10-Easy Tips to Identify the Best Marketplace Builder

If there was ever a good time to start thinking about building an online marketplace, the time is now. 

Wonder why we say so? 

To begin with the reasons, the multi-seller marketplace model is versatile and suits every industry. Add to this the model’s easy scalability across product lines and locations- an easy and quick way to grow your brand. Now top it off with zero inventory cost, multiple revenue streams, and commissions on each order. 

And with the best marketplace builder, going to market does not need months or years of coding and testing. So your business can start earning from ideation to actual orders in just a few weeks.

That sets the stage for a successful business, right?

If the reasons above still don’t sound compelling, check out the following insights and trends about multi vendor marketplace model’s growth:

• $3.25+ trillion goods sold on marketplace websites in 2022 
• 50% of top online marketplaces across the globe were launched in the last decade
• 62% of all ecommerce sales globally will be done on marketplace websites by 2027
• $8.7 trillion of sales forecasted to be done through marketplaces by 2025
• 4X growth in the number of B2B marketplaces in the last 3 years

Source: Digital Commerce 360, Statista, Mirakl, Bain & Company and Accel report

The trends clearly point towards a fast-growing ecommerce marketplace environment. Customers' preference for ease and shopping, convenience and trust associated with the marketplaces buying experience has made multi vendor marketplaces the most loved shopping destination.

Why consider the best marketplace builder to launch your marketplace website

Now that you have got good reasons and data-driven insights, it’s time to find the best marketplace builder for creating your multi-seller website. Wonder why we are suggesting you go with a turnkey solution rather than building your marketplace from scratch?

Let us try to understand.

Building your marketplace from scratch by finding an expert team of software developers can be a time and resource-consuming activity. Alternatively, going with a ready-to-use best marketplace platform means much fewer hassles and costs.

 While developing a marketplace website from scratch was the only solution some time back, new SaaS-based fully hosted and managed marketplace solutions have now changed the game for many enterprise brands.

Once you find the best marketplace platform you can build, launch, manage, and market your  marketplace website without any hassles. What’s even more important is that you can build your marketplace website at just a fraction of the cost and time as compared to building from scratch.

How to choose the best marketplace builder for your business

The next step in your online success journey is to choose the right ecommerce solution that supports your business goals. For the same reason, we have come up with the top tips you should know when you are identifying the platform for your marketplace website.

Read on our expert tips to find, decide on and choose the best ecommerce marketplace builder:

1. Low-code marketplace software

Setting up a marketplace should not be an epic struggle for your brand. The best marketplace platform is one which offers a low-code solution where your enterprise brand does not require a huge IT team to manage your marketplace portal.  

With a ready-to-use, low-code marketplace website builder like StoreHippo, you can build your enterprise online marketplace in record time. Unlike other popular solutions like Shopify or Magento or WooCommerce, StoreHippo does not require syncing a lot of apps or extensions to build a fully-functional marketplace website.

StoreHippo also offers a ready-to-use platform with hundreds of beautiful themes, drag-and-drop support, and a friendly interface to launch your marketplace with utmost ease.

 The feature-rich platform comes with 300+ built-in features that allow you to build B2C, D2C, B2B, hyperlocal or any other kind of multi vendor marketplace for your business.

2. Enables to build omnichannel marketplace 

Modern customers are demanding. They want your brand to be present across every channel they visit while surfing online, and most importantly your brand should have a marketplace app along with your marketplace website. Also, your brand should offer a connected and immersive buying experience on all channels.

To achieve all of this and your enterprise business needs the best marketplace platform that can rapidly add new customer touchpoints for your multi seller ecommerce website. StoreHippo is built on mobile-first principle and uses headless architecture which enables enterprises to add new customer touchpoints using the same backend logic and APIs as used for building the marketplace website.

StoreHippo not only offers mobile-friendly sites and mobile apps but also ensures customer engagement and connectivity across multiple devices with PWA (Progressive Web App) functionalities.

3. Customizable and scalable for your business needs

No two enterprise businesses are the same. This implies that the best marketplace builder should be equipped to create tailored marketplace solutions for your brand. Also, the marketplace solution should be scalable to accommodate your business growth.

Built on MACH architecture, StoreHippo offers extreme flexibility and creative control for building a modem online marketplace. StoreHippo ensures that every aspect of your marketplace website can be customized, from the look and feel, to landing pages, offers, prices, payment and shipping choices and every action throughout the buyer journey can be customized.

StoreHippo’s cloud-native solutions are inherently scalable and support business growth even if you scale up to millions of users, products or geographies.

