8 Multi Vendor Website Builder Features to Help you Manage your Marketplace

When we talk ecommerce stores, the names that come to our mind are marketplace websites like Amazon, Etsy, eBay etc.

Thanks to their massive product catalogues online marketplaces are the most preferred shopping hubs for buyers. In 2021, a massive 62.7% of combined online sales came from the top 100 marketplaces stores. With online shopping forecasted to exceed $7 trillion in value by 2025, building an online marketplace is definitely a lucrative business deal for enterprise brands.  

Before we dive deeper let us check some more trends and stats about the growth of multi vendor marketplace stores.

• 48% of buyers go straight to a multivendor marketplace when buying online
• 67% of global online sales are done on marketplaces
• 40 of the top 100 marketplace websites were launched in the last 10 years
• $31.19 billion is the estimated GMV of global B2B marketplaces 
• 7.2X faster growth of B2B marketplaces as compared to overall B2B eCommerce

Source: Statista, Digital Commerce 360

With such amazing trends, multi-vendor marketplace is undoubtedly an idea worth considering for enterprise B2B and B2C businesses.

Why building a marketplace website is a good idea for your business

This is the most opportune time for enterprise brands of every size to capitalize on the opportunity of creating your online marketplace. If the stats above have not not yet convinced you, here are some reasons to consider the multi-vendor model for your business.

Zero-inventory model

You can build your multivendor store literally anywhere with zero inventory. All you need is a well-designed website which enables your vendors to onboard, showcase and sells their products seamlessly. You just take care of the technical aspects and you have a full-fledged business without investing anything in inventory.

Easy to expand to new product lines

By setting up your marketplace website you can onboard vendors from diverse industries or product lines/brands to your multivendor store. This way you can easily offer a vast and rich catalogue of products to your customers and add new product lines to your business without much effort or investment.

Reach new markets

Reaching new markets and geo-locations also becomes easy with local vendors on your multi vendor marketplace. With faster delivery options in hyperlocal markets using your location-specific vendors, you can quickly build a local customer base.

Win loyal customers

When your customers get a variety of products under one umbrella brand they trust your brand and stay loyal to your marketplace website. Having a marketplace website with trusted vendors selling quality products wins you, loyal customers, for a lifetime.

Huge CapEx savings

Setting up a multi-seller store is relatively easy with a feature-rich multi vendor website builder that comes with readymade solutions for different use cases of the marketplace. An online marketplace is a cost-effective solution compared to an offline set-up and hugely saves on CapEx.

Create multiple revenue streams

With a marketplace website, you get opportunities to add multiple revenue streams for your business. While you earn commissions on each product sold on your platform you can also earn from product placements, premium memberships, ads etc.

Experiment with different business models

Having a multi-seller portal means you come in contact with vendors and businesses of different scales and sizes across different geographies. This opens up new business avenues and fosters an environment where your brand can experiment with new business models and new products in new markets by going D2C. All you would need is an advanced multi vendor website builder that can support different business models on the same platform.

Access to huge data 

With huge product catalogues, multiple vendors and lots of customers you get access to huge data on customer behaviour and buying patterns. And as we know, “Data is modern gold”. With vast data comes the opportunity to understand markets, buyers and sellers. You can strategically use this data to grow your multi vendor marketplace business.

Well, with so many benefits, having a multivendor portal for your business can be a profitable deal for your brand. However, to get the business rolling in the cut-throat market with lots of players, your brands need to have features, services and brand presence that stands out. After all your customers are not just looking for products and prices anymore. The ecommerce battleground is fiercer than ever and you need the right arsenal to WIN.

Why consider a multi vendor website builder to build your marketplace?

The first step in winning the ecommerce game is deciding on the multi vendor software that is going to power your brand. With ecommerce giants like Amazon, eBay etc. already dominating the marketplace space and customers conditioned to the ease of buying on these platforms, your brand needs a marketplace builder that gives you cutting-edge technology and builds an omnichannel marketplace website for your brand.

Here are the two most popular ways of building your multi-seller portal:

I) Custom-built marketplaces

Going for a custom-built marketplace solution can be an option for enterprise brands with deep pockets. However, the trade-off here is between building extremely customized software and the time taken in achieving that perfection. With the dynamic market conditions, time is of the essence and brands cannot afford to lose to competitors for lack of a fully-functional multi vendor marketplace solution to go live.

II) Turnkey multi vendor website builder 

Ready-to-use, customizable marketplace platforms are a smart alternative to building an online marketplace quickly. With SaaS-based  plug-and-play marketplace website builders like StoreHippo building any type of multivendor portal is easy. The MACH-based architecture gives enterprise brands agility, scalability and creative freedom to build tailor-made marketplaces in record time. Also, the cost is pretty decent as marketplace platforms like StoreHippo come with subscription plans for different budgets.  

8 features of a Multi Vendor Website Builder that help you manage your marketplace effortlessly

While modern marketplace platforms do offer the essential features to run and grow the business, running the marketplace efficiently becomes a cumbersome exercise if there is a dearth of features to make everyday business automated and streamlined. 

Here is a list of features you would need on your marketplace to make everyday life easier for your teams and vendors.

1. Comprehensive seller ledger

To guarantee the success of your multi vendor marketplace, you will need to onboard multiple vendors. While the more the merrier holds true to make your brand a success, managing a large number of vendors, their products, their orders, payments, commissions etc. can be a daunting task.  Also, depending on the types of products sold, the rules of payment and commissions will be different for different sellers. 

Setting these rules annually for each seller can take ages. The best thing to have in such a scenario would be a comprehensive seller ledger that allows the admins to set rules for calculating and tracking the payments and receivables for the sellers on the marketplace store. StoreHippo multi vendor website builder enables you to set up individual vendor rules for payments, commissions, and related concerns. The comprehensive seller ledger displays everything you need to know about vendor payments, transactions, pending orders, invoices, and more in a few clicks.

2. Simplified tax calculations 

Taxes can be overwhelming but they need to be managed well to run a successful ecommerce business. Having multiple vendors from different industries and geolocations makes tax compliance all the more complex. Automating and streamlining taxation on your multi vendor marketplace can make your business more aligned with stipulatory government requirements