Ecommerce guide: 3 essential sales channels for your business

There are more than 25 million brand websites, also known as direct-to-consumer (DTC or D2C) websites, around the world, and this number continues to grow every day as new stores come online. A brand website is an online store, which is typically owned and operated by the ecommerce business itself, where customers go to browse and buy the products.

Most brand websites are built on software systems designed by ecommerce solution providers such as Shopify or WooCommerce. These software systems enable you to easily and effectively manage all the elements of your online store, including listings, catalog, cart, checkout, and order routing.

The advantages of selling on a brand website

• You can shape the shopping experience for customers on your website and decide how to optimize their entire journey, from browsing to adding items to their carts to checkout and order confirmation. For example, if you are looking to offer your Prime member customers fast, free delivery and a checkout experience they know and trust, you can add Buy with Prime to your brand website. MCF and Buy with Prime are helping ecommerce business Epic Water Filters streamline its fulfillment and convert shoppers with a seamless checkout and fast, free delivery.
• You can control the selection of products from your catalog to display to customers (to optimize upselling and cross-selling opportunities), the pricing of these products, any promotional campaigns that you want to run, and the method of fulfilling orders placed on your website. Some businesses opt to handle their order fulfillment themselves, while others outsource fulfillment to 3PL services, like MCF, to offer fast, reliable delivery and streamline operations.
• You can access customer data and utilize it to unlock opportunities to forge direct relationships with your customers (as long as you adhere to privacy policies and applicable laws).

The drawbacks of selling on a brand website

• You are responsible for the upkeep of your brand website, requiring dedicated resources to ensure that everything is running smoothly on the back end.
• You have to manage top-of-the-funnel marketing activities and implement strategies to attract, engage, and convert consumers. It can be challenging, especially for brands that are not yet well established, to drive traffic to your website and develop trust with online shoppers.

Selling on your brand website gives you more autonomy to shape the shopping experience for your customers, but requires greater time, expertise, and resources to manage the maintenance and marketing of your online store.

Ecommerce marketplaces were first introduced in the 1990s and have revolutionized the way we shop. Ecommerce marketplaces allow anyone—from individual sellers to global brands—to post and sell their products. Some of the biggest marketplaces are Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.

According to recent research, online marketplaces account for the largest share of online purchases worldwide. These marketplaces serve as a powerful vehicle for third-party sellers and ecommerce businesses like yours to reach new audiences and drive revenue growth. These websites have become true online marketplaces, connecting hundreds of thousands of independent merchants with customers around the globe.

The advantages of selling on an ecommerce marketplace

• You gain access to a massive, global audience. Ecommerce marketplaces are the trusted and preferred channel for most online shoppers today, with 63% of consumers stating that these marketplaces are the most convenient way to shop online. By putting your goods on an ecommerce marketplace, you can reach and tap into an enormous pool of shoppers from all over the world without having to invest extensively in marketing.
• You don’t need to worry about building or managing an ecommerce website, as the marketplace handles infrastructure and management. Many ecommerce marketplaces provide resources to help improve customer acquisition and conversion across product listings.
• You can choose whether to handle your own order fulfillment or outsource to a 3PL provider. Many ecommerce marketplaces offer 3PL fulfillment services. For example, Amazon offers Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), a service businesses selling on Amazon.com can use to fulfill their orders. Or, if you are selling on ecommerce channels besides Amazon.com and want to have Amazon pick, pack, and ship your products to customers, you can use MCF. Both FBA and MCF are part of ASCS, and you can add on additional logistics services, like ground freight, warehousing, and parcel shipping, as needed.

The drawbacks of selling on an ecommerce marketplace

• You might have to pay listing, commission, and payment processing fees to sell your products on an ecommerce marketplace.
• You might face stiff competition from other merchants looking to sell similar goods—and may find it challenging to differentiate your products and drive traffic to your listings.
• The ecommerce marketplace creates and controls the shopping experience for customers, and, in many cases, sets the prices for products. You will have to adhere to the marketplace guidelines and rules, which may impact how you position and promote your products.

Ecommerce marketplaces can provide you with an avenue to reach a huge pool of potential customers, but may charge additional fees, subject you to strict operating guidelines, and place competition when selling through these websites.

Social commerce—or the use of social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to market and sell products to customers—is on the rise. Sales on social media stores—which totaled $683 billion in 2024—are expected to reach $1 trillion by 2029.

Social commerce is particularly popular among younger generations, with at least 79% of surveyed Gen Z and millennial shoppers saying that they integrate social media in their shopping journey.

The advantages of selling on a social media store

• You gain access to a highly interested and engaged audience of potential shoppers, and can serve up personalized, relevant video, photo, or other content to them (using paid and organic campaigns) to help accelerate conversion.
• You can utilize powerful marketing tactics such as influencer marketing, enlisting the services of social media influencers (individuals with a large social media following) to help promote your products. This can be an extremely effective tactic, as 55% of Gen Z consumers say that they trust an influencer’s recommendation.
• You can choose whether to handle your own order fulfillment or engage a 3PL. Some 3PL services, like MCF, can handle orders placed on social media stores and ensure that your customers receive the same fulfillment experience as they do on other channels. Since MCF draws from a single pool of inventory, you don’t need to worry about monitoring or managing inventory levels from different channels—it’s all drawn from one source.

The drawbacks of selling on social media stores

• You may need to invest a lot of time and effort to manage your brand’s presence on social media, consistently create content to engage with potential shoppers, and monitor comments and feedback to protect your brand’s reputation.
• You may need to invest a lot of money and resources to promote your content through advertisements, influencers, or other avenues—and these marketing costs can really add up.

Social media stores can provide a powerful, effective avenue to reach an audience of engaged shoppers, but a business has to invest a good amount of time, effort, funds, and social media savvy to optimize your brand’s presence on social media.

Expanding your ecommerce business across multiple sales channels can open up new opportunities for top-line growth, but it can also create significant operational complexity—particularly when it comes to inventory management and order fulfillment.

Fortunately, a strong 3PL provider, like ASCS, can help you manage multichannel logistics operations, reduce costs, and deliver your customer orders on time, through any sales channel through its MCF service.

ASCS enables you to effectively manage your order fulfillment across multiple sales channels by providing:

By working with a 3PL like ASCS, you can drive greater efficiency across your order fulfillment operations and set your business up to succeed and scale in today’s multichannel ecommerce world. Prime Line Packaging, for example, has expanded into four ecommerce marketplaces and experienced 843% sales growth with the help of Amazon’s multichannel fulfillment capabilities.

Consumers today can choose from an array of different online shopping channels, including brand websites, ecommerce marketplaces, and social media stores. To survive and thrive, ecommerce businesses must have a presence across all these channels.

Indeed, ecommerce businesses must be able to meet customers wherever they are. They must be able to offer customers the right products, through the right channels, at the right times, and then deliver those products to those customers’ doorsteps on time. By enabling you to rapidly and reliably fulfill orders placed on any ecommerce channel and streamline your logistics operations across different channels, a 3PL, like ASCS, can help you achieve consistent bottom-line growth.