Every brand wants to be profitable, but increasing sales alone isn’t enough. True profitability comes from a balance of revenue growth, cost efficiency, and strategic pricing. Even with rising sales, poor margins, high operational costs, and inefficient marketplace strategies can eat away at profits, leaving businesses struggling to scale effectively.
Many sellers make common mistakes that limit their growth—from relying too heavily on a single sales channel to inefficient inventory management, pricing missteps, and failure to leverage data-driven insights. These challenges can stunt growth and limit long-term success if left unaddressed.
In this post, we’ll explore the most common mistakes that hinder ecommerce growth and offer actionable solutions to help your business scale efficiently and profitably.
1: Not selling online at all
Selling online – is it worth it?
This might seem a pretty obvious one – and most retail businesses today are established with online sales being ‘built-in’ from the outset as a part of the business model. However, (as hard as it is to understand) some businesses still hesitate to establish an online presence. With billions of customers shopping online, businesses that fail to embrace digital sales miss out on an ever-expanding market.
The typical digital shopping journey has become increasingly channel-agnostic and highly variable. Consumers often seek inspiration from a range of social and ecommerce channels before making a purchase decision, making an omnichannel strategy even more crucial. According to our Marketplace Shopping Behavior Report 2025, the average consumer visits 2 to 3 different marketplaces before completing a purchase and engages with more than 4 platforms in a period of 6 months.
Case study on IKEA & Primark - The Impact of Online Sales
The value of online sales is widely recognized, yet even major brick-and-mortar brands have struggled to transition. IKEA and Primark illustrate two contrasting approaches to ecommerce adoption.
IKEA, founded in 1943, only launched online sales in 2000, initially in Denmark and Sweden. By 2019, online sales made up 11% of total revenue, growing 46% year-over-year. Instead of replacing physical store sales, online expansion contributed to 5% total sales growth.
By contrast, Primark still relies entirely on physical retail, using its website solely for branding and product visibility—without an ecommerce checkout option. Despite investing heavily in new U.S. store openings, sales growth has been sluggish. Meanwhile, retailers with strong omnichannel strategies, like IKEA, have successfully offset losses in physical retail with robust ecommerce growth.
This comparison highlights the necessity of embracing ecommerce and marketplace strategies to remain competitive in today's retail landscape.
What can you do next? Start by integrating online sales into your strategy. Whether through your own website or by leveraging online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay, expanding online can increase revenue and customer reach. However, simply selling online isn't enough, adopting an omnichannel approach ensures that your brand provides a seamless shopping experience across all platforms, from marketplaces to social commerce and direct-to-consumer channels.
2: Not selling through multiple platforms
Do you need to sell across multiple platforms? Or is just one sales channel enough?
According to our Marketplace Shopping Behavior Report 2025, nearly 47% of consumers begin their shopping journeys on marketplaces, surpassing search engines (24%) and brand websites (14%). This highlights the importance of being present where customers are already searching and buying.
The role of marketplaces is still growing:
- In the U.S., marketplaces account for over 60% of total online sales, with Amazon alone responsible for nearly 38% of all ecommerce revenue in 2023.
- 80% of Amazon sellers also sell on multiple platforms, with eBay, Walmart, and niche marketplaces playing critical roles in expanding brand reach.
- In Europe, Amazon faces strong competition from regional marketplaces like Otto, Cdiscount, bol, and Zalando, which have loyal customer bases that may not shop on Amazon at all.
This demonstrates the need for a diversified marketplace strategy to tap into regional customer bases and maximize profitability. Expanding across multiple platforms allows brands to mitigate risks, access new customer segments, and optimize their pricing and profitability strategies across different marketplaces.
By diversifying sales channels, as a brand you can:
- Reduce dependency on one platform, mitigating risks from policy changes or competition.
- Discover new customer bases by selling on niche or regional marketplaces.
- Optimize profitability by testing different pricing models, commission structures, and marketplace incentives.
What can you do next? Implement a multi-channel sales strategy that includes a mix of global and regional marketplaces, as well as direct-to-consumer options. Using a marketplace integration platform like ChannelEngine can help streamline product listings, inventory management, and order fulfillment, ensuring efficiency across all platforms.
3: Wasting time (and money) with manual product feed management
So you've made the smart move to expand into multi-channel selling—well done!
But now comes the hard part: managing product data across multiple platforms. Each marketplace has its own data requirements, making manual product feed management time-consuming and prone to errors.
Many sellers initially rely on spreadsheets, CSVs, and XML files to manually update stock levels, pricing, and product attributes across platforms. While this approach requires little initial investment, it quickly becomes a bottleneck as ecommerce operations scale. The longer a business sticks with manual systems, the more inefficiencies multiply. Some key challenges include:
- Stock updates become unreliable, increasing the risk of overselling or underselling due to lagging data.
- Data field inconsistencies (e.g., product titles, SKUs, descriptions) require constant adjustments to meet each marketplace’s evolving requirements.
- Image and content compliance issues, as platforms frequently update guidelines that sellers must adapt to or risk losing visibility.
