The question of where to sell — your own website, Amazon, other marketplaces, or all of the above — is one of the most consequential strategic decisions an ecommerce brand can make. It affects your margins, your brand perception, your customer relationships, and ultimately your long-term viability as an independent business.
Too many brands treat this as a tactical question: which channels generate the most revenue right now? That framing leads to decisions that maximise short-term volume at the expense of long-term brand equity and profitability. The right framing is strategic: which channel mix gives you the strongest position in three to five years?
I have spent twenty years watching brands navigate this tension. The ones that get it right treat their own store as the strategic priority and marketplaces as supplementary channels. The ones that get it wrong become dependent on Amazon, surrender their customer relationships, and find themselves competing on price in someone else's ecosystem with no exit route.
The channel landscape in 2026
The UK ecommerce channel landscape in 2026 is dominated by a few key players. Amazon accounts for roughly 30% of UK online retail spending. Brand-owned websites collectively account for the majority of the remainder, with a long tail of smaller marketplaces including eBay, Etsy, TikTok Shop, and category-specific platforms.
The dynamics of each channel have evolved significantly. Amazon has become increasingly competitive and expensive for sellers. Advertising costs on the platform have risen as more brands compete for visibility in search results. Amazon's private-label brands compete directly with third-party sellers in many categories. And the platform's policies around pricing, inventory, and customer communication have become more restrictive.
Meanwhile, DTC brands on Shopify and similar platforms have matured their capabilities. Better checkout experiences, improved mobile commerce, and sophisticated marketing tools have closed many of the convenience gaps that once gave marketplaces an advantage. The economic case for DTC has strengthened as marketplace fees have risen and DTC tools have become more powerful.
The strategic advantages of DTC
Direct-to-consumer selling through your own Shopify store provides several strategic advantages that marketplaces fundamentally cannot offer:
- Customer data ownership. When a customer buys from your store, you own the relationship. You have their email address, their purchase history, their browsing behaviour, and their preferences. This data is the foundation of personalisation, retention marketing, and customer lifetime value optimisation. When they buy on Amazon, Amazon owns the relationship and shares minimal data with you.
- Brand experience control. Your website is your brand's home. You control every pixel, every interaction, every message. You can tell your story, build emotional connection, and create a shopping experience that reflects your values. On a marketplace, your brand is reduced to a product listing in a standardised template.
- Margin advantage. DTC typically delivers 15-25% higher margins than marketplace selling once you account for referral fees, FBA fees, and marketplace advertising costs. As your DTC channel scales, margins improve further as fixed costs are spread across more revenue.
- Pricing independence. On your own site, you set prices based on your strategy. On marketplaces, you are subject to price matching algorithms, competitive pressure, and policies that may force you to match lower prices elsewhere.
- Long-term asset building. Every pound invested in SEO, content, and brand-building for your own site creates an asset you own. Investment in marketplace optimisation builds an asset on someone else's platform that can be devalued by algorithm changes or policy shifts.
The role marketplaces should play
Despite the strategic advantages of DTC, marketplaces have a legitimate role in most brands' channel strategies. The key is using them intentionally rather than defaulting to them.
Marketplaces serve three useful strategic functions:
- Discovery and acquisition. Marketplaces have enormous built-in traffic. Customers who would never find your brand through search or social media may discover you on Amazon. Used strategically, marketplace presence can feed your DTC funnel as customers who discover you on Amazon then seek out your own store for repeat purchases.
- Category testing. If you are launching a new product line or entering a new category, marketplace sales data can validate demand before you invest heavily in DTC marketing for that category.
- International market entry. Amazon and other marketplaces provide logistics infrastructure that makes it possible to sell in new markets without establishing local fulfilment, which can be valuable when testing international expansion.
The critical principle is that marketplace revenue should supplement your DTC business, not replace it. If you find yourself investing more time, money, and attention in your Amazon store than your own website, your priorities are misaligned.
Economics compared: DTC vs marketplace
The unit economics of DTC versus marketplace selling are frequently misunderstood because people compare revenue rather than profit. A like-for-like analysis on a £50 product typically reveals significantly better contribution margins through DTC channels.
On Amazon, a £50 product might generate £50 in revenue, with approximately £7.50 in referral fees (15%), £8-12 in FBA fees, and £5-10 in Amazon advertising, leaving £20-29.50 before cost of goods. That represents a 40-59% effective take rate by Amazon before you earn any gross margin.
On your own Shopify store, the same £50 product generates £50 in revenue, with approximately £1.25 in payment processing (2.5%), £0.20 in Shopify platform fees, and variable marketing costs. Even with £10 in marketing cost per order (which would be high for an established brand with organic traffic), you retain £38.55 before cost of goods.
The margin advantage widens further as your DTC channel matures. Organic traffic, email-driven repeat purchases, and direct navigation all carry near-zero acquisition costs, pulling your blended marketing cost per order down well below marketplace fees.
Data ownership and customer relationships
Data ownership is perhaps the single most important strategic consideration in the DTC vs marketplace decision, and it is the one most frequently overlooked by brands focused on revenue volume.
