How to Move Away From Selling on Amazon and Sell on Your Own Website

If you’re starting out in the world of e-commerce, a natural starting point is selling on Amazon, or a similar large e-commerce website. It doesn’t require a lot of startup investment, the website does a lot of the heavy lifting, and you get quick access to an existing audience. There’s a reason these sites are so big: people use them.

Yet, as your business grows, you might start to see the flaws of doing business through large e-commerce sites. It might be struggling to compete against competitors listed right next to your products, unhappy with how your products are featured in product pages, or not wanting to share profits with the e-commerce site.

 

Moving away from Amazon and similar sites is a natural choice as your business grows. It’s not an easy one, though, and doing it wrong could lead to some financial troubles. If you want to strike out on your own, you’ll need to build a working website, market it so customers can find you, and brand your business so it can stand out.

 

Plan Out Your Transition Slowly

While working on moving to your own website and building up your business, you need to plan out a timeline for it. Don’t just cut off your revenue source from Amazon and throw everything into the new site.

 

While you build out your website and marketing plans, keep selling on Amazon so you don’t run out of money unexpectedly. Then, as your site goes live, put all of your products up there and slowly start to move away from Amazon. That way, you still have some money coming in while your website starts to gain traction.

 

Building a Brand the Right Way

While you likely have a business name already in order to list your products on Amazon, you need to build a full brand for your website.

 

Your brand identity is more than just a logo or color scheme, it’s how consumers view your business. Sure, a logo and colors affect that, but it’s much more than that. Your website is going to play a key part in your business’ brand, and you need to stand out in order to be successful.

 

Start by examining the products you sell and who is currently buying them. If you focus on homemade wooden signs, your branding needs to match that product. On the flip side, if you sell luxury soaps, your branding needs to exude luxury to your customers. Good branding reflects how your customers feel about your products, and thinking about your business should get them excited.

 

Everything on your website and in your marketing needs to match and support your branding. That includes website design, the photos you use, the copy you write, and even how your customer support talks to customers.

 

Building a Working E-Commerce Website

Your website needs to be able to do everything Amazon was handling for you. That includes hosting product pages, a shopping cart system, handling financial transactions, gathering shipping info, and more. All things you’ll either need to build yourself or purchase from others.

 

Alongside the necessities of selling products, your website also needs to look good and be optimized. That means all your webpages load correctly and quickly, contact forms all work, and page transitions are smooth. It also means doing SEO work on each page, making sure they have correct keywords and meta descriptions.

 

Marketing Your New Website

Just because you built a site doesn’t mean your work is done. Now you need to market it and attract customers away from Amazon and competitor sites.

 

Top marketing strategies include content marketing, social media marketing, and making sure your site is optimized to be found in searches, especially on mobile devices. The goal is that people looking for your products can find your website easily through Google.

 

Your first goal is to get traffic to your website. That means creating useful content for the site and growing a following on social media. Then, as more people come to the site, you can focus on creating a marketing funnel that converts those visitors into customers.

 

Another strategy as you move away from selling on Amazon is spreading the news to current customers. As you send out products purchased through Amazon, include a note and a coupon telling people to buy through your website. Spread the word to those already buying your product, and hopefully that in turn means more learn of your website.

 

When moving away from Amazon, you’ll be able to keep a larger profit, but it also means more responsibilities on you. Be prepared to create a top-to-bottom marketing plan, build a fully functional website, and handle far more logistics than ever before. If you pull it off though, there will definitely be more money and business coming your way.

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