Online Store for Businesses in Granada: When It Makes Sense and How to Do It Right

Marketplace vs own store: understanding the difference

What is a marketplace

A marketplace is a platform where multiple sellers offer their products: Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and many others. The marketplace provides the infrastructure, traffic and payment gateway. In return, it charges commissions (between 8 % and 20 % depending on the platform) and sets the rules of the game.

Marketplace advantages: immediate traffic, no development costs, no payment management, no worry about hosting.

Marketplace disadvantages: high commissions, no customer data (the customer belongs to the marketplace, not you), no control over design or the shopping experience, total dependence on platform policies (which can change or close your account without warning).

What is your own store

Your own online store is yours: you control the design, prices, customer data, shopping experience and SEO. Every sale you make builds a long-term asset (your customer database, your Google ranking) instead of building the platform's.

When does your own store make sense?

It is not always the right answer. Your own store makes sense when:

• You sell regularly and want to build a loyal customer base.
• Your margin per sale can absorb the development cost (generally amortised in 12-24 months with a reasonable sales volume).
• You have a differentiated product that does not compete on price with identical products on Amazon.
• You want to rank on Google and build organic traffic over time.
• The marketplace is limiting you (you cannot customise your listing, they penalise you, commissions are growing).

If you are just starting out and do not know whether your product has demand, marketplaces are a valid way to validate before investing in your own store. But if you are already selling on them and the business is working, start thinking about your own channel.

Technical options for your online store

Payment gateways in Spain: what options you have

In Spain, the most common options for accepting online payments are:

• Stripe: the best option for most online stores. Simple integration, excellent documentation, support for recurring payments, Google Pay, Apple Pay and cards. Commission: 1.5 % + €0.25 per transaction for European cards.
• PayPal: very well recognised by buyers, which reduces checkout abandonment. Slightly higher commission than Stripe (around 3.4 % + €0.35). Useful as an alternative option, but not as the only gateway.
• Redsys: the Spanish banking system's gateway. Required if you want a virtual POS terminal with Spanish banking authentication. More complex to integrate technically, but required by some banks and regulated sectors.

Store SEO: a long-term asset

Every well-written product listing, every well-structured category and every relevant blog article you publish on your store is an investment in organic traffic that does not expire when you stop paying. This is the opposite of the marketplace model, where your visibility disappears if you stop paying for advertising or policies change.

Online stores with the best SEO typically have:

• Clean, descriptive URLs: /shop/handmade-shoes-granada instead of /product?id=482.
• Original product descriptions (not copied from the manufacturer).
• Images with descriptive names and alt text.
• Customer reviews on each product (fresh content generated by users).
• A blog with articles related to the products they sell.

E-commerce mistakes that cost money

These are the most common mistakes I see in online stores from local businesses in Granada:

• Long and complicated checkout: every extra field in the purchase process increases cart abandonment. The current standard is a 2-3 step checkout maximum.
• No guest checkout option: requiring registration to buy is one of the biggest abandonment generators.
• Low-quality product photos: in e-commerce, the photo is the product. Without good photos, there is no sale.
• No clear returns policy: legally required for online sales (14-day right of withdrawal in the EU) and, moreover, its absence generates distrust.
• Slow load speed: every additional second of load time reduces conversions. A store that takes more than 3 seconds to load on mobile loses a significant portion of its visits.

Platform comparison for your online store