Take Back What’s Yours: Reclaim Your Online Sales and Own All the Value That Comes With it

To sell wholesale or direct to consumers or both — what a dilemma. To dilute your brand or deliver authentic brand experiences — what an easy call.

Like consumers today, brands have choices when it comes to which channels they sell their goods on. However, the stakes for brands are a bit weightier than those of consumers.

Sure, e-commerce sales on Amazon.com grew by 44.1 percent in 2020, and Walmart is projected to grow e-commerce sales by 21.2 percent in 2021. However, selling wares on these industry-leading retail e-commerce platforms comes at a latent cost to first-party brands: brand experience fragmentation.

In 2020, Forrester said that brands risk fracturing their brand experience when they pursue bifurcated sales strategies to include direct-to-consumer (D-to-C) sales and wholesale retail sales. This risk of brand experience fragmentation stems from an inability to align digital commerce and wholesale teams to ensure a consistent brand experience across all channels through which the brand sells products.

The effort and money required to deliver a unique voice, value proposition, and experience to customers is significant. Selling on a third party’s transaction mill (which lacks the full brand story and personality) chips away at that hard work and significant investment.

The “Platform Era” has forced brands to “rent” their customers and their data. It’s time for brands to reclaim that groundwork and nurture their brand communities by delivering an authentic brand experience on a first-party website.

Destination: Your First-Party Website

Consider the following scenarios. Would you rather ...

• Create an experiential destination (that you own) for shoppers, or direct them to a third-party site that lacks your flavor, your verve, and connections with other brand enthusiasts?
• Have full control over the delivery of value and experience you know your customers demand, or pray that the common e-commerce pain points consumers resent won’t be held against your brand?
• Personalize the customer experience by using first-party data, or relinquish control over the personalization of the shopper experience?
• Own, access, protect and use first-party data to deliver better brand experiences, or accept the cookie-less future while walled garden platforms use your customers’ data to refine their algorithms and target shoppers with competing products?

Take Ownership of the Brand You Built

Achieving the better side of those “would you rather” scenarios might seem easier said than done. But don’t shy away from reclaiming what’s yours.

It’s possible to nurture your brand community and rectify brand damage incurred on third-party platforms by transforming your space into an experience tailored for the customers you’ve earned across channels. And consumer behavior indicates that they're looking for exactly that.

Trends are pointing to a consumer preference for decentralized and authentic shopping experiences: Shopify-powered websites received more unique visitors than Amazon’s marketplace did in Q2 of 2021. Furthermore, Shopify sites have experienced average year-over-year traffic growth of 108.5 percent each month since May 2020. (Amazon’s growth, by the same measure, was 9.9 percent.)

Additionally, the IAB 2021 Brand Disruption Report projects that in the next year, “shoppable media” (i.e., "shoppertainment" livestreaming, social commerce, shoppable ad formats) are set to be the fastest-growing advertising type, and global livestream-generated sales will double to $120 billion. IAB is not alone: Forrester reports that consumers consider shoppertainment (specifically livestreaming) “a practical solution for common online shopping pain points, such as trust, pricing, a lack of spatial immediacy or first-person view at the product.”

By connecting with consumers and giving them a welcoming place to browse products, engage with content, and connect with like-minded shoppers who care about your brand, mission and everything else you deliver, you enhance their brand experience.

The pandemic shifted consumer behaviors toward e-commerce in a monumental way. Think like your customers — change your behavior, too.

Jeff Lucas is the global chief revenue officer at Firework, the short-form video platform designed to bring a shoppable, livestream video experience to any website.