BigCommerce Multichannel Strategy: Maximizing Sales on All Platforms

Running a successful BigCommerce store is exciting, but it's really just the beginning of your ecommerce journey. While having a beautiful, conversion-optimized website is an essential part of any ecommerce business, limiting yourself to a single sales channel means missing out on millions of potential customers who do their online shopping on platforms like Amazon, eBay, Instagram, TikTok, and other sales channels where your products could be thriving.

A well-executed BigCommerce multichannel strategy doesn't just increase your revenue – it makes your ecommerce business a diversified, resilient operation that can weather algorithm changes, new platform policies, and market fluctuations. Whether you specialize in selling fashion, electronics, home goods, or any other product category, expanding beyond your BigCommerce store is essential for sustainable growth in today's competitive landscape.

In this guide, we'll explore proven strategies for building a successful multichannel ecommerce business around your BigCommerce store, and learn how to leverage your BigCommerce success on additional sales channels. From choosing the right platforms to managing inventory across channels, you'll learn how to utilize your existing BigCommerce infrastructure to strategically expand to new selling channels to increase profitability while maintaining operational efficiency at scale.

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Key Takeaways: Essential BigCommerce Multichannel Insights

• Platform Selection Strategy: Focus on 2-3 complementary channels initially before expanding to more platforms in order to maintain quality and profitability.
• Inventory Management: Centralized inventory tracking prevents overselling, while automated multichannel integration and sync tools reduce manual workload.
• Channel-Specific Optimization: Each platform requires tailored pricing, descriptions, and imagery strategies for maximum visibility and optimal conversion rates.
• Revenue Diversification: Expanding beyond the BigCommerce platform creates multiple revenue streams that provide stability and growth opportunities.
• Integration Efficiency: Purpose-built integration tools reduce listing time from hours to minutes while maintaining consistency across platforms.
• Customer Data Leverage: Cross-platform customer insights enable better targeting and personalized marketing campaigns.

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Choosing the Right Sales Channels for Your BigCommerce Store

The key to successful BigCommerce multichannel expansion lies in selecting platforms that align with your product categories, target demographics, and business goals. Rather than attempting to be everywhere at once, strategic channel selection allows you to excel in specific niches while creating efficient systems for multichannel management. Below, we'll explore the types of ecommerce sales channels you can choose to expand your BigCommerce store to: marketplaces and social commerce platforms.

Major eCommerce Marketplaces

The ecommerce landscape today is dominated by a handful of major ecommerce platforms that host third-party sellers. Below, we'll go over three of the most popular ones for BigCommerce sellers looking to go multichannel: Amazon, eBay, and Walmart.

Amazon:

Amazon has been the dominant force in online retail for well over a decade, making it an essential channel for most BigCommerce merchants who want to expand beyond their standalone webstore. The platform's massive reach and sophisticated FBA and MCF fulfillment networks can dramatically increase your sales volume on both Amazon and BigCommerce, though success requires understanding Amazon's complex fee structure and ranking algorithms. In our experience, BigCommerce sellers who expand to Amazon frequently see it become a major source of revenue, sometimes even surpassing that of their BigCommerce store.

eBay:

eBay offers unique advantages for certain product categories, particularly electronics, collectibles, and hard-to-find items. The platform's auction format can be particularly effective for testing pricing strategies and moving inventory quickly. Additionally, eBay's international reach makes it an excellent channel for BigCommerce sellers looking to expand globally without the complexity of managing multiple international storefronts.

Walmart:

Walmart Marketplace presents a compelling opportunity for merchants seeking an alternative to Amazon's competitive environment. The platform maintains stricter seller requirements, which can mean less competition but also higher barriers to entry. Walmart's focus on value-conscious consumers and emphasis on the American market can be particularly advantageous for merchants whose products and selling strategies align with these values. The platform's growing investment in fulfillment services and advertising tools makes it an increasingly attractive option for established BigCommerce merchants.

Specialized and Niche Marketplaces

Industry- and niche-specific marketplaces often provide higher conversion rates and less competition than general platforms. For example, Etsy specializes in handmade and vintage items, while secondhand fashion marketplaces like Poshmark, Depop, Vinted, and Grailed each serve distinct demographics and style preferences. Additionally, platforms like Mercari cater to general secondhand goods, and Whatnot focuses on live auctions for collectibles and unique items. These niche platforms typically attract buyers with higher purchase intent for specific product categories, and each one presents a unique opportunity for BigCommerce sellers whose specialty aligns with each respective marketplace's demographics.

Social Commerce Opportunities

Facebook and Instagram shopping have transformed social media into powerful sales channels. These platforms excel at reaching customers through targeted advertising, making impulse purchases directly part of the overall social media experience. The key to success on social platforms lies in creating engaging content that showcases your products naturally within the platform's native environment.

