Why multi-store eCommerce is growing & why you should pay attention

Does your online business currently sell all of its products through a single website? If so, does that website meet the needs of all your customers?

There’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution for delivering smooth and engaging eCommerce experiences, especially for companies that compete in multiple markets, targeting various customer types — from individual consumers to business owners. Now, a growing number of brands are expanding their online presence by implementing multi-store eCommerce platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.

With multi-store eCommerce, a business will set up multiple online storefronts, each catered to a specific customer segment — resulting in higher engagement, conversions, and sales. This is becoming a key strategy for growing brands looking to expand into new markets and effectively manage various online stores — each with its own specific design, products, content, and user journey — all from a centralized platform.

Let’s take a deeper look at why so many businesses are embracing multi-store eCommerce.

Key reasons for adopting multi-store eCommerce

With the right tools and processes, your eCommerce business can add, manage, update, and track the performance of multiple online storefronts — while maintaining low costs, high scalability, and strong communication between teams. Here are the key reasons to consider implementing a multi-store eCommerce platform for your company:

Selling to different customer types

For businesses with both B2B and B2C customers, setting up distinct storefronts for each is a no-brainer. After all, individual consumers will approach your brand with a different set of wants, needs, and expectations than your B2B buyers — so providing a single solution for both won’t produce the best results.

Rather, you can set up a traditional eCommerce site, with features and functionalities geared toward B2C customers — as well as segments within this group, like first-time buyers, bargain hunters, brand loyalists, and so on. These site elements should include specific user flows, products, content, promotions, payment methods, and shipping options — designed with the B2C end-user in mind.

For B2B customers, you can set up a less-traditional eCommerce site, with a separate user journey, products, and content. When engaging with online sales portals, B2B customers expect the ability to quickly and easily order products in bulk at a discount, track the progress of their orders, make payments, and get in touch with a sales representative if necessary.

Managing multiple brands

Let’s say your business owns several different brands, each with a unique online presence and target audience. Managing storefronts for each one can get very complicated very fast — but multi-store eCommerce platforms offer a convenient solution.

From a single dashboard, you can access each site’s inventory, product information, marketing materials, and other data — as well as make swift updates based on new branding guidelines, industry trends, and user behavior. With a versatile multi-store eCommerce platform, you can continue to acquire new brands, without dramatically increasing your business’ web development costs and operational complexity.

Joining online marketplaces

To reach certain customers and maintain a competitive edge in the eCommerce space, you’ll likely need to expand beyond your business’ native B2C and B2B storefronts. This means listing products on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Facebook, or any other site that functions as a marketplace for sellers and buyers within your niche.

These online marketplaces can be integrated with your multi-store eCommerce platform, enabling your team to collect data, make updates, and create specific sales and marketing strategies for each.

Expanding internationally

Multi-store eCommerce solutions also help businesses sell their products in other countries. International markets have varying regulations for businesses around shipping, taxes, payment processing, and so on. Therefore, managing multiple foreign storefronts — each with its own language and currency — can introduce great complexity. But with a scalable, centralized system, managing foreign sites becomes much easier.

Each international site can be optimized for customers living in each respective region. You can adjust prices based on the local economy, modify the user journey to replicate other successful businesses in the territory, and run specific promotions for products that are particularly popular among local consumers. With a modern multi-store eCommerce strategy, your business will sell more products in more places to more people, without blowing up overhead costs or violating foreign regulations.

The real benefits of multi-store eCommerce

Managing various websites and customer experiences from a centralized location offers many advantages. So long as your strategy is supported by intelligent digital solutions and workflows, multi-store eCommerce will provide:

• High customer engagement: Users are more likely to engage with content, buy products, and return for future purchases on websites that are designed with their wants and needs in mind.
• Streamlined operations: From a single dashboard, you, your employees, and any other relevant parties can manage eCommerce operations across multiple channels. This approach is much cheaper and more efficient than having disparate systems power each individual storefront.
• Superior data analytics: By selling products through multiple online stores, you can collect more user data, better understand your target audience, and ultimately make smarter sales and marketing decisions moving forward. The trick here is to establish an effective system for centralizing, analyzing, and reporting data from each site so you and your stakeholders can achieve a holistic view of the business.

Team up with Codal for modern multi-store eCommerce solutions

When your organization is ready to embrace multi-store eCommerce, you’ll need a digital transformation partner that can provide the necessary technical knowledge and resources to ensure a satisfactory ROI. That’s where Codal comes in.

We’re a web design and development agency that specializes in eCommerce solutions, from marketing websites to B2C and B2B sales portals. While you focus on running your business, we’ll plan and execute a multi-store eCommerce strategy, powered by data and cutting-edge technologies. This will include picking the right eCommerce platform, whether it be Shopify or BigCommerce — two of the leading providers, both of which have long-standing partnerships with Codal.

We’ll help establish a technological infrastructure that allows you and your team to easily manage several online storefronts from a single dashboard. By integrating advanced tools and processes on the back end, you can deliver better customer experiences on the front end — and continue growing your business without barriers.

Interested in learning more about the benefits and best practices of multi-store eCommerce? Reach out to Codal today!