The Difference Between a Booth and a Webstore
Here at Bonanza, we are always looking for ways to make selling online easy, efficient, and practically effortless. Bonanza has been a seller-centric business since it was founded in 2008, and has maintained a laser-focus on helping entrepreneurs build a thriving ecommerce business with as little effort and overhead as possible. Over time, we have developed several unique tools that were designed with you in mind.
One of those tools is Bonanza Webstores. We launched Webstores just over a year ago, and have been adding features and making improvements to the platform ever since. What is a Webstore, you ask? A Bonanza Webstore is a standalone website, separate from the Bonanza Marketplace, where shoppers can buy your items. It is a place where you get to create your brand and control your online presence. You can make your Bonanza Webstore your own by choosing a personalized URL and one of several unique designs and other customizations.
We've received feedback that some sellers are confused about the differences between a Webstore and a Booth. That's why we wrote this handy article. It outlines the similarities and differences between the two, so you'll never have to wonder again.
In this article, you'll learn everything there is to know about Webstore and booth differentiation, including:
- What fees are included in a Webstore
- How to manage your inventory across both platforms
- The various customization options available for Webstores
- How to drive traffic to your booth
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25 responses to The Difference Between a Booth and a Webstore
I purchased from someone and I don’t know if it was a store or a booth but I can’t get anyone to respond to me. I have no idea if the item made to the individual that I sent it to. I never received any shipping information or any communication from the seller. This is terrible. i spent money and don’t even know if my item was ever delivered.
I have contacted the seller through messages several times! I also contacted support twice…. I think there is a lot that needs to improve.
Excuse me, I think you should write support again, with some details, they are very good , given problems to handle. To think everyone is like a few is ridiculas, we are proud to serve you, here on bonanza, and , on websites. There are 1000sands of sellers here doing business right, but you didn’t hear about that, just these very unhappy situations… I would NEVER allow this, and most here DO NOT act like this, or Bonanza, would have NOT received #2 in platforms this year!
rightnow i have just the booth attached to my website, www.chulioroadglassengravings.com, but im hoping to get the webstore soon,
It is unfortunate to hear about your experiences with Bonanza, and we are very sorry to hear about it. While our sellers strive to make our site run as smoothly and as customer driven as possible, it will always be possible for someone to drop the ball and not deliver on the standards so many of us try to uphold. However, the same could be said of many, many sites across the board, and for sellers like ourselves who sell on multiple platforms, sometimes the most challenging aspect is not finding customers to buy our products, but instead to rise above some of the stigma that a small percentage of sellers have created by not delivering outstanding customer service on each and every sale.
Important things that can help dramatically for everyone in our community are things like the feedback system.
Be sure to check someones feedback before you purchase an item. If someone is not delivering great customer service, it will begin to show up in their feedback very quickly. On the flip side of that, it is equally important that when a buyer does receive good service, that they take a minute and leave that seller positive feedback as well. The feedback you leave is really there to help the next buyer make a more informed decision about where they spend their money. Having had thousands of transactions on various sites, and having worked very hard to deliver outstanding customer service on every sale, we still only receive feedback from less than 25% of those transactions.
If you aren’t sure about making a purchase with someone, send them a message through the message system. Any seller who is involved with their business, and cares about customer service will be practically falling over themselves to get back to you as soon as possible. This is one of the ways we decide who to buy from when we’re shopping online. We will message several sellers who are selling the same item and see how long it takes for them to get back to us. We often will be willing to pay a few dollars more for an item, just because the seller got back to us right away and made an effort to let us know they wanted our business. That’s important for sellers to think about as well.
Lastly, if you made your purchase with PayPal, you should have an extra level of protection to try and help you resolve your issues. The PayPal website will be able to provide you with proof that you made your purchase by providing you with a transaction ID#, the date of your purchase, and in some cases the tracking numbers are made available on the PayPal site as well. PayPal is also very good about refunding your money if you have not received your item. PayPal ensures that there is someone between you and the people you are purchasing from in the event that something goes wrong with your transaction, and we never shop online without it.
We appreciate your business with us here on Bonanza, and we hope that you will continue to shop here and help our community grow!
David
The Married Merchants
Well said, David (themarriedmerchants)! I completely agree.
I am always disappointed when someone has a bad experience on any of the venues I sell on. It’s bad for the buyer and bad for the other sellers. Viewing feedback and contacting a seller via the message system (most venues have them) before making a purchase can help show how engaged a seller is in their business, and how interested they are in customer service. Whether they respond in 5 minutes or 5 hours is not so much the point for me (not everyone can be online 24 hours a day)… but do they respond within 24 hours? 48 hours? At all? Do they actually answer the question? If they can’t be bothered, it’s a very good indication of the level of service you would — or, more aptly, would not — receive if you purchased… and a fabulous chance for you to move on to someone else more interested in having your business.
