
Amazon sellers are moving to alternative ecommerce platforms during Covid-19 - mich7395
https://betterthansure.com/why-amazon-sellers-are-moving-their-stores-to-alternative-ecommerce-platforms-during-covid-19-74183e72b0e2
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yurishimo
I can say as an employee for a dev agency that has historically specialized in
e-commerce, we’ve seen a massive increase in work since this all started. Our
clients are all selling more which means they need to scale more and we’re
getting paid to make optimizations to balance infrastructure costs due to
demand.

Shopify has said they’re serving Black Friday levels of traffic and volume
every day since this started and our clientele on their platform supports that
data point.

Depending on how the next 6 weeks goes for “opening up” around the world, it
will be interesting to see how much of this increased demand sticks around.

As someone who advocates for owning your own data, I think it’s a good thing
to move away from these larger platforms when you can. Going from amazon to
Shopify is a good step. When you need more customization or data control,
WooCommerce is a decent choice given the unlimited flexibility of the platform
(though this comes with downsides if you are not aware how to run it in a way
that is performant).

~~~
Izkata
> Going from amazon to Shopify is a good step. [..] WooCommerce is a decent
> choice given the unlimited flexibility of the platform

Just took a look at both those sites, and on the consumer side I don't see how
these are even remotely comparable: I don't see any way to search for
products. They seem geared to creating independent stores that must be linked
to from some other location.

~~~
exolymph
> on the consumer side I don't see how these are even remotely comparable

Consumer side isn't relevant here. These are two backend ecommerce platforms.
The platform part doesn't extend to anything that consumers know they're
interacting with.

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juokaz
We checked seller growth on competing marketplaces like eBay, Walmart, Google
Shopping, etc. and found it to be the opposite - none are seeing accelerated
seller growth.

Report here [https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/sellers-are-not-
di...](https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/sellers-are-not-diversifying-
as-amazon-struggles)

~~~
DevX101
Your analysis doesn't include Shopify which the fastest growing e-commerce
platform right now.

~~~
juokaz
We don't have data on this, but Shopify is not growing because of Amazon
sellers opening up Shopify stores. The sets of businesses on Shopify vs Amazon
are largely distinct. For example, most Amazon sellers are resellers of brand
products; few of these are shifting to sell though their own e-commerce
website.

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adamparsons
Interestingly over here in Australia, those who went with Amazon AU left for
different reasons; mainly that the platform just doesn't attract much sales
volume and the costs were astronomical. Even eBay does better here.

At the company I work for, we operate a fulfillment center for eCommerce
sellers and we've been booming lately from businesses choosing to leave the
closed ecosystems and marketplaces like Amazon and run their own Shopify,
WooCommerce and others while still having a third party handle their
fulfillment needs.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
As a consumer, I found Amazon here (AU) ridiculously overpriced. The shipping
is fast, so if they have the thing I want and I need it urgently sometimes
it's worth it, but generally you'll get it cheaper at the local online stores
like Big W/Target/Kmart/JB/GoodGuys/etc, or the small independent stores who
run their own websites. Discoverability sucks, and sometimes you spend a
couple hours (or even a few nights) searching around all the little local
stores buried 5-10 pages down the search results to find what you need, but
it's generally worth the effort for the better prices and local support.

Ebay is even worse than Amazon now though. I was an avid Ebay user from when
they first came here until not long ago, but in the last year or 2 I find it's
just chock full of scams, fake products, lies about shipping (advertised as
local stock with 2-5 day shipping, arrives 4 weeks later with postage marks
from China), etc etc. I flat out just don't trust anything on Ebay anymore
unless it's an actual local individual selling something used and I'm picking
it up.

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a3n
> generally you'll get it cheaper at the local online stores like Big
> W/Target/Kmart/JB/GoodGuys/etc, or the small independent stores who run
> their own websites. Discoverability sucks, and sometimes you spend a couple
> hours (or even a few nights) searching around all the little local stores
> buried 5-10 pages down the search results to find what you need, but it's
> generally worth the effort for the better prices and local support.

Room for someone to be a discoverability platform? One stop discoverability,
which _sometimes_ is all Amazon is for a particular transaction.

Find it at IFoundIt, and then directed to the seller's store.

~~~
colinmorelli
Shopify seems to be working towards exactly this, and recently announced their
new Shop app: [https://www.shopify.com/shop](https://www.shopify.com/shop)

It only includes Shopify sellers, and of those only the ones that choose to be
listed on Shop, but with the Shop app and their new fulfillment network, I
think Shopify is currently best positioned to become a real threat to Amazon.

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tandr
Ok, so I am a consumer, not shop owner. Where do I find products that are
offered using Shopify platform?

~~~
wic8
I made a shopify global search
[[https://snapshop.netlify.app](https://snapshop.netlify.app)]. Hastily
completed just for this post but it should work.

