Buy Directly from Sellers and Cut Out online Marketplaces?

These days, Amazon is the first place most small businesses turn to when they want to sell something online. This gives an immense amount of power to one company, and they charge accordingly. It also means that all businesses are forced to compete against each other, and the buyer will always go for the lowest-priced product.

This is bad news for small businesses that want to focus on offering the best possible experience or highest quality products for their customers. The huge fees that are charged by Amazon Marketplace will eat up a large proportion of any income that they would have made on the sale, and other businesses on the Marketplace may force them to lower their prices even further. This is a recipe for a 'race to the bottom' where experience, customer service, and product quality are thrown away in a race to the top of the Amazon rankings.

We believe that things don't have to be this way. That's why we've set up a website that allows small businesses to own their relationship with their customers. Read on to discover the advantages of this better way of working.

Own the Relationship

On a service such as Amazon Marketplace, if anything goes wrong with the product, shipping, or returns, both you and the customer are at the mercy of the Amazon customer services department. This can be slow, bureaucratic and leave customers with a poor impression of the seller even though the situation is entirely beyond their control.

On our site, we offer links directly to the seller's website, meaning that you have the chance to own every part of the transaction. This means that you can keep them fully informed of shipping times and other important information. In the unlikely event of any delays, you have the customer's contact information and will be able to speak to them directly and put their mind at ease.

The same goes if the customer has any problems with the order or simply wants to ask a few questions about the item that they have purchased. Unlike Amazon, where their only port of call is the Q&A section on the product page, they have direct access to an expert on whatever they have bought; you!

Provide Stellar Customer Service

While Amazon is the biggest name in online shopping, complaints about the level of service that it provides have risen in recent years. As the company moves to send more packages through its in-house logistics service and drivers are under ever more pressure to get deliveries made, the quality of service has slipped. The same goes if the buyer has any reason to contact the customer service team. Amazon has made it increasingly difficult for its customers to get in touch with a real person in order to resolve any problems that they may have. Instead, the company prefers to force them to use chatbots and endless FAQ pages, which often leads to frustration and means that you will have unhappy customers that you don't even know about. Even if they can't contact you, there is every chance that they will spread negative information about your products to their friends and family.

Sell the Experience

Amazon product pages are all identical and turn every product, no matter its purpose or nature, into a commodity. This is terrible news for anyone selling an experience or even a product that is more than a basic tool. Selling the benefits of a product on Amazon can be very difficult, which is a massive issue for all sorts of sellers. If you're selling a book, pain relief, or any other item that cannot be sold visually, then you are at a considerable disadvantage before you've even started as the range of tools that you have that allow customers to explore the product that you are selling are immensely limited.

If you want to provide videos of customers who have used the product saying what they thought of it, explain how to use the product correctly once it has arrived or just offer plenty of in-depth information to make sure that all questions are answered, then it is far easier to do this on your own website than trying to cram information into Amazon's rigid page format.

Don't Overpay

Amazon knows that it is the first place people turn to when they are looking to buy online, and it charges its sellers accordingly. This can put huge pressure on margins since Amazon massively favors the lowest-priced option regardless of product quality or the level of service that the seller has built up. Even if you have spent many years nurturing your relationship with Amazon and working hard to make sure that everyone who buys from you has an excellent experience, an upstart competitor can quickly come along and undercut you. Your customers may not even know that it's not you who is selling to them anymore.

All of this is a huge risk for sellers, who may find that Amazon robs them of their potential audience overnight. The only way to avoid this possible pitfall is to cut Amazon out of the equation altogether and go directly to your customers. People generally prefer to deal with small businesses where they know the people behind the products and can be sure of the highest levels of customer service. By selling directly to the public, you can do this; we're here to make sure that your business can be found and that customers are confident that they will receive the best levels of customer service when they make a purchase from you.

All of this is a great reason to start selling directly and step away from Amazon, a business that is actively harming the people who sell through it. The sooner you make the switch, the more quickly you can start building the customer relationships that will enable your business to grow and thrive in the years ahead as you sell to genuine advocates of what you do.