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B2B eCommerce keeps gaining popularity: up to 83%¹ of B2B buyers choose to purchase their needed products online, and 70% of them expect good performance from these online resources. According to Gartner, 80% of B2B sales interactions will happen online in 2025.²
The most powerful way to keep in this market and even grow is to win the race for customer experience and loyalty. This is why choosing the right ecommerce platform is exceptionally important.
The first thing entrepreneurs encounter when starting their B2B digital business is choosing between their own ecommerce platform and joining some big B2B marketplace. Later, they can start their own marketplace. In this article, let's compare the two options and potential for the personalized marketplace to make an informed decision on what to choose at the beginning of your journey.
Basically, the marketplace is the digital commerce platform that embraces multiple sellers and many buyers in the same place. Though most of us imagine a usual B2C marketplace, B2B businesses also need this platform. Here are some excellent examples of such B2B marketplaces:
1. All-in-one marketplaces for companies where you can sell and buy whatever you want:
2. An industrial sector that connects businesses from manufacturing, construction, and other verticals:
3. FMCG and retail examples of B2B marketplaces all over the world:
Marketplace examples
Whatever vertical you choose, it all depends on the sellers' and buyers' business needs. The following advantages and disadvantages of the B2B marketplace compared to ecommerce platforms are these:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
B2B eCommerce platform refers to software specifically built to enable businesses to sell their goods and services to other businesses. Compared to the B2C ecommerce platform, it is tailored to sell to businesses instead of individuals directly. So, it has to support all the unique needs of business users on both sides: the seller and the buyer.
A perfect B2B ecommerce platform must feature the following:
In more technical terms, it should have several very specific capabilities:
Moreover, B2B ecommerce can also offer both SaaS marketplaces and modern ones, ecommerce auction marketplace, European-level B2B marketplaces, marketplaces and ecommerce websites.
Though this option offers many positive sides, it is also challenging. Here are the good and the poor sides of having yourself a B2B ecommerce platform.
Good sides:
Challenges:
Here, we collect everything we discussed into one table:
Your own ecommerce platform
|
Third-party marketplace
|
|
---|---|---|
Control and branding | Full control over branding and processes. Your capabilities only depend on the platform vendor. | The platform marketplace owner limits branding. You have some control over the part of your operation. |
Cost structure and fees | At your own ecommerce platform, you can build your own unique cost structure. | Marketplaces often quote a commission that you have to pay. Cost policy depends on them. |
Audience reaches and targeting | You can build personalized channels and use omnichannel marketing to target the segments you need. | Marketplaces offer big audiences, but it will always be shared with your competitors. Audience reach is poor. |
Customizability and flexibility | Modern modular platforms are fully flexible and can be adapted to any need. | Marketplaces restrict you from any customizations. |
It all looks like building your own ecommerce platform is the greatest idea. It might be! However, it all depends on your business needs and financial capabilities.
For example, if you own a middle-sized business that wants to grow into an enterprise, starting with your own platform is better.
But most businesses moving to digital do not realize what they actually need. At this point, trying a marketplace might be a good idea as you will quickly learn what you need and lack thereof, and it will be easier to choose your further vendor.
The key idea is to analyze your business and decide which option would work for your business better regarding needs, capabilities, and resources.
Here are some considerations to evaluate before deciding on the marketplace or your own platform:
Once you reply to these questions, you will know what your choice is going to be.
And, of course, here are some companies who tried selling at marketplaces already. Now it's time to grow and build their own solution. Before such a replatforming, analyze what exactly you expect from your new platform and which features you lack at the current place. The most often examples are lack of control and poor branding and customization capabilities. Some want to reduce spending, and some prefer improving their operations.
You can transfer your loyal audience straight from the old marketplace to your new solution if you decide to keep using the marketplace as an additional channel. An important step is onboarding. You have to transfer all your customers seamlessly as they expect to get the same info, details, and history on the new platform while getting more convenience and, probably, benefits you offer.
A dedicated ecommerce platform provides a long stable growth of business and revenue, ensures your business is independent of third parties, and allows you to constantly innovate to stay in the market or even disrupt it.
Another reason for ecommerce platform migration is that some of them found many new customers in the marketplace and now want to keep these loyal customers without paying platform marketplace fees. A good example is Virto's success story with one of our clients when the company moved to the platform to provide a more sophisticated personal approach.
Another great option for those who think they need to move on with some large clients while keeping the marketplace sales is building your own marketplace based on your ecommerce platform. Modular solutions like Virto allow for building a brand-new separate marketplace for partners and customers.
Virto is an Asp.NET ecommerce platform that offers capabilities for building a multivendor marketplace. As marketplaces provide multiple products and services, the customer should have a choice. This is why making it all available for communicating with different vendors simultaneously is essential. Surely, choosing the best multivendor marketplace platform is not the simplest task, but is necessary to cover the biggest customer need: the variety of choices.
When starting a digital ecommerce journey, most companies do not consider building their own marketplace but take part in ecommerce vs. marketplace battle. Some purchase ecommerce platforms, while others simply try themselves at public marketplaces. Though having your own platform is the best (at least, you can build your own marketplace on it), there is no right decision for all businesses. Analyze your resources and your needs and start with what fits your business needs right now.
Nevertheless, there is even a better option for those who want to play it all right. There is no need to purchase the whole ecommerce platform at once. With Virto, you can start with a simple ecommerce platform offering basic needed capabilities and grow further whenever you need it. Reach our team to find more capabilities that match your needs and learn if your business is ready for a separate ecommerce platform.
If you are selling at the third-party marketplace, you can easily replatform to any ecommerce solution. The important part is to ensure it can connect with such a marketplace to exchange your data and make customer onboarding seamless.
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