Marketplace

A third-party marketplace, or simply a marketplace is an online platform that allows multiple sellers to list and sell their products at the same location to a large general audience. Popular examples include Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Myntra, Ajio, Nykaa, etc. So you don’t have to create your own standalone website; you can set up shop on Amazon’s extensive, established platform. This can be incredibly attractive for new sellers: you gain immediate access to a huge audience, built-in trust from customers, and a streamlined process for transactions and logistics. It allows you to focus more on sourcing and marketing your products rather than on the technical aspects of building a website.

However, selling on Amazon involves adhering to their guidelines and limitations. Your storefront on Amazon is largely uniform and doesn’t allow for as much personalization as a dedicated store would. You’re competing with a massive array of other products, often in the same listing, which can make it challenging to stand out. Moreover selling on Amazon typically involves various selling fees, fulfillment fees (if you use Fulfillment by Amazon), and other costs that can eat into your profit margins.

So if you want advanced branding and UX, you better start a personal ecommerce store.

Personal store

You can create a personal store in 3 ways:

• Hardcode your project in React/Express or HTML/PHP and host it
• Create your store in Shopify
• Create your store in WooCommerce (a wordpress CMS plugin)

For a beginner or non-tech savvy, Shopify is the best platform to create a personal store. It costs more but provides all the basic templates and requires least maintenance. It covers the basics every business needs, but for additional features, you also have apps available in the Shopify App Store.