When a customer purchases through your own store, you capture their email address, purchase history, product preferences, browsing behaviour, geographic location, and communication preferences. This data powers your retention marketing through email and SMS, personalisation across your site, product development decisions, inventory planning, and customer segmentation.
When a customer purchases through Amazon, you receive their name, a shipping address, and a marketplace-specific email address that blocks direct communication. You cannot email them. You cannot target them with advertising using your own data. You cannot analyse their behaviour. You cannot build a relationship.
This data asymmetry compounds over time. Every DTC customer enriches your understanding of your market and enables better decisions. Every marketplace customer adds revenue but no strategic knowledge. After five years, a brand with 50,000 DTC customers has a rich dataset that informs every aspect of their business. A brand with 50,000 marketplace customers has revenue history and nothing else.
Brand control and experience
The shopping experience a customer has with your brand shapes their perception, their loyalty, and their likelihood of recommending you to others. On your own website, you have complete control over that experience. On a marketplace, you are a tenant in someone else's property.
On your own Shopify store, you can craft a brand experience that tells your story, showcases your products beautifully, provides detailed content that educates and inspires, and creates the kind of emotional connection that drives loyalty. You control the design, the navigation, the content, the checkout process, the post-purchase communication, and every other touchpoint.
On Amazon, your brand is reduced to a product listing template. Your brand story is condensed to an A+ content module. Your packaging appears in a brown Amazon box. Your customer communication is restricted by marketplace policies. The customer's primary relationship is with Amazon, not with you. That may not matter for commodity products, but for brands that compete on experience, values, or emotional connection, it is a fundamental limitation.
Managing channel conflict
When you sell the same products through multiple channels, channel conflict is inevitable. The most common form is price competition: if your product is cheaper on Amazon than on your own website, customers will buy on Amazon. If it is cheaper on your website, Amazon's algorithms may suppress your listing or flag a pricing discrepancy.
Effective channel conflict management strategies include:
- Product differentiation. Create marketplace-specific bundles, sizes, or SKUs that do not directly compete with your DTC offerings. This allows you to maintain separate pricing without direct comparison.
- Price consistency. Maintain the same base prices across all channels. Differentiate on value rather than price by offering loyalty rewards, free gifts, or exclusive content through your DTC channel.
- Experience differentiation. Make your DTC experience demonstrably better: faster shipping options, better packaging, personalised communications, loyalty programme, and superior customer service.
- Exclusive products. Reserve certain products, colours, or limited editions exclusively for your DTC store. This gives customers a reason to buy direct that marketplace availability cannot replicate.
A multi-channel decision framework
Not every brand should sell on marketplaces, and not every brand should avoid them. The right decision depends on your specific circumstances. Here is a framework for evaluating the question:
Prioritise DTC if: your brand competes on experience, story, or values rather than price; your product category benefits from education and content; your repeat purchase rate is or could be above 25%; you have or can build organic traffic through SEO; your target customer values brand relationships over marketplace convenience.
Include marketplaces if: your product category has strong marketplace search volume; you need to validate demand before investing in DTC marketing; you have excess inventory to clear; you are entering new geographic markets; your brand awareness is low and you need discovery channels.
Avoid marketplaces if: your margins are too thin to absorb marketplace fees and remain profitable; your brand experience is a core competitive advantage that marketplaces would dilute; your product requires extensive pre-purchase education that marketplace listings cannot provide; you sell in a category where Amazon private-label competition is strong.
Building your DTC foundation
If you are currently dependent on marketplaces and want to shift toward DTC, the transition requires investment in several areas. Your Shopify store needs to be genuinely excellent — fast, well-designed, easy to navigate, and optimised for mobile.
Your SEO strategy needs to build organic visibility so that customers can find you through search rather than only through marketplaces. Your email marketing programme needs to capture and nurture customer relationships from the first purchase. And your brand identity needs to be strong enough to give customers a reason to buy direct rather than defaulting to marketplace convenience.
This transition does not happen overnight. Plan for twelve to twenty-four months of sustained investment before your DTC channel reaches the maturity needed to meaningfully reduce marketplace dependency. During that period, continue selling on marketplaces while progressively building your direct capabilities.
Marketplace optimisation tactics
If marketplaces remain part of your channel strategy, optimise them strategically rather than accepting default configurations. Ensure your listings are optimised for marketplace search with relevant keywords and high-quality imagery. Use advertising selectively to defend branded search terms and capture high-intent category searches. Monitor your profitability by SKU on each marketplace and remove products that are unprofitable. And include branded inserts in marketplace orders that encourage customers to visit your DTC store for their next purchase.
The goal is to treat marketplace presence as a customer acquisition tool that feeds your DTC ecosystem, not as a primary revenue channel that defines your business.
The brands that will thrive in the next decade of UK ecommerce are those that own their customer relationships, control their brand experience, and build long-term assets through their own channels. Marketplaces will remain important for discovery and volume, but they should supplement a strong DTC foundation rather than replace one.
If you want to discuss your channel strategy or build a DTC experience that gives customers a reason to buy direct, start a conversation with us. We have helped dozens of brands make this transition successfully.