Things to Keep in Mind When Building an Online Marketplace
Every task begins with laying the groundwork. When it comes to a multi-seller store, competing with online eCommerce giants like Amazon, eBay or Etsy is one of the tasks with multiple pain points. So, you need to make sure your groundwork includes them all.
When generally speaking, putting products of multiple sellers together on a single page and earning commissions from sales, seems easy; right? Not really! Starting a successful multiple-seller marketplace requires a lot to make things run as swiftly as needed.
In this article, let’s dive into few things that you need to keep in mind when building an online multivendor marketplace.
Before that, putting the highlight on the facts why online marketplace business is blooming for different aspects:
For consumers
Customers need options. You give them options with an online marketplace. The customers get different products sold by different vendors in one place. Moreover, with real-time information about the products. Consumers are likely to go for a website that offers a range of products rather than a single vendor online store.
For Vendors
Better exposure in lesser time. It’s hard to cover a large audience when you are just starting out as an individual retailer. The marketplace solves this query for you.
For owners
The online marketplace is a profitable business with lesser responsibilities and expenses. Basically, if you are someone who is looking forward to opening a store but doesn’t want to get into the hassle of inventory, shipping, etc then a multi-seller marketplace is the suitable way to go. The vendors take care of logistics and product listing. Other than this, commission acts as a good money factor!
Coming to technical details, while building an online marketplace, consider the following features:
Vendor Registration, Security & Data Authorization
Sellers must provide personal details such as name, gender, email, date of birth, phone number, password to signup on to your store. Most of all, it’s the prior responsibility that all seller data must be protected! Vendors must have access to all the required functionality of the online marketplace. Such as products, orders, shipping, invoice & payment method details.
Increase signups (vendor/customers) by introducing sign up via a social network.
Managing vendor profile
Seller information should be clearly presented and easily managed by the admin as well as the vendors themselves.
Managing Listing
Listing is products or services on a web marketplace. Sellers need to publish and manage their items. For site visitors add the ability to search, use a filter and view detailed information; for site publishers – to add a new listing, view their listings, publish, edit or unpublish their listing, etc.
Booking/order process
This functionality is built to ensure reserving goods and services by customers and collecting delivery information by vendors. Here developers need to add also a possibility for communication between leads and vendors. Order management should allow multiple leads and vendors to engage at a time.
Payment option
Online Marketplace requires advanced payment functionality: payment system, ability to use credit cards, cash, PayPal, billing, and invoice operations. Develop a marketplace with multiple payment methods to ensure that both user’ groups can use them most conveniently.
Payout
Vendors should retrieve their money from the marketplace panel. Major payment providers have solutions for that, for example, Stripe Connect or PayPal.
Reviews and ratings
This is aimed to help vendors and customers understand the situation on the market and build trust between each other. Both sides should be able to see listings reviews, customers will be able to write them and rate listings.
Notifications
Users can be informed about the arrival of their order and so on via notifications. The user must be able to change notifications settings. The most widespread notification methods are SMS and emails.
Landing pages for clients and vendors
You should be able to customize different layouts for landing pages to capture customers’ or vendors’ attention. Also, to personalize it & put across your brand’s identity.
Browsing content
This feature lets a user find what he is looking for. As navigation getting more smooth the more attention is paid to the products. Take user comfort among the priorities.
Customer service
This allows to keep in touch with the customer and grow loyalty. In this part marketplaces usually use promotions, collecting and visualizing data to understand tendencies, email campaigns for customer onboarding.
This was all. Furthermore, if you are looking for a ready-made solution for building an online marketplace, check out this.
With over 400+ reviews on the official Shopify app store, this module is highly likable by the Shopify merchants. It is an easy-to-use Shopify add-on that converts your eCommerce Store to a fully-fledged marketplace or a Hyperlocal Marketplace. Moreover, there are 3 different plans for different merchants.
With over 60+ Multi-Vendor Marketplace feature apps, you can build the most high-graded online store. We also have a live chat support feature to help our clients whenever they need it. If you want to build a hyperlocal marketplace, check out this blog.
Moreover, in case you need a demo of this app, drop us an email at support@webkul.com.