The Ultimate Guide to Selling on eCommerce Marketplaces

Third-party selling means listing your products on third-party platforms like Google Shopping and Walmart Marketplace in addition to your own eCommerce site. This helps to drive brand and product discovery and gives you the reach needed to acquire new customers.

Acquisition costs have been trending upward for several years now, and with recent privacy changes implemented by Apple in the iOS 15 update and Google’s shift away from cookies, those costs aren’t coming down any time soon. Leveraging a third-party marketplace gives you more brand exposure, more leads, and for smaller brands, better trust and authority through an association with a known companies like Google or Walmart.

Why D2C isn’t enough anymore

For growing brands, it’s not enough to launch an eCommerce site and spend a ton of money on digital advertising to acquire new customers. That tactic isn’t as effective as it used to be, especially with a limited budget. In addition, many small or new brands don’t have the capacity, manpower, or knowledge to launch a successful advertising campaign. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be running ads on social and search — you absolutely should. But in the current eCommerce landscape, you need to think bigger. 

Driving traffic to a new eCommerce site is hard. When you sell on third-party platforms, their traffic becomes your traffic. And that traffic is significant — more than 60% of all product searches start on third-party retail platforms. You just aren’t going to get that amount of reach through Facebook ads.

Social proof is crucial on third-party platforms

So how does a smaller brand stand out on a third-party retail platform? Reviews and ratings. 

Our research shows that consumers are 186% more likely to buy something after reading reviews. If you sell women’s black boots and are competing with 10 other brands who also sell women’s black boots, having tons of positive reviews and ratings will help your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

When selling on third-party platforms, social proof is the most important factor in establishing authority and brand trust. Having reviews is crucial for brands that shoppers may be encountering for the first time when searching for products.

Brands that sell on eCommerce retail platforms have an enormous opportunity to boost brand awareness, customer acquisition, and revenue. Getting to know the nuances of each channel and working with a partner like Yotpo to leverage official partnerships and syndicate reviews is essential for making your brand and products stand out among the competition.

Google Shopping is a retail search engine that displays both paid and organic product listings relevant to the user’s search query. It allows consumers to compare and shop for products across different retailers and offers product recommendations based on both the user’s shopping and search history. 

How Google Shopping works

Google Shopping works a lot like Google Search, only the results are all products. Paid product listings are displayed across the top, and organic listings make up the rest of the search results page. 

Brands have multiple options for listing and selling products on Google Shopping:

• Organic listings: As of April 2020, Google made it free for brands to submit product feeds for listing in organic search results. 
• Shopping ads: Brands who want to be listed across the top of a search results page can create shopping ads. 
• Buy on Google: Brands that have their product feeds on Google Shopping can drive traffic back to their own sites to complete the purchase or buy right from the product page on Google. As of July 2020, Buy on Google is commission-free, and brands that use Shopify or Paypal to process payments can now do so on Buy on Google as well. This makes it easy for brands to get started using the tools already working for their businesses.

Why reviews are essential for Google Shopping

Because Google Shopping is essentially a search engine, the number of results for any given search term is going to be much higher than on a platform that owns the customer experience end-to-end. Displaying your customer reviews will help your products stand out from the competition. 

Brands that add reviews to their Google Shopping Ads see up to a 24% increase in CTR. And, having just 100 reviews on a product page on your site can more than double conversion rates on that product.

As an official Google partner, Yotpo offers brands a full suite of features dedicated to making the most out of ratings and reviews. Our partnership with Google allows brands to easily feature star ratings, reviews, and customer photos in their Google Shopping ads, Google Shopping product listings, Google Seller Ratings, and rich snippets. 

Redline Steel drives discovery with Google search results

When home decor brand Redline Steel was looking to engage their customers at earlier touch points, they turned to Yotpo because of our integration with Google. By incorporating their user-generated content (UGC) on Google, the brand was able to boost their SEO strategy, increase visibility through Google search results, and decrease their cost per acquisition by 60%. 

With shops on Facebook and Instagram, you can display and sell products through your own storefront on Facebook and Instagram. People who visit your shop can browse your products, make purchases, and get to know your brand. 

