Sihay – Venezuelan Retail Marketplace Platform Built with Webkul Digital Commerce Services

Sihay is a very well-known B2B and B2C Marketplace in Venezuela. The customer can purchase all required products like medicine, groceries, home, beauty, fashion, and shoes.

Moreover, Sihay is a CS-Cart marketplace e-commerce site that provides the platform for multiple vendors to sell their products. The customer can log in to the store and find their desired product and purchase it.

Sihay is an e-commerce platform, an online shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a wide variety of goods and services.

Furthermore, the Sihay store provides a wider range of wholesale and retail products to the customer. They also used multiple categories in their store.

Variety of product categories – Sihay

Categories are the most important part of an eCommerce store. If you provide a wide range of products in every sector then it added benefits to your store.

Sihay provides multiple options of different categories to the users. The product is available at wholesale price and retail price.

Ecommerce in Venezuela

According to America Retail, 1.77 million Internet users made an online purchase in Venezuela in 2017, an 8% increase compared to 2016.

After increased Internet Speed in Venezuela would suggest that expected e-commerce growth, the economic crisis, and government restrictions on foreign exchange for online purchases have had a negative impact. Approximately 60% of the retail stores that existed in 2012 were closed in 2017.

Many Venezuelans increasingly rely on credit cards as a way of dealing with rapid inflation, making it a popular payment method among online shoppers.

The most popular product category among Venezuelans is consumer appliances and electronics. The lack of product availability makes it difficult to generate online grocery sales.

A significant number of Venezuelans don’t have bank accounts, and the country’s Internet infrastructure is poor, which are two big barriers to e-commerce growth. Some of the most popular e-stores in Venezuela include Mercado Libre, Amazon, and OLX.

Driving Growth with Mobile Commerce Strategy

Tarek El HinaOui founder of Sihay contacted Webkul for Sihay Mobile App development. He was looking for custom development work for CS-Cart his online shopping mobile apps besides that also looking for mobile app development for his shoppers/vendors and delivery boy.

The Sihay also uses a point of sale system both POS and native POS App

#1 Retail Marketplace Shopping App

Webkul provided CS-Cart Mobile App to the client. This mobile application covers all the vital functions that any mobile should have. This application is supported on iOS and Android. The customized home page and the product page are created for the client.

Sihay chooses Multi-vendor Marketplace so that multiple vendors can list products on the web marketplace and the Customers have the choice to choose from different variety of products from different brands.

When the Sihay launched its Mobile App adds Webkul’s Cs-cart Multi-vendor Mobile App, The service had everything they were looking to start with. Very easy to use and manage, this was a perfect blend for their vision.

Webkul also did some custom work on the Sihay Multi-vendor App to fulfil their needs.

Below are the client’s custom requirements used on the vendor profile page:

• The client Wants the vendor’s rating to be displayed on the vendor’s profile

• On the order page, the customer should be able to rate the vendor.

• The customer gets notified of every order status change
• Not to display the vendor’s website, email, phone number, or address 
• The customer gets notified of every order status change.

#2 Vendor Mobile App

Sihay has purchased a Vendor Mobile App so that the vendor/seller can manage their profile through Mobile App also. It’s a separate application for the seller/vendor which has excellent features for the vendor.

Sihay uses Mobikul CS-Cart Vendor Mobile App debeloped by Webkul.

Now it is not necessary to have desktop/laptops to access your Multivendor Store backend. The vendor can easily access his/her account from the application with a single tap.

#3 Delivery Boy Mobile App

Sihay using Delivery Boy Mobile App so that, this Flutter based application gives an allowance to both the admin and delivery boy to communicate effectively.

The delivery is authenticated by the One time Password which will be provided to the customer. Only authorize OTP will work, and the status will change to complete.

Additionally, the app has an efficient chat system that allows admin and delivery boys to chat with each other.

“They are responsible, good to have a team that has your back and rely on.”

Tarek El Hinaoui

Viewing Products Prices in US Dollars

Sihay Needs a Live Currency Convertor because in Venezuela Customers have come to rely on U.S. dollars and digital payment methods, such as Zelle and PayPal, to make purchases. Nowadays, most transactions are made electronically, and Guerra said that more than 60% are made in U.S. dollars.

Banks allowed customers to withdraw a maximum of 20 million bolivars in cash per day, or sometimes less if the branch was running short.

So, Sihay integrates CS-Cart Advance Live Currency Converter in their Website to convert live rates of the product. Customers can select currency according to their choice as mentioned in the Top Right Corner.

The client wants the Currency convertor in Bolivares and US dollars, so any customer can purchase the product from the store according to their currency.

Sharing Order Status Updates

The customer wants to know how their order is progressing from the time it places to the time it delivers.

You can improve customer satisfaction while minimizing support costs with the CS-Cart Order Status Tracker. By providing their order number and email address, customers may track the status of their orders.

The consumer can use order lookup to learn more about the products in their order, and the real-time status of their package (sent, out for delivery, etc.).

Accepting Card Payments via Stripe

Sihay integrates Stripe Payment Gateway into the website. With the help of this solution, you can integrate the most scalable payment gateway Stripe with your store. It also takes care of the concepts of full and partial refunds.

Managing Physical Retail Stores with POS

Sihay uses the CS-Cart POS system for the web and CS-Cart POS native App developed by Webkul which is going to live in the future soon. Through POS Sihay can maintain the stock of sellers for their physical and online stores.

That can work both online and offline, with the ability to synchronize all sales and customer data from the offline business with the online website.

Van der Vegt chooses Akeneo PIM because it will allow gathering all the product information in one single place, enrich it, and spread it to several channels like an e-commerce website like Magento store.

By having a management system to handle both online and physical businesses, the module plays a critical role in growing day-to-day sales.

Remark At The End

After using Webkul’s Cs-cart different Marketplace services. Sihay has achieved its business goals by allowing different sellers to sell different category products from their local shops to the marketplace.

From Sihay, can do online shopping for grocery, medical, and beauty products, as in this pandemic it’s safe for the aged people to do the shopping for medicine from their homes. Besides the website, Customers can also shop by mobile to purchase their daily used products.