How to Diversify Your E-commerce Sales Channels?

Customer acquisition costs have risen by 60% over the last 5 years¹. In an ultra-competitive e-commerce market, where new players are constantly emerging and it’s getting harder and harder to stand out, multiplying the points of contact with your customers is essential.

In this article, find out how to diversify your sales channels to boost your sales and secure your market position.

Why is diversifying sales channels essential?

Relying on a single sales channel, whether it’s your physical boutique or your e-commerce site, is a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket. Risky, isn’t it? Here’s why it’s crucial to diversify your approach:

Reach a wider, more diverse customer base

The e-commerce market is constantly evolving, with the number of online shoppers growing daily. In France, 40 million people buy online every year², placing an average of 60 orders per person per year. It’s impossible to capture all these customers with a single store, however effective it may be. By diversifying your sales channels, you:

• Increase your online visibility and brand awareness;
• Reach customers with different characteristics: age, standard of living, buying habits…

Adapt to customer volatility

Today, a customer can leave your purchasing path in a single click to buy from a competitor. It’s hard to keep your customers loyal, because consumers are increasingly demanding and have a huge number of similar items at their fingertips. Relying solely on the clientele of a single channel is therefore a mistake. By multiplying your points of sale, you can compensate for shopping cart abandonment in one channel with customers from another.

Track changes in buying behavior

Purchasing behavior has changed radically in recent years. Customers are present on multiple sales channels: marketplaces, social networks, discount websites… It’s not unusual for a customer to pass through 3, 4 or more points of contact before finalizing an order.

Take Sophie, for example, who’s looking for a new phone. She sees a sponsored ad on Instagram for a new model. Preferring to buy refurbished models, she first looks at prices on eBay. The next day, she compares different models on a bargain site. In the end, she buys her phone on Rakuten, where she benefits from an attractive cashback offer. If you’re selling this phone, it’s in your interest to be present on each of these sales channels.

Avoid dependence on a single source of income

Dependence on a single sales channel can be risky. Has a Google algorithm change penalized your e-commerce site’s SEO? Does your favorite marketplace increase its commissions, or worse, close? These elements are beyond your control and can have disastrous consequences for a business centered on a single channel. Diversification is a resilience strategy that enables you to cope better with the unexpected.

How to set up a sales channel diversification strategy?

To successfully diversify your sales channels, you need to follow a few key steps:

How do you manage your stocks, orders and deliveries across different channels?

Selling across multiple channels can quickly become a logistical headache. Fortunately, there are solutions to make your life easier. For efficient, centralized delivery management, consider a logistics service like Rakuten Fulfillment Network. With this type of solution, all your orders are centralized in a single dashboard, you can monitor your stock levels in real time and choose your delivery methods in just a few clicks. Bonus: 99% of orders are delivered within 24 hours. A considerable time-saver!

What are the best sales channels to use in e-commerce?

There are a multitude of e-commerce sales channels, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The ideal is to use them in a complementary way to reach a varied clientele and maximize your revenues.

Your own e-commerce site

Specialized marketplaces

Did you know that 46% of consumers start their purchasing journey on a marketplace, and that 61% are more inclined to buy on a marketplace than on a retailer’s website³? For online shoppers, a marketplace has many advantages: access to a wide range of products in one place, low prices, promotional operations (sales, Black Friday)… Marketplaces are attracting more and more customers every year.

Advantages of a marketplace for a retailer

For a retailer, a marketplace also has a number of advantages:

• Traffic and brand awareness: marketplaces attract massive traffic. And traffic means sales opportunities. 15 million unique visitors visit Rakuten every month.
• Promotions and loyalty tools: marketplaces finance numerous promotional offers for sellers. Rakuten, for example, offers up to 20% cashback on all purchases on Mega Peak days, every first Wednesday of the month.
• Customer journeys and innovations: marketplaces generally have entire teams dedicated to optimizing customer journeys and integrating the latest technological innovations: chatbots, AI-supported search engines, optimized item suggestions… These are all essential but time-consuming elements that you don’t have to manage yourself.
• Complementary tools: Most marketplaces are complete ecosystems that offer numerous tools to optimize your business: advertising solutions, logistics services, retail media… At Rakuten, our solutions are integrated into a single dashboard. The objective? Develop your sales in just a few clicks.

As you can see, selling on a marketplace is an essential step towards diversifying your sales channels. All that remains is to choose the right platform for your needs.

Successful marketplace integration: Fnac-Darty group

Let’s take the example of the Fnac-Darty group, which integrated the Rakuten marketplace in 2023 to diversify its acquisition channels. The decision to join a marketplace was a response to the following challenges:

• Develop online sales in an ultra-competitive sector;
• Capitalize on Fnac-Darty’s physical network through Click and Collect;
• Offer concrete benefits to consumers (cashback, flexibility).

A year and a half later, the results are convincing:

By joining a marketplace, the Fnac-Darty group has benefited from a new customer base, increased in-store sales thanks to Click and Collect, and taken advantage of Rakuten’s loyalty-building tools. A successful gamble!

Sources

¹Profitwell

²Fevad

³ChannelEngine