If you host your online store on a Facebook partner platform, like Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento, you can easily import your product catalog and ensure that it’s always synced with your eCommerce site. Yotpo’s custom integration with Meta allows Yotpo brands to syndicate their product reviews directly to their shops on Facebook and Instagram.  

Why sell through shops on Facebook and Instagram

When you’re a growing brand, it pays to be an early adopter on new acquisition channels. Not only is there less competition for acquiring new customers, but you’ll also be better positioned to take advantage of new features and capabilities as they are launched. 

Selling is all about meeting customers where they are, and chances are, your customers are on Facebook and Instagram. By getting your products in front of them while they’re browsing social media—and more importantly, allowing them to complete a purchase without leaving the platform—you’ll be more likely to increase conversions at these crucial, seamless touchpoints.

Why your brand needs reviews on Shops

By adding reviews to your shops on Facebook and Instagram product listing, you’ll be able to build immediate credibility and trust. Small brands often have limited budgets and time to spend when they think about selling, so it makes sense to leverage the social proof you already have from existing customers vs. the more expensive acquisition of new prospects. This will enable you to stand out from your competitors who aren’t taking advantage of all of Meta’s integrations for Shops, and allow you to establish authority with new customers who may not be familiar with your brand or products.

Meta chose Yotpo as a Reviews integration partner, which is an extension of our long-lasting partnership. With the new Yotpo and Meta integration, you can syndicate your hard-earned reviews from your D2C site directly where your customers’ shop — including Facebook and Instagram — and let your UGC continue to work for you. Plus, by partnering with Yotpo for your reviews syndication, you’ll also receive a weekly report via email that will help you keep track of which reviews have syndicated properly to your Shops.

Walmart Marketplace is a curated community of respected, professional sellers who offer only top-quality, authentic products and best-in-class customer service. The main advantage of selling on Walmart is that after Amazon, Walmart.com is the largest player in the United States eCommerce market, with over 120 million monthly shoppers. Brands who sell on the platform not only get access to Walmart’s incredible reach, but there’s also less competition and more brand authority because Walmart has much stricter requirements for being a seller than Amazon.

Walmart Marketplace offers sellers an opportunity to leverage a trusted, popular platform to get their products in front of potential customers. To capitalize on the retailer’s rapid growth, eCommerce platforms like Shopify are partnering with the retail giant to make it as easy as possible for more brands to sell on Walmart Marketplace. 

Why you need social proof on Walmart Marketplace

For brands just starting out on Walmart Marketplace, it can take time to generate sufficient reviews for each product. Without a convincing number of reviews on your products, consumers are likely to bounce to a different brand faster, especially on such a highly competitive platform.

Yotpo’s unique partnership with Walmart makes it easy to syndicate all of your existing product reviews to Walmart, so you can build trust and accelerate sales right away. And with our new and improved Walmart Reporting Dashboard, your brand can gain even more clarity into which reviews are being syndicated. 

Yotpo x Walmart: iFLY case study

Family-owned travel fashion brand iFly knew the importance of authentic customer feedback, so they began collecting reviews with their previous reviews platform, Bazaarvoice. However, as iFLY expanded its digital ambitions, it migrated to Yotpo because of the elevated user experience, easy digital integrations, and Walmart syndication partnership. 

Switching over to Yotpo gave iFLY the flexibility and freedom to customize their review requests, resulting in a better user interface and experience, and ultimately leading to an increase in their review submissions. In fact, they were able to collect and syndicate 1,000 new reviews to Walmart in just 40 days.

Conclusion

With more brands and products coming online every day, taking advantage of new channels for customer acquisition is the key to growth, especially for newer or small brands. Yotpo has cultivated partnerships with major third-party retail platforms to allow brands to easily integrate their reviews and visual UGC into their product listing to boost discovery, brand trust, and sales from day one. That will free you up to focus on turning all of those new customers into loyal shoppers and brand advocates.

To learn more about how Yotpo can help you scale your business on both third-party retail platforms and your eCommerce site, request a demo.