Thanks David at The Married Merchants – you are 100% spot on. This is a great place to buy and sell, and reputable sellers will bend over backwards for their customer buyers. I have my live chat active in my booth constantly, and we would LOVE to here in advance from a prospective new customer with any communication they have. Everyone should feel safe to purchase with confidence, and there is a whole community of support here, ready to jump in and assist.
Well that went well.
I have a website that I run on magento, after reading about this, it looks no different than starting your own site and managing the inventory through bonanza for $25 a month. Traffic generation is all on you. Do the products get put into paid search on google so they show up differently than using good SEO? My hosting service charges a lot less than $25 a month. What are the benefits of a bonanza webstore in comparison to a website run via magento that would only have hosting fees? Traffic is the most valuable asset and it doesn’t look like Bonanza offers that in exchange for the $25 a month.
Hi Falken, great question. One of the biggest differences is that a Bonanza Webstore doesn’t take any technical expertise to set up – existing Bonanza sellers can open and launch a great-looking Webstore for their products in about 15 minutes. No coding is needed.
By comparison, to set up a store on Magento using their free CE software, merchants need to contract a Magento developing company or a single developer. You don’t have access to technical support, and you’ll likely need to hire a developer to make changes unless you know how to write code.
Also, a Bonanza Webstore shares inventory with your Bonanza booth, so you can manage your inventory for both from one place, which eliminates the need to import/export/sync inventory between your Bonanza booth an external solution.
There are other differences mentioned in the article that’s linked from this blog post, but Bonanza Webstores won’t necessarily be the best solution for every business, it just depends on the needs of your business, your level of technical expertise, etc.
All true, it was pretty painless getting my webstore up and running. It looks great! I didn’t have to hire anyone special to do it. I waited a LONG time to get tools THIS GOOD to be able to do this on my own. THANK YOU BONANZA! Can’t find enough good words to say!
Thank you so much for the kind words, Elfworkslane, your new Webstore looks great!
evins5, I see you just signed up 10 days ago. Did you purchase from a US seller, or from someone who ships from another country? Did you receive an order confirmation email from Bonanza? Payment confirmation through Paypal? Also, it sounds like you were buying something to have shipped to another person — many sellers aren’t able to do that if the buyer pays through Paypal, because the seller needs proof via tracking that the item was delivered to the buyer’s Paypal address in case of any disputes.
I definitely agree that the seller should be much more responsive, though, and I’m sure Bonanza support will help you take care of this issue.
we are more then happy to assist customers in any way, questions, comments, special orders, etc, we will reply within 24 hours. Yall come take a look at our booth
Hopefully they have it fixed by now. I went through all the trouble of making one when this first opened. It looked nice but nothing worked, hard to sell when only about 10 would go in there. No one could help at Bonanza and their only answer was to just refund the money I paid to do it. It was a huge waste of my time. They had no examples of real websites to show me, it was as if they just made it and did no testing what-so-ever to see if it would actually work. Pretty unconcerned about it as well from the emails I received.
Show us some real life websites with the corresponding booths so we can see if it really works as it should, so far I have seen a one page site, exactly all I was able to get before.
Hi MardiGrasMasksBeads, I’m sorry to hear that you had a less-than-stellar experience with an early version of Webstores – we did have technical problems early on, which is not at all the experience we strive to give our customers. But the platform is much more mature now and we have a great number of happy users, so if you’re still in the market for a standalone website I hope you’ll give it another try.
We have a demo store at http://www.greenbeedecor.com/. We’re also working to make a “showcase” page to highlight some of the most creative live stores – we’ll blog about that when it’s finished so you can have a look.
Thank you for being a long, long, long-time seller on Bonanza. We really appreciate your business and your support!
I will be happy to try it again sometime. Thanks.
Can I attach the webstore to our golf cart parts related website? http://www.apexgolfcarts.com
Thank you for the article Bonz admin. It’s so much easier to understand the difference now.
Sandi
EmbellishMart
“Embellishments for your crafting, your space & you!”
