9 great reasons to sell with OnBuy

Choosing sales channels for your business is a tricky thing. There is so much competition on major marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, and so many pitfalls such as high fees and the risk of your account being suspended (often seemingly for no good reason) retailers look to develop their own websites. But getting customers to your website takes time, money and effort with SEO, and even then, many shoppers still prefer the security of making their purchases on a marketplace. With such challenges, it is little wonder that retailers are looking for alternative channels to reach their customers on.

Customers want an alternative to Amazon and eBay

Unfortunately, even with great SEO, just 13% of customers shop on retailer’s own websites. Customers want to be able to browse marketplaces – in part because they want the number of options that a marketplace offers, but there is an aspect of trust too. When they buy from a marketplace, they have the assurance that if something goes wrong, they can escalate the problem if they don’t get it resolved.

Clearly Amazon and eBay are the marketplace powerhouses of the eCommerce world and are pretty unlikely to be going away any time soon. But there are quite a number of customers who want to buy in a different way! With controversies around taxes, and a general feeling of discontent against Jeff Bezos’ incredible wealth when considering allegations about Amazon employees in warehouses, there is little wonder that customers are looking for an alternative. In the UK, OnBuy is fast fulfilling the demand for those customers that are looking for a way to buy online with a more ethically minded approach.

OnBuy pride themselves on the fact that they operate completely above board and ethically, paying their fair share of UK taxes in order to support the economy. To be even more clear about their intentions of operating in the UK, they don’t have any overseas offices – meaning there aren’t any funds being diverted elsewhere.

OnBuy isn’t a retailer

The OnBuy marketplace is relatively new to the eCommerce playing field, having only launched in 2016. Since then though, the company has grown by 24,000%, and we think that much of their success is due to the fact that they prioritise retailers, rather than competing with them for customers.

Unlike Amazon, they don’t sell any products themselves (indeed, they don’t hold any stock at all) so you’re never forced to make your prices lower to win customers from them. If you’re thinking it is only a matter of time before they start selling themselves – well, they don’t have any plans to now, and we don’t expect that this will change in the future either.

OnBuy want to support retailers, and that isn’t hype for the sake of getting businesses to sign up. There are no special introductory rates, or messing about waiting for payments – let’s take a look.

Low sales fees

We’ve talked about the way some marketplaces structure their fee systems before on the blog. Quite frankly, keeping up with which marketplace charges listing fees, which one charges commission, which has a combination of both – well, it gets exhausting. Not only that, fees have huge implications for your business and where you operate.

The team at OnBuy know this, and so they keep it simple: you’ll pay a sales fee when you’ve sold an item (so you’re not out of pocket from listing fees) and PayPal’s payment fees.

You’ll pay for your account on OnBuy too, but again, the investment is well worth it.

The Standard package is just £19.00 + VAT per month, and comes with the £500 sales guarantee. Any month that you receive less than £500 in sales, OnBuy will waive the next month’s subscription – providing you with some breathing space if you experience a downturn.

The Partner package is £39.00 + VAT per month, and offers improvements on search rankings, lead listing authority and priority support – all of which is well worth the extra fee for the increase in potential sales that you’ll experience.

If you’re thinking that you don’t want to be tied selling on a marketplace that might not work for you, then don’t worry – the OnBuy team know that retail businesses need flexibility. The subscription doesn’t mean you’re locked in, it runs on a 30 day, rolling agreement, and you can cancel your account at any time.

PayPal

Most businesses have made use of PayPal, and so to keep things straightforward OnBuy partnered with PayPal. That means that businesses that sell on the OnBuy marketplace are protected as much as their customers are. Eligible orders are covered for 180 days by PayPal Seller Protection.

Payments are released instantly

When you make a sale on Amazon or eBay, you end up waiting for your funds to be released, and there is always the chance that they might not allow the payment to be made, for some reason or another, leaving you out of pocket. OnBuy saw that this was a problem for sellers, and that delayed payments were preventing businesses from being able to grow as efficiently as they could be.

With OnBuy, as soon as your order is updated and the item has been dispatched, PayPal release funds from your customer to you immediately, so you can use those funds to continue to grow your business. Whether your business is brand new, or turning over seven figures, you’ll immediately see the benefit of this arrangement for the day-to-day running of your company.

Simple categorising

Marketplaces sometimes end up being akin to rabbit warrens that customers find it hard to navigate, even when they use keywords to try and find the product they want. These kind of structures can also make it complicated for businesses to know which category they should put products into – meaning there is the potential for lost sales. The OnBuy category structure is easy to understand, both as a retailer and as a customer.

They promote your products

Did we mention that OnBuy support businesses? Not only are you not competing against them for sales, but they’ll also promote your products – with even more potential sales made possible with their Boost service. It costs a little extra, but you’ll only pay for what sells – so if your supplier is running an incentive for you to make sales on a particular product, then you can choose to take advantage of this.

OnBuy is growing

If you follow anything about eCommerce on LinkedIn, you won’t have failed to see the increasing number of posts about OnBuy. The company is on an incredible upward trajectory, and we believe it won’t be long before OnBuy is a household name that is mentioned every time a customer talks about Amazon and eBay.

Right now, having only launched in 2016, OnBuy is now the fastest growing marketplace in the world. In 2020 so far, they have tripled their team of staff members – and they’re expecting to grow even further in 2021, following their £5 million Series A funding round.

They’re not stopping at being a UK eCommerce site either. Customers are already shopping on OnBuy from around the world, and they expect to be selling in 143 locations by 2023. This will offer you the chance to be one of the first sellers on the marketplace in those locations, and you’ll have options available for auto-translation and auto-currency conversion.

Like Avasam, the team aren’t prepared to stop with offering one solution – they’re constantly working to improve what they, and the marketplace can do. They’re working on launching click and collect, same day delivery in every UK city, as well as a complete fulfilment network, allowing sellers to get more products to their customers, much quicker.

UK-based seller support

Ever tried to contact Amazon to discuss your account in detail? If you have, you’ll know it can be a frustrating experience, with standardised responses and long waits for replies – which often don’t make sense. Because OnBuy are putting sellers first, they have ensured their seller support team is in the UK, and from their offices in beautiful Dorset they’ll help you sign up, get onboard and help you get the most from selling on OnBuy.

How to start selling with OnBuy

It is incredibly simple to start selling with OnBuy. You’ll go to this page, and then click the Register Now button, and once you’ve registered, an account manager will be in touch to get you started. Then, it is a case of uploading your inventory – either manually, with a CSV template, or using a channel integration – and you can start selling. Simple and effective – just how we like it.

Aside from your inventory, the only thing you’ll need to start selling on OnBuy is a PayPal business account – and if you’re using a personal PayPal account, it is pretty easy to upgrade.

If you’re selling products from Avasam, you’ll need to add the marketplace integration to your account. Head to Settings, then Sales channel integrations, click Add sales channel, scroll to find OnBuy in the list, and click Add.

Integration with Avasam

We recognised just how fantastic OnBuy can be for retailers, and so we wanted to make it as simple as possible for our sellers to get going on the marketplace. We’ve built an integration with OnBuy, so that stock levels get pushed to the platform automatically, and in our upcoming update we’ll have a listing tool to make adding products to OnBuy even more simple.