- Complex pricing structures, making it difficult to maintain profitability across multiple marketplaces.
- Time-intensive order processing, as brands must manage orders separately across different marketplace interfaces.
- Scaling limitations, as manually updating product feeds becomes increasingly unmanageable with business growth.
In short, managing product feeds manually is inefficient and prone to errors. Inaccurate product listings, stock mismatches, and slow updates can negatively impact sales and customer satisfaction.
What can you do instead? Invest in marketplace integration software that can automate product feed management for you. By automating product data synchronization in real-time, you can ensure accuracy across marketplaces, prevent costly errors, and eliminate the need for manual updates.
Additionally, with centralized control, sellers can efficiently manage product listings, stock levels, and pricing structures across multiple marketplaces from a single interface. This not only saves valuable time but also enhances scalability, ensuring that businesses can grow without being hindered by outdated processes. A solution like ChannelEngine also provided real-time insights, allowing for quick adjustments that help you maintain competitiveness in an ever-changing ecommerce landscape.
4: Ignoring marketplace profitability strategies
Many businesses focus solely on increasing sales volume but fail to assess profitability. Simply selling more products does not always translate to higher profits—marketplace fees, advertising expenses, and fulfillment costs can quickly eat into margins if not managed effectively.
A key factor in marketplace profitability is Average Order Value (AOV) —the average amount a customer spends per transaction. Increasing AOV is a proven strategy for maximizing revenue without drastically increasing customer acquisition costs. Strategies such as product bundling, upselling, and cross-selling can encourage customers to spend more per order, driving higher overall profitability.
Another critical aspect is marketplace-specific pricing strategies. Each platform has different fee structures and competitive dynamics, meaning that a pricing model that works on Amazon may not be effective on Zalando or bol. Implementing dynamic pricing and margin-based pricing strategies can help businesses maintain profitability across multiple sales channels.
What can you do next? Optimize for profitability by tracking all costs associated with each marketplace. Leveraging pricing automation, AOV-boosting strategies, and data-driven decision-making can help maximize profits. For instance, Petrol Industries leveraged bundling to achieve a 4X revenue increase during peak sales periods - read more here!
5: Not repricing competitively to keep stock moving
Pricing is one of the most powerful tools in ecommerce—but only if it’s used effectively. If your prices don’t align with market demand, your stock can sit untouched while competitors sell out. At the same time, pricing too low can erode margins, making sales less profitable. Striking the right balance is key to keeping stock moving while protecting your bottom line.
Many sellers fall into the trap of setting static prices, failing to adjust for fluctuations in competitor pricing, demand, and marketplace fees. This is where dynamic repricing comes in. A dynamic repricing tool ensures that your prices automatically adjust in real-time to remain competitive, helping you outsell rivals while maintaining healthy margins.
But repricing isn’t just about staying ahead of competitors. Smart pricing strategies can also increase perceived value. For luxury or niche products, maintaining a higher price can signal exclusivity and quality, influencing buyer perception. Likewise, adjusting prices for seasonal demand, promotions, or bundles can boost sales without resorting to deep discounts.
Finding the right price at the right time is almost impossible to do manually, especially across multiple marketplaces. That’s why automation is essential. A feed management solution with built-in repricing tools allows businesses to test different pricing models, track performance, and make data-driven decisions. ChannelEngine’s pricing management solution enables sellers to set pricing rules based on competitor activity, demand shifts, and marketplace fees, ensuring products remain competitive and profitable.
What should you be doing instead?: Implement an automated dynamic pricing strategy that adjusts in real-time based on market conditions. This ensures your prices are always competitive, helping to keep stock moving efficiently while preserving profitability. A smart repricing approach doesn’t just drive sales—it builds a stronger, more resilient business.
6. Failing to leverage data and analytics
Many ecommerce businesses struggle to scale because they lack insight into key performance indicators (KPIs). Without data-driven decision-making, brands risk missing opportunities to optimize sales, pricing, and operational efficiencies.
Tracking critical marketplace KPIs, such as conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, return rates, and fulfillment efficiency—enables sellers to make informed adjustments that directly impact profitability.
Data analytics also plays a pivotal role in identifying high-performing products, predicting demand, and improving inventory management. Without clear insights, businesses often face issues like understocking, overspending on ineffective advertising, or setting suboptimal pricing strategies.
What can you do next? Utilize real-time data analytics and reporting tools to track marketplace performance. Integrating an analytics-driven approach allows businesses to optimize pricing, enhance inventory forecasting, and reduce inefficiencies. By leveraging KPIs effectively, brands can make data-backed decisions that boost revenue and long-term profitability.
Set yourself up for marketplace success
Ecommerce is full of opportunities, but avoiding some common mistakes is crucial to ensuring long-term success. Whether it's expanding into multiple sales channels, automating product management, implementing dynamic pricing strategies, or leveraging data analytics, brands that take a proactive approach can gain a significant competitive edge.
By refining your marketplace strategy, improving profitability, and optimizing operations, you can scale your business efficiently while maximizing revenue. The key is to continuously adapt to changing market conditions and leverage the right tools to stay ahead.
