Insights / Guide / Omnichannel platform architecture
GuideMarketplace or your own store?
Marketplaces bring traffic but take fees and control. Your own store gives control but needs your own marketing. Most sellers end up with both, run from one back office.
Few online selling decisions generate more debate than whether to sell through marketplaces such as Amazon or eBay, through your own ecommerce store, or both. Each route has passionate advocates inside most businesses. Sales teams like the immediate volume of marketplaces. Brand and marketing teams prefer the control of a direct store. Finance worries about fees on one side and acquisition costs on the other.
The honest answer is that both routes work, for different purposes and at different costs. This guide sets out what each gives you, what it takes away, and how to decide. It also covers the hybrid model most growing sellers adopt and what it demands from your systems.
What a marketplace gives and takes
A marketplace brings customers who are already looking to buy. You list products, meet the platform’s standards and can be taking orders within days. For a new product, a new market or a business without a marketing team, that speed is valuable. Marketplaces are also an excellent way to test demand: you learn quickly whether a product sells, at what price and against which competitors.
In return, you accept the marketplace’s rules. It sets fees, which typically include a commission on each sale and often charges for fulfilment, storage and advertising. It controls how your products appear, how disputes are resolved and what customer information you receive. It can change any of these with limited notice. Many sellers find that, as competition grows on a marketplace, paid advertising within it becomes necessary simply to stay visible.
- Strengths: immediate traffic, customer trust in the platform, fast launch, optional fulfilment services.
- Weaknesses: fees on every order, limited customer data, price competition shown side by side, rule changes outside your control.
- Best for: testing new products or markets, commodity or replenishment items, sellers without an established brand.
What your own store gives and takes
Your own store, built on a platform such as Shopify, Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce or an ERP-linked option such as Odoo, gives you control. You decide the design, the product presentation, the pricing, the promotions and the checkout. Above all, you own the customer relationship: you know who bought, can contact them with consent and can build repeat business.
That control comes with responsibility. Nobody arrives at your store by default. You must attract every visitor through search, advertising, email, social media or offline marketing, and you pay for that acquisition in money and effort. You also run the operation: payments, fraud checks, customer service, returns and the technology itself. For a business with a strong brand and loyal customers, those costs are worth it. For an unknown seller, they can be prohibitive.
- Strengths: full control of brand and experience, ownership of customer data, no per-order commission, freedom to build loyalty.
- Weaknesses: you must generate all traffic, higher operational responsibility, slower start.
- Best for: established brands, products that benefit from rich storytelling, businesses relying on repeat customers.
How to decide: five questions
Rather than debating in the abstract, work through five questions with your commercial, marketing and finance leads.
1. How well known is your brand?
If customers search for your brand by name, your own store will capture much of that demand. If they search for a product type and you are one of many suppliers, a marketplace is where they are looking.
2. How much does the customer relationship matter?
Products bought repeatedly, or that lead to service and accessory sales, reward a direct relationship. One-off purchases with little follow-up do not.
3. What does each order really cost?
Build a simple model per order for each channel: marketplace commission, fulfilment and advertising on one side; customer acquisition, payment fees, hosting and service on the other. Include returns, which can differ sharply by channel. The comparison often surprises both camps.
A worked illustration helps. Imagine a homeware seller with an average order of £60. On a marketplace, commission, fulfilment and in-platform advertising together might take a substantial share of that value, but almost no marketing effort is needed to win the sale. On the seller’s own store, there is no commission, yet paid search and social advertising to win a first-time customer may cost as much or more. The difference is that the second order from that direct customer costs far less to win. Put your own figures into the same frame, including repeat purchase rates, and the right balance becomes much clearer.
4. What capacity does your team have?
Running your own store well needs marketing, content and operational skills. A marketplace needs listing management, pricing discipline and close attention to performance metrics. Be realistic about which your team can sustain.
5. How exposed are you to one platform?
If most of your revenue comes through a single marketplace, a change in its fees or rules can hurt badly. A direct channel, even a small one, reduces that dependency.
Why most sellers do both
In practice, many growing sellers combine the two. They use marketplaces for reach and demand testing, and their own store for brand, margin and loyalty. Some keep their full range on their own site and a selected range on marketplaces, avoiding direct price competition on their best lines. Others launch new products on a marketplace and move them to their own store once demand is proven.
The hybrid model works only if the operation behind it is unified. One stock figure must serve every channel, so a unit sold on a marketplace is no longer offered on your site. Orders from every channel should flow into one order management process, so warehouse staff pick and pack from a single queue. Finance needs each channel’s sales, fees and refunds reconciled in one ledger.
Customer service also needs one view. A customer who bought through a marketplace and then contacts you directly about a fault should not be told you have no record of the order. Bringing every channel’s orders into the same system lets service teams find and resolve issues quickly, whatever the source.
The hidden cost of a split operation
Sellers who run each channel from its own spreadsheet or plug-in commonly see overselling, duplicated work and slow month-end reconciliation. The cost grows with every channel added.
Building the back office for both
Whatever mix you choose, design the back office first. In most cases that means an ERP or order management system holding the single stock figure and receiving orders from every channel through reliable connectors. Pricing rules, product information and fulfilment logic should be managed centrally and published to each channel, not maintained separately in each.
- Choose the system that will hold stock, orders and product information.
- Connect your highest-volume channel first and prove the flow end to end.
- Add further channels one at a time, using the same order and stock process.
- Report margin by channel monthly, including fees, advertising and returns.
- Review the channel mix every six months against your cost model.
Next steps
Start by building the per-order cost model for each channel you use or are considering. Pair it with an honest assessment of your brand strength and team capacity. If you are new to online selling, a marketplace is often the fastest way to learn. If you are established, invest in your own store and treat marketplaces as a controlled extension. Either way, put a single stock and order process behind every channel before you add the next one.
Source: Intelliversal analysis.