4. Support for diverse business models

E Commerce is a fierce battlefield and to win the game your enterprise business needs to be equipped with the flexibility to implement new business models that can disrupt the market. For this you need a multi vendor marketplace solution that has inbuilt capabilities to handle a variety of use cases of the marketplace model along with built in features to implement hybrid business models, for example an online marketplace website with different location or product lines based stores. 

StoreHippo comes out as the best marketplace builder here as it has built a variety of successful horizontal, vertical, service aggregator and hybrid marketplaces. With inbuilt support for B2B, B2C, B2B2C, D2C and hyperlocal ecommerce, StoreHippo is well equipped to build hybrid marketplaces combining two or more business models. You can also easily pivot your business to new business models easily.

5. Ease of running your business

Well, building a marketplace is one thing, running and managing an enormous project is totally another ballgame. You certainly don’t want to be stuck with a multi vendor marketplace platform that has a steep learning curve or makes it difficult for your teams, sellers and other participants involved to run the show. 

StoreHippo offers a feature-rich and easy to use online marketplace solution that enables your admin team as well as sellers to run the business on the go. While your sellers get separate dashboards your admin teams also get an intuitive dashboard to have complete overview of the business. With a host of built-in features like order management, product management, tax-engine etc. it becomes easy to run the day-to-day business and ensure regulatory compliance. The hosted and management best marketplace builder by StoreHippo also frees you from all the IT burdens like server management, software upgrade, maintenance etc.

6. Ability to go beyond borders

When you build your marketplace website you plan a future growth strategy also. Expanding your business to new markets and verticals is the first step towards your growth. And your ecommerce solution should be equipped to facilitate your foray into new geographies.

StoreHippo best marketplace builder comes with built in multilingual, multi currency and other features that help your brand build a global online presence with ease. Even the design theme can be customized into different languages including the RTL languages. You can also customize your admin panel in different languages to facilitate easy business for your sellers from different countries. The powerful tax engine can calculate different taxes and help you comply with local rules easily.

7. Seamless integrations for streamlined business processes

Well, the integrations like shipping, payments seem to be simple and obvious. But in absence of these integrations, your ecommerce business can be a big mess. Also, to run your business seamlessly you need to integrate your multi vendor marketplace with a host of best-in-breed marketing, accounting, CRM, ERP and other solutions. A rigid marketplace software that makes integrations difficult can be a deal breaker.

StoreHippo ensures that your online marketplace is well integrated with all the extended business functions like logistics, payment gateways, email software, marketing tools etc. to make everything smoother for you. The headless architecture and API based integrations make it easy for you to integrate, remove or replace a given software and build your own marketplace environment.

8. High-end security

Offering a secure shopping experience to your customers is the must-have feature for an online marketplace. With the growth of your online business, there are greater chances of security thefts or malicious attacks on your portal. So the multi vendor marketplace builder you choose should have robust security measures in place to protect your business.

StoreHippo, the best marketplace builder offers multi level security when you build your marketplace. The PCI-DSS compliant platform offers free SSL certificate, has an audit log system in place and also offers the inherent security of the cloud environment. 

9. Automated marketing tools for business growth

Building an online marketplace is just a start. To run and grow an online business, the out-of-the-box marketing tools and features are the must-haves in your checklist. So when you are evaluating the prospective multi vendor platforms, you need to look for one that comes with built-in marketing solutions.

Like, StoreHippo offers automated marketing tools to grow your online marketplace’s traffic and customer conversions. It comes with a powerful discount engine for customized deals, abandoned cart follow up tools for remarketing, dynamic marketing pages for better customer engagement etc. You can also integrate with the best in breed marketing and analytics tools to strategize your marketing efforts.

10. Offers post-sales customer service

Even if you get the best marketplace builder you need to ensure one thing and that is the level of support they are going to offer. While pre-sales support is common it makes sense to go with a multi vendor marketplace solution that offers post sales support as well.

The best marketplace platform should be able to help you even after you have paid for a subscription. Just like StoreHippo offers multi-channel customer support through help material, chats, emails and call support. 

Conclusion

Starting your online marketplace is probably an easier decision than choosing the right ecommerce solution. Considering all the aforementioned tips, StoreHippo can be your perfect choice for the best marketplace platform.

 It has 300+ inbuilt features and various pre-integrated functionalities to take your business to the new heights. Our fully hosted and managed, scalable platform is a one-stop solution for all your ecommerce needs.

Ready to set foot in the exciting world of a multi vendor marketplace? Explore the out-of-the-box features offered by StoreHippo by scheduling your 14-day free trial today.