How to sell on your own site and a marketplace at once

Why the usual way fails

The usual way is two separate systems: a store builder for your site and a seller account on a marketplace, each with its own product list, photos and prices. Every change has to be made twice, and sooner or later the two drift apart, with a price updated in one place and not the other, or an item that sold out in the shop still listed on the marketplace. Connector apps that sync the two exist, but they add another bill and another thing that can break. Plenty of sellers give up and pick one channel, which means giving up either their brand or the traffic.

How Towami helps

Towami puts both channels in one workspace. You build a storefront on your own web address, and from the same product catalog you choose for each product whether it shows in your store, on Towami's regional marketplace, or in both. That lets you keep exclusive products on your own domain while local offers go where marketplace shoppers will see them. You pay a fixed subscription for the plan, not a share of each sale on either channel.

Step by step

1. Create your store. You can start on a Towami subdomain and connect your own domain later.
2. Add your products to the catalog once, with photos, prices and descriptions.
3. Open the sales channels settings and turn on your online store, Towami Marketplace, or both.
4. For each product, choose where it appears: your store, the marketplace or both.
5. Keep a few exclusives on your store only, so people who find you on the marketplace have a reason to visit your domain.
6. When a price or detail changes, change it in the catalog. Both channels run from that same list.

Tips

• Decide what each channel is for before you sort products. One simple split is that items people search for locally go to the marketplace, and the things that carry your brand stay on your own store.
• Connect your own domain early. Your store pages live on your domain, so every product page you publish adds to your own presence on Google instead of someone else's.
• Check the product limit of your plan before you plan the catalog. Stores start on Free with up to 20 products, and the paid plans go to 300, 1,000 and 3,000.
• Make sure you sell where the marketplace runs. The regional marketplaces cover Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the USA.

Questions