Should a small e-commerce team choose a standalone site or a platform?

Small e-commerce companies should consider their own resources and capabilities as well as market demand and other factors when choosing a sales channel. The following are the advantages and disadvantages of independent websites and platforms for your reference:

Advantages of standalone stations include:

• Independence, more autonomy and control, and the ability to freely design website pages and features;
• The brand image is easier to build and can showcase your products and services better;
• Own user data, easier to carry out accurate marketing and customer maintenance;
• The income stream is stable and does not require commissions to be paid to the platform.

Disadvantages of standalone stations include:

• Need to incur more technology development and maintenance costs;
• Traffic and exposure are relatively low, requiring more SEO and promotion efforts;
• User word-of-mouth and trust are relatively low, requiring more branding and word-of-mouth marketing.

Benefits of the platform include:

• Traffic and exposure is relatively high and the platform comes with a lot of user traffic;
• The brand and reputation of the platform is relatively high and you can leverage the brand image of the platform to improve your credibility;
• The technical and service support provided by the platform is relatively good, which can reduce the cost of its own technology development and maintenance.

Disadvantages of the platform include:

• Pay a higher commission or fee;
• Inability to design and control website pages and features on your own;
• Competition is fierce and there is a need to share the platform's user traffic and exposure with other merchants;
• Unable to have own user data, marketing and customer maintenance is limited.

To summarize, small e-commerce companies can choose their own sales channels according to their own situation, if the company has sufficient resources and capabilities, the brand and user reputation is more important, you can choose an independent station; if the company's traffic and exposure is insufficient, and hope to get more customers through the platform, you can choose to sell on the platform.