TikTok Shop represents the newest frontier in social commerce, particularly effective for brands targeting younger demographics. The platform's algorithm-driven discovery means viral potential for products that resonate with users, though success requires a deep understanding of TikTok's unique content style and community preferences.

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Inventory Management Across Multiple Channels

Effective inventory management forms the backbone of any successful BigCommerce multichannel strategy. Without proper systems in place, you risk overselling products, disappointing customers, and damaging your reputation across multiple platforms simultaneously. In this section, we'll discuss the core principles of multichannel inventory management, and understand how each one contributes to the success of your multichannel business.

Centralized Inventory Control

If you're starting out on BigCommerce, it makes sense that your BigCommerce store should serve as the central hub for inventory management, with all other channels syncing to this master database. This approach not only ensures consistency and reduces the risk of selling products you don't have in stock, but makes it easy for you to maintain the workflows you're used to. While most integration tools rely on a single catalog that's hosted on these tools to update multiple sales channels, ExportYourStore enables sellers to maintain their familiar workflows by selecting a single store – in this case, your BigCommerce store – as the "source of truth" for inventory management purposes.  

Buffer Stock Strategies

Smart multichannel sellers quickly learn to approach inventory allocation strategically by keeping some of their best-selling items in reserve while pushing slower-moving products across all channels.

This approach prevents disappointing customers when your top sellers run out of stock, and ensures you're not letting slow inventory sit around eating into your profits. We recommend keeping a security buffer of the most popular items exclusively for your BigCommerce store, especially when you first branch out to new channels. This helps maintain your BigCommerce store at peak performance, while giving you a safe way to expand into new sales channels.

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Platform-Specific Optimization Strategies

Each sales channel has unique characteristics, customer expectations, and optimization requirements. Successfully leveraging your BigCommerce business into a multichannel selling hub requires a platform-specific, tailored approach that prioritizes each channel's unique characteristics and fine-tunes everything from listing strategies to pricing. Below, we'll discuss what these strategies mean in practice for some of the more popular channels for BigCommerce sellers who choose the multichannel route.  

Major eCommerce Marketplaces

For most BigCommerce sellers, their first step into multichannel selling will be to expand into one of the major ecommerce marketplaces – Amazon, Walmart, and eBay.

Amazon

Successfully expanding your BigCommerce store to Amazon requires, first and foremost, understanding the platform's A10 search algorithm and optimizing your listings accordingly. Product titles must include relevant keywords while remaining readable, bullet points must highlight key features and benefits, and product descriptions must be descriptive yet easy to read. High-quality images are non-negotiable, with Amazon requiring specific image dimensions and recommending multiple angles for each product. Finally, you'll need to keep a close eye on what competitors are charging, since Amazon's algorithm tends to favor products that are priced competitively and sell consistently.

Walmart Marketplace

While Walmart Marketplace is similar to Amazon in many ways, it demands a different approach, one that focuses primarily on good value and detailed product information. Walmart is very selective about which sellers they approve, so if you're approved to sell on the platform, you'll likely face less competition once you begin selling. Furthermore, you'll want to prioritize competitive pricing, as this is an integral part of your Walmart listing quality score, which directly affects its visibility.

eBay

eBay's variety of selling formats and diverse buyer base make it a different option for BigCommerce sellers who want to expand to new marketplaces without the rigid structure that retail marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart impose on sellers. These fundamental differences bring with them a fundamental difference in optimization strategy. A successful eBay seller needs to be able to employ flexible pricing strategies, write detailed condition descriptions, and understand how Cassini, eBay's search algorithm, analyzes and ranks listings. In addition to listing optimization, eBay sellers will also need to understand how to effectively time an auction, negotiate selling prices via eBay's Best Offer feature, and craft eBay business policies that protect their business while still allowing them to maintain Top Rated seller status.

Secondhand and Niche Selling Platforms

Secondhand and other niche-focused marketplaces offer a slightly different selling experience than traditional retail marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and, to some degree, eBay. We'll explore some of the most popular choices among BigCommerce sellers and understand how each one offers a unique selling experience.

Poshmark

Poshmark was one of the first platforms to combine social media and shopping into a single experience to offer its users a way to shop for secondhand fashion in a unique online community. As such, optimizing your products and sales strategy for Poshmark requires both informative yet stylized product images, and a focus on active buyer engagement. As a seller on Poshmark, you'll want to prioritize building relationships with other users, offering competitive prices and attractive bundle deals, and growing your follower count in order to increase your items' visibility.

Depop

As a platform that focuses on secondhand fashion, Depop is similar to Poshmark in many ways. Unlike Poshmark, which set its sights on more affluent millennials, Depop tends to attract younger demographics seeking unique vintage finds and trendy, streetwear-inspired pieces. As such, a Depop optimization strategy will prioritize trendy photography and hashtag optimization to drive visibility, as well as a solid negotiation strategy to successfully drive sales through Depop's offers system. Additionally, aesthetic consistency and a solid understanding of current fashion trends are essential to any successful Depop business.

