Multivendor marketplace platform is the need of the hour. Every aspiring and budding entrepreneur put their heart and soul in building the same. The reason for the sudden growth is because of the acceptance it has gained among the audience.
Every business will have its own target audience and all of them are available online and they spend more time in visiting more ecommerce websites and they tend to buy products online. Around 75% of US citizens are already online buyers and the count is expected to increase in coming years.
Though building a multivendor marketplace platform is an easy task but managing the same is not as easy as you think. There are several challenges that every multivendor store need to confront and you need to have a separate strategy to make your multivendor marketplace platform survive in this ecommerce industry.
Let us checkout the key aspects that are essential to follow to make your multivendor marketplace software standalone in the crowd. Hope this is going to be a perfect guide for you in managing your multivendor store.
Essential aspects to manage a multivendor ecommerce platform
Get a better understanding on the below mentioned tips as it is going to play a crucial role in building your online business.
Perfect inventory management
Being a multi vendor marketplace platform, there will be several vendors and each vendor will have their products. These products can either be added to the platform by the vendor or by the admin. Most multivendor marketplace platforms prefer vendor to add their products as it will save admin’s time.
Still, the admin needs to monitor the quality of products and he can either approve or disapprove products. Many tools are available to analyze market demands. You can rely on them and can keep stocks where the demand is high. Never go out of stock as it will make an opportunity for your competitors to drag your customers to their multivendor platform.
Maintain minimum stock value all the time and if the stock goes down the value then let vendors be notified through push notification feature and let them be aware about their stock. 5% of sales is affected in any multivendor marketplace due to shortage of stock. More attention is needed in maintaining them.
Simplified order management
After sorting the inventory you need to organize your orders in an efficient way. A multivendor marketplace can sell both digital and physical products. In digital products, the order management is simple as customers will pay online and will access the platform and will download their products. There will not be any confusion.
When you sell physical products then more process is involved. Once you get order from customers you need to notify the concern vendor to make arrangements for shipping the product. Then you need inform customers regarding their order status and many multivendor marketplace platforms offer order tracking feature that will help them track their orders.
You need to make sure that the product is shipped on time and delivery happens within the stipulated delivery time. If you show less involvement in order management then you may lose your customers and also your online marketplace software reputation in the market.
Shipping and delivery management
This task is the major task where your goodwill lies. More focus is needed in arranging shipping and delivery. Few multivendor marketplace platforms prefer vendors to arrange shipping and delivery. But most multivendor platforms will prefer to have the complete control of this process as it is very crucial for their business growth.
To have smooth shipping and delivery the admin needs to have direct contact with the vendor often and should make sure that products are properly shifted to the shipping agency. Then he should communicate with the shipping logistics and should confirm the vehicle’s departure and should track them till it reaches the customer place.
Never forget to get customer feedback regarding the shipping and delivery process. This will help you to enhance your service and retain your customers. Before finalizing the shipping agent, go through several agents and check their shipping policy. Confirm the one that has good reviews from its customers.
Charging vendor fees and commissions
This part will give ways for more misunderstanding between you and your vendors. Proper understanding is required on both sides. As this is the only way where the store manager and vendors earn through the multivendor marketplace platform, it has to be fair on both sides. Before letting vendors sell their products in your multivendor ecommerce platform, you need to fix their commission or fees.
The commission should be flexible and should be accepted by vendors also. You can have different commission plans for different vendors and you can support poor performing vendors initially by charging low commission. You need to gain the complete trust from vendors only then they will stay with your multivendor marketplace software and will do business else they will reach your competitors’
Before fixing the fee or the commission, do some research works. Check with your competitor and know about their commission slab. You need to come up with the better plan than your competitors only then you can grab vendors from them and retain your existing vendors with your multivendor marketplace platform.
Branding and promotion
Vendors will join the multi vendor platform only if it is well-known among the audience. For eg, multi vendor platforms like Amazon, eBay will easily get more vendors as well as customers as they are well-known and reputed ones in the market. So to gain more audience you need to promote your brand and make it more visible among your target audience.
To get higher visibility you need to develop an SEO-friendly multi vendor marketplace software that will get you easy ranking in all search engines. around 48% of online shoppers will check the review and product description online and then will proceed buying. And 70% of surfers will visit the first 3 sites listed on the first page of the search and then will decide to buy the product. So make sure you are on the top.
Apart from SEO, you can also promote your brand on all social media platforms. 82% of people who are online are active on any of the social media channels. So you cannot ignore social media platforms at any cost. Keeping posting blogs and running campaigns in social media pages and making it visible to all audiences.
You can also run Google ads that will help you to increase the multi vendor website traffic instantly. When there is an increase in traffic then you will start getting leads and conversions. You need to invest wisely and get more of an audience. Also you can utilize affiliate marketing and make your customers be brand ambassadors for your multi vendor store. This will get you more reach and better recognition.
Conclusion
Hope you have gained enough knowledge on managing your multivendor marketplace platform effectively. Implement all the above mentioned ideas in your multivendor store and keep track of your outcomes. Definitely this is going to help you to easily survive in the ecommerce market and have your own place in the industry.