I PURCHASED A PAIR OF WOMEN JAMES LEBRON IV SNEAKERS FROM ONE OF YOU VENDORS (MARCO25) ON MONDAY AND THEY WERE INDICATED TO BE IN STOCK (99 PAIR) I WAS INFORMED ON TUESDAY THEY WERE OUT OF STOCK AND ASK FOR A REFUND— HE HAS SENT ME A COUPLE OF EMAILS STATING SURE I WILL CHECK INTO THAT
-AS OF THURSDAY I NO LONGER SEE HIM ON BONANZA SITE (HIS PROFILE SAID HE STARTED ON THE 10-22-15) NOW ON SATURDAY THE 31TH I SEE THE SAME SHOES ON HERE WITH VENDOR FRANCINE4 -I DON’T THINK THIS IS A COINCIDENCE BUT WHEN I FIRST STARTED LOOKING FOR THESE SHOES THE WAS ANOTHER VENDOR SELLING THE SAME SHOES BUT I DIDN’T WRITE DOWN THERE NAME—-I HAVE FILED A CLAIM WITH PAYPAL BECAUSE THEY WERE VERY QUITE TO TAKE MY MONEY—-I BOUGHT THESE SHOES FOR MY GRANDDAUGHTER FOR CHRISTMAS AND IF I DON’T GET MY MONEY BACK SHE WON’T GET ANYTHING FOR CHRISTMAS—- I HAVE BOUGHT FROM BONANZA BEFORE BUT HAVE MY DOUBTS ABOUT ORDERING AGAIN. PLEASE GIVE ME SOME ANSWERS.rcloer, I see many examples of sellers selling this description of shoes,(using your worded description in search) The only coincidence is they are obviouly popular. The problems you are having, should be addressed by paypal. We do not manage each others goods, or booths. Please get help, where help is given, as no-one here can help you except listen with understanding about the situation. We of course, are very upset to hear about your experience, I am sure, anyone reading this, would NOT treat you this way, “WE” are all reading because we care, about our Business, about Bonanza, our Buyers, and wish for everyone’s happiness here, and success for each persons expirence. I understand why you are upset, and wish for your resolution for this transaction. However, please just write anyone you wish to purchase from, to see if they are quick to write back, that usually means, you have a responsible seller, who is happy to provide you with service you will love. I would venture to say, one bad apple does not mean the barrel is rotten, but lots of great sellers here, wonderful people!
This is supposed to be about the difference between booths, and websites, but I see it has been edging at, what the “help”, is used best for, unhappy, few situations that can, unfortunately, occur.
AS for us, we have both a booth and, our stand alone website is getting 3 times the traffic, our booth is, cause I push it with social (free) media, like pinterest, google +, twitter, facebook, and others share, and like us. It really can bring em in to start looking, quickly. Come have a look, see what we’ve done.
http://divashack.bonanza.comDiva
I DO APOLOGIZE IF I PUT MY POST IN THE WRONG PLACE
I JUST THOUGHT YOU GUYS MIGHT WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ONE OF YOUR SELLERS.I HAVE CONTACTED PAYPAL AS WELL-THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSEI read our article and I like the idea of also having a stand alone website BUT, One of the BIG reasons why I came to Bonanza, is because of your advertising feature. With a stand alone website you’re saying the advertising it’s all up to me. I’ve had a stand alone website in the past and one of the big downsides of it was the advertising costs.
Because if I understand correctly,I would have to deal directly with google adwords and pay for an advertising campaign which is why I left. I don’t mind paying Bonanza after I sold something through my Bonanza Booth which I think is fair, but if after I get a website I have to pay google adwords for the advertising of my stand alone website, that is of no interest to me. I very much like the fact that Bonanza does the advertising for me because I can find my products in google search now. Please correct me if I misunderstood your article.
Thank you.
Hi QteeDesignsPlus, thanks for sharing your thoughts. You are understanding the article correctly – you’re responsible for bringing your own traffic to a Webstore, although you don’t pay any final value fees.
Not every business wants or needs a standalone website to build their brand. If you ever need one in the future, hopefully it’s good to know that you’ve got the option with Bonanza and it’s fast and easy to set up.
It’s the advertise and promote your ‘brand’ thru social media to get traffic to a webstore that has little interest for us. . The only tweets I’m familiar with are the birds waking us up at 4am. The only ‘face’ I’m familiar with is my own. Not really interested in ‘pinning’ so….I’m happy with my bonanza booths and mostly happy with the support team when they are notified of ‘glitches’ in the bonanza site. Collectibles are a small niche and ‘branding’ seems like a poor fit with dimishing returns. Not really into blogging to get exposure..see it buy it.
Thank you for your comment, ticklemeteak! Too funny! It’s great to hear that you’re happy with Bonanza and our Support team, which is growing and improving all the time. We’re glad to have you on board!
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