and mobile-friendly, with a checkout process that is quick, simple, and secure.
• Get creative with your product descriptions, by all means—but don’t forget to add the nitty-gritty details that will help customers choose the right product. 
• Use inventory management software to keep on top of your stock levels, so you don’t accidentally sell out or overstock. 
• Make sure you can keep up with the demands of high-quality customer service as your business grows—you may need to consider hiring a virtual assistant or outsourcing support. 

Marketplaces 

For reaching the greatest number of potential customers, online marketplaces are second to none. According to our research, marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Google Shopping are the top shopping choice for 51% of consumers in the US and the UK. 

Like their real-world equivalent, marketplaces offer shoppers everything they need under one roof — whether searching for specific items or browsing at their leisure. If you want your small business to reach far and wide, a marketplace is a profitable place to set out your stall. In fact, we found that more than 7 in 10 businesses sell their wares in two or three marketplaces. 

Pros: 

• Marketplaces give you access to a global customer base of millions.
• You can list your products easily and quickly.
• Marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have universal name recognition and trust, making your customers feel more comfortable about buying from you. 
• Marketplaces offer secure payment processing, so you don’t have to deal with any payment logistics (especially handy if you’re selling internationally.) 

Cons: 

• Marketplaces come with fees and commissions — as well as potentially tedious or demanding terms and conditions.
• Marketplaces may restrict certain products or categories from sale (for instance, you can’t sell CBD oil or sculptures on Amazon.) 
• Your products are listed alongside your competitors — meaning you need great product descriptions and competitive pricing to succeed.
• There’s little room for customization, so it can be difficult to stand out.

Which marketplaces are right for you?

Sell on Amazon if: 

• you want your products to be on the platform two-thirds of Americans turn to first.
• you want the FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) service to take care of your shipping and customer service.

Sell on eBay if: 

• you want to offer sought-after or unique items for auction.
• you could use some free monthly listings and promotions.
• you don’t want to compete with Amazon-branded products. 

Sell on Etsy if:

• you specialize in selling handmade crafts or vintage clothes, furniture, or art.
• you want a marketplace that offers brand customization options. 
• you want a sense of community for niche interests.

Best practices for selling on ecommerce marketplaces

• Use keyword optimization in your listings to get your products seen.
• Adjust your prices to account for fees and commissions.
• Offer excellent customer service to rank highly as a seller, and qualify for options like Amazon’s Buy Box.
• Participate in promotional listings to boost your visibility and attract more buyers.

Why you should have more than one ecommerce sales channel

As you see, there are a lot of choices for ecommerce retailers. But you don’t need to settle for just one sales channel. Nor should you.

Let’s say you want to sell handcrafted jewelry pieces online, to reach a bigger audience than your local craft fair offers. You could start by setting up a branded online store using Shopify and set out your product range. You could also list your jewelry on Etsy and Amazon Handmade to tap into their larger, established customer bases.

Finally, you could complement this by visually showcasing your pieces on Instagram and Pinterest to build your brand awareness, driving traffic to your marketplace listings and online store.

As your visitors and sales grow, you could send out regular email newsletters with new product launches and jewelry care tips, to cultivate your customer relationships.

With a well-managed multichannel sales strategy like this, you can spread out and diversify your reach, and maximize your sales and your profitability. 

How to make the best decisions for your ecommerce channels

Here’s a quick guide to help you decide when and how to add a new channel

Know what’s working so far

You need a baseline view of where you’re starting from. How are your current sales channels performing when it comes to sales and customer experience? Where is the room for improvement? Are your current channels maxed out in terms of the sales they can deliver and the customer base they can reach? A connected ecommerce platform like Linnworks can help you get a unified view of all your sales data. 

Know your customers

You need to get a good idea of the people you’re trying to reach. Where do they hang out online? How do they shop, where do they browse and what do they search for? What kind of content do they engage best with? If they’re spending more time on Instagram than Amazon, it might be an idea to improve your social media presence

Survey your most loyal and engaged customers to build a customer profile. Explore the different platforms and look for other small businesses similar to yours. Find out where and how they market their products and learn from how their customers interact with them. 

Assess your resources

You need to know what your capacity is for managing your sales channels, in terms of time, personnel, and budget. Adding new channels means you have to consider what each will take in terms of setup, maintenance, and then ongoing marketing.

Start small. Get really good at using one new channel before you decide to add another. Be honest about what you can manage and don’t overreach.

Test it out

Test the waters to see if your prospective customers bite. Maybe start with a limited product range or a special offer and gauge the response and the interest you get. 

Try this out on a number of channels to get a sense of what’s going to work best for you and bring in the best results.

How to manage multiple sales channels  

Managing multiple sales channels is vital for making your ecommerce sales channel strategy work effectively. You need to stay on top of your inventory, track orders, and analyze your sales data across all your channels.  

Here’s our best tips for managing more than one sales channel as a small business: 

Have a centralized hub for managing your sales channels

To make life easy on yourself, it’s wise to have a single center of operations. This will help you to compare your overall sales performance, instead of having to go into each channel separately to see how you’re doing. 

Linnworks’ intuitive dashboards let you track orders, inventory, and performance across all channels from a single place. You get a 360-degree perspective on the KPIs and metrics across multiple selling channels and specific SKUs, giving you real-time visibility of stock and real insights to your overall sales performance.

All the sales insight you need in the same place, automatically 

Automate your inventory management

It can be a nightmare when you find yourself unexpectedly sold out of a product on one channel while still having plenty in stock on another. Similarly, you don’t want to end up with in-demand products on backorder. 

Invest in inventory management systems that let you put the busywork on autopilot and sync your stock levels across all your sales channels in real time. 

Make sure you can offer the same customer service across channels

If your customers are going to find you through multiple channels, it’s crucial that you can offer the same level of high customer service across all those channels. A cohesive, coherent experience will do wonders for your brand’s reputation.

Stay agile and on your toes 

The ecommerce tides shift quickly, so you’ll need to surf the changes. Consumer behaviors and interests wane. New trends — and new channels — emerge and older ones become outdated. And ecommerce tech is always evolving — with new payment options or innovative uses for AI-driven personalization. 

To keep your sales channel strategy effective and profitable, you need to keep up to date with changes in the ecommerce landscape. Regularly review the performance data of all your channels, looking out for trends and lulls, and taking note of what products are performing well on each channel. 

The more agile and adaptable you are, the more you can make your suite of sales channels work for you, your business, and your customers.

Build your integrated sales channel strategy with Linnworks

These days, no single channel will serve you fully. While marketplaces will certainly offer you the widest reach, they’ll also put you in with all your closest competitors. So make sure to strengthen your online presence and impact with complementary channels. 

Whichever sales channels you choose, make sure to offer your customers as smooth and seamless an experience as possible. With Linnworks, you can easily integrate all your sales channels so you can stay on top of them all from one central platform. From real-time inventory management and automated restocking to streamlined fulfillment and post-sales service, Linnworks helps simplify your sales channel strategy and deliver the best to your customers. 

To find out how, request a demo.