Quote:
According to a PowerReviews study released last year, 38 percent of shoppers start their search on Amazon versus only 35 percent for Google, and other studies have pegged the percentage of shoppers searching first at Amazon as high as 55 percent.
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This is a very important stat. If the purpose of a search query is to ultimately buy a product, why not go to the marketplace directly? Google just adds one more step to the process. In the future this 35-55% might as well become 80-90%.
So while businesses should have their own website as a hygiene factor, they absolutely need to be on all the major e-commerce platforms (There are quite a few here in India - backed by local, American and Chinese Venture funds). The wider you spread your net, the more your sales will be. And then it won't matter whether and how many sales you're able to make from a standalone website.