Vinted

Another marketplace focused on secondhand fashion, shoppers on Vinted are often primarily motivated by environmental and sustainability concerns. As a seller on Vinted, you'll want to be upfront about any flaws or wear in your descriptions since buyers expect honesty about condition. Keep your prices competitive since there's usually plenty of similar items available. Many sellers find success by mentioning the environmental impact in their listings, like how buying secondhand reduces waste or extends a garment's life.

Grailed

Yet another secondhand fashion marketplace, Grailed caters to a highly specific niche: the high-end streetwear and designer menswear market. As such, success on Grailed hinges on selling verified authentic products, and providing shoppers with detailed descriptions of the item's condition on the listing. Like many online marketplaces, particularly those that focus on secondhand items, building your seller reputation is crucial for fostering buyer trust.

Mercari

Another secondhand selling platform, Mercari offers opportunities across multiple product categories beyond fashion. Sellers on Mercari rely heavily on their reputation for success, which is why clear photos and honest condition descriptions are an essential part of any Mercari optimization strategy. The platform's broad and diverse categories make for more varied selling opportunities, making it a multichannel selling opportunity for a wider range of BigCommerce sellers.

Etsy

With an emphasis on custom and handmade goods, vintage items, and craft supplies, Etsy's niche is broader than many of the marketplaces mentioned above, making it a good multichannel option for BigCommerce sellers in a wide variety of niches. Optimization for Etsy will be similar to optimization for larger ecommerce marketplaces in some respects, such as keyword integration and high-quality product photography, and different in others, such as storytelling in product descriptions that emphasize craftsmanship or unique product origins.

Social Commerce Platforms

An increasingly popular destination for ecommerce sellers, social media platforms offer an unmatched level of buyer engagement and conversion. Optimizing for these sales channels requires adopting a more entertaining approach, as users on social media are less primed to buy, simply because they're usually not actively seeking out a specific product on a marketplace.  

Instagram Shopping

Sellers who sell on Instagram find that their products perform best when they're shown being used in real-life settings rather than as still product shots. Your posts should have a cohesive look and feel, and captions need to spark conversations and encourage people to engage. Success comes from building a recognizable visual style and telling stories that connect with your audience.

Facebook Shop

In terms of seller experience, Facebook Shop borrows heavily from traditional ecommerce platforms when it comes to product optimization. Products perform better with clean, professional-looking product photos and a straightforward pricing strategy. Your products appear directly on your Facebook business page as a dedicated Shop section, allowing customers to browse and purchase without leaving Facebook. You can use Facebook's advertising tools to promote your products to specific age groups, interests, or geographic areas.

TikTok Shop

TikTok is the newest major platform for selling through social media, where creating content that goes viral can lead to significant sales spikes. You'll need to stay current with trending hashtags and create short videos that entertain while naturally featuring your products. Success means understanding what content resonates with TikTok's users and various demographics, and adapting your approach accordingly.

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Technology Integration and Automation

As you grow your ecommerce business, the complexity of managing multiple sales channels makes automation essential for sustainable growth. The right technology stack can transform overwhelming manual processes into streamlined operations that scale with your business, facilitating growth and increasing your profitability.

Integration Platform Selection

Choosing the right integration platform will have a direct impact on your growth potential, as well as on the day-to-day operations of managing your multichannel BigCommerce business. Multichannel integration tools like ExportYourStore specialize in connecting BigCommerce stores with multiple sales channels to help you better manage the essentials of multichannel selling, such as product listing, inventory sync, and order management processes. The right integration platform reduces the time spent doing manual synchronization tasks, helping sellers maintain accuracy across all channels while also saving time.

From our experience working with hundreds of BigCommerce merchants, those who invest in proper integration tools early in their multichannel journey achieve faster growth and maintain higher profit margins than those who attempt to manage everything manually.

Order Management Automation

Centralized multichannel order management becomes increasingly necessary as your business grows and your order volumes increase across multiple channels. Effective multichannel order management solutions will enable you to view and manage your orders in one place, take order actions like updating shipping and tracking information, and even automate multichannel fulfillment with solutions like Amazon MCF.  

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Final Thoughts: Building Your BigCommerce Multichannel Empire

A successful BigCommerce multichannel strategy requires patience, systematic expansion, and continuous optimization. The merchants who achieve the greatest success treat multichannel growth as a gradual process, taking the time to master each new platform before adding additional complexity to their operations.

Remember that multichannel selling isn't just about increasing revenue – it's about building a more resilient business that can adapt to changing market conditions and platform policies. By diversifying your sales channels while choosing the right tools to help you maintain operational efficiency, you create multiple pathways to growth while reducing dependence on any single platform.

The key lies in starting small, choosing complementary channels that serve your target customers, and investing in the right tools and processes to maintain quality as you scale. With proper planning and execution, your BigCommerce store can become the foundation for a thriving multichannel empire that continues growing for years to come.