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jcbrand
Nice! I'd use something like this, but it's not very useful to me currently if
I can't search by region or country.

~~~
wic8
Planning to do that, try searching for "product <location>" for now. Should
work to some extent.

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cnj
> Once the decision has been made to move their products off of Amazon [...]

There is another valid decision: Diversify your channels and sell on multiple
platforms. This way, you're not completely dependent on Amazon anymore, but
still present on the biggest eCommerce marketplace.

Sell on your own shop (and, if you do marketing, direct it there) but also on
Amazon, eBay and probably other marketplaces that work well for your niche.

This can be done with Shopify and probably most of the other solutions listed
in the post as well.

Disclaimer: I work for commercetools, an API-first eCommerce platform.

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sneak
Is there an aggregator for online shopping that isn’t Google Shopping?

I would love to give Amazon less business, but Google’s results aren’t super
helpful a lot of the time either.

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
Like pcpartpicker but for everything else? I'd pay a few bucks for such a
service that respects privacy but collecting no user data and has a perfectly
level playing field that actively polices shops.

~~~
sneak
It would be cool if there were some open format and standard URL structure (or
a meta link) that points to it so that any online shop can publish a full
table of what they have for sale, so aggregators can slurp up all of the data
from all known webshops.

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libertine
Wouldn't that turn everything into a race to the bottom, which is precisely
what happens in Amazon?

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Red_Leaves_Flyy
Amazon has far worse problems then declining quality.

Eg: review fraud, selling stolen items, counterfeits, inventory comingling,
inconsistent return policy, warehouse worker/driver treatment, terrible
search/discovery, bad ux, etc.

I'd worry about that problem when it's a reality not before.

~~~
libertine
I agree with you, but my point is: other than their internal problems,
wouldn't a aggregator suffer the same faith?

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
The subscription fee should be enough to hire enough staff to design fraud
resistant systems and police the rest of the network with bounties for whistle
blowers and PoCs. The server cost for essentially a forum, even with trillions
of page views a month, is nothing compared to tens of millions of paying
subscribers and the requisite army of business moderators.

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triyambakam
In the US I've found Amazon is so slow to ship something that it's led me to
buy the product directly from the company or from eBay. I actually will
continue this even if Amazon shipping times returns to normal. The only
benefit of Amazon is discoverability, at this point. I ordered some vitamins
that said would arrive from Amazon in a month but shipped the same day I
ordered them directly from the company.

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bo1024
Regardless of shipping speed, I'm concerned about quality and co-mingling with
knock-offs. Especially with something medical like vitamins. But everything
else too.

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WhyNotHugo
As a consumer, Shopify just doesn't cut it because of discoverability.

On Amazon, there's on search bar on top where I can search thousands of
sellers.

For Shopify, there's just hundreds (thousands?) of smaller shops with no
centralised search. Many products I want might be there, but they're not easy
to find.

(Disclaimer: Amazon is unaffected in my region and continues to deliver all
products as usual, so I quite biased)

~~~
wenc
> As a consumer, Shopify just doesn't cut it because of discoverability.

Fair point, but it's not that hard to do a Google search after an Amazon
search. I usually check Amazon first, and then the manufacturer's website to
see if they link to the Amazon storefront. If not, I jump to a 3rd party
reseller.

For me, it doesn't matter whether or not a specialty storefront is a Shopify
one. I would pay a premium for that extra trust that I'm getting an authentic
item. For instance, I buy my fountain pens from Goulet Pens [1] which is
Shopify but you would never know it. I've tried buying fountain pens and
consumables off Amazon but have received enough fakes to drive me toward
specialty storefronts.

But for dish soap and other stuff that are not worth counterfeiting, sure, I
get them off Amazon. Fulfilled by Amazon is slightly better, but I've still
gotten duds.

I just hate wasting money on counterfeits.

[1] [https://www.gouletpens.com/](https://www.gouletpens.com/)

~~~
WhyNotHugo
Amazon lets me quickly filter out things that ship to my region.

A google search is usually dominated by products that don't.

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ecommerceguy
I'm willing to bet that a lot of these stores were pushed on Amazon FBA
sellers that were frustrated with Amazon by Facebook "masterminds" hawking
"Shopify Courses". These stores will see zero sales or will be forced to
purchase so much in Facebook ads that the margins are drilled into negative
territory. What I do has been the opposite. I run niche sites for products not
selling on Amazon and lately have moved into selling on Amazon MFN. Note to
FBA sellers, just do MF and you'll be fine.

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sonium
The article mentions BigCommerce and WooCommerce as alternatives to Shopify. I
was always wondering what the selling point of this alternatives are - isn't
this a winner takes all market? Shopify has the biggest app-store and its most
convient to work with since most information is available to people getting
startedn - or do I miss something?

~~~
vsloo
I head up customer experience at Re:amaze and we work with merchants on
Shopify, Bigcommerce, and WooCommerce. These alternatives all have something
to offer that is unique to a particular merchant's business preference.
Shopify is much easier to set up and offers more direct access to
marketplaces. Bigcommerce is a bit more powerful for high volume, high GMV
businesses looking for headless commerce. WooCommerce is, of course, low cost
and works with WordPress and that's a huge plus for many merchants. These are
very basic differences but merchants should look at every platform to see
which one suits them best.

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btmorex
Not surprised. Amazon has been completely useless since the pandemic hit the
US. Everything I want is out of stock or shipping in weeks. I guess some
people must be getting orders though.

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eru
I guess they didn't raise prices enough to make demand match supply?

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CamperBob2
They can't. People would scream bloody murder.

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Sindisil
What a coincidence -- as a shopper, I'm moving to alternatives to Amazon, as
well.

Partly C19 related, but I was moving away from them in the before-times, as
well.

