Overstock vs. Wayfair - Product Listing Insights for home goods online retailers

Nowadays sellers are listing products on marketplaces such as Walmart, Wayfair, Houzz, Overstock, Amazon and Home Depot instead of solely relying on their own ecommerce platforms like Magento, Bigcommerce, Woocomemerce or Shopify. Ecommerce marketplace management and its product listings are good for increased exposure, lower listing costs, streamline processes, increased sales and encourages business growth.

Marketplaces have larger existing customer base, so sellers can easily access a wide range of audience. And more customers are now turning to shop from online marketplaces.

When you sell your products on well-known marketplaces, it boosts brand visibility and credibility as customers always trust these prominent platforms.

Additionally, marketplaces often rank higher in search engine results and attract organic traffic since they have higher domain authority and better SEO than your own ecommerce store.

Hence, choosing the right marketplace is very important to maximize your sales and target audience.

Overstock and Wayfair are two established platforms that allow home goods sellers to list their products and grow their businesses.

Overstock is ecommerce company now known as Bed Bath & Beyond 100% online home decor retailer, specializing in furniture, bedding and related home goods.

Wayfair is ecommerce company specializes in selling furniture, lighting, Rugs, Kitchen, and more home goods online.

If you are an furniture or home goods online retailer who would like to list products in these marketplaces, will examine the features and limitation of Overstock and Wayfair in-terms of product listing.

Difference between Overstock and Wayfair

New Product Listing (Manual & Bulk):

We can do product uploading by either manually or bulk import to Overstock. Where as in Wayfair, we can bulk import products, but level of importing is a bit complex in Wayfair when compared to other platforms.

For example, in Overstock, we can update all details like title, image, description, price, attributes and other column data using one template.

In Wayfair, attribute updates need to be done separately.

Editing of Existing Listings:

In Overstock, we can update all existing products’ details via template sheet. You just have to download the exported file, edit the required fields and reimport.

However one drawback is that in Overstock, each category of products is exported and imported in separate file.

For example, if store has 50 kinds of products, then exported file would have 50 tabs, and you would need to update data in each tab.

In Wayfair, an easier method available is to open a ticket requesting update of exiting data. Almost all details like image, price, description etc can be updated via ticket submission.

Grouping & Regrouping

Both stores support grouping and option products listing.

However, please note we CANNOT EDIT grouping of products on Overstock once products have been uploaded. So make sure to check grouping before uploading.

Once uploaded, if you want to make any change, you would need to open ticket and rename the existing sku’s to a new one (suggested method is to add “-OLD” to the current skus) and make them as discontinued.

Then you would need to upload the required skus again as new products as per the required regrouping.

In wayfair, we can do regrouping of skus just by opening ticket.

Product Categories

Bulk Image Import:

Both Overstock and Wayfair allow sellers to bulk import images for new and existing products.

Approval for New Products:

Overstock has a direct approval process for new products.

Whereas Wayfair takes few days or more for approval when compared to Overstock.

Product Listing Costs:

Overstock offers retailers competitive listing fees that make listing their products cost-effective.

Wayfair may have higher item listing costs compared to Overstock, which could impact profit margins for retailers.

Customer Support:

Both Wayfair and Overstock has a solid customer support, assisting sellers promptly with any inquiries.

However some sellers have mentioned experiencing delays in getting response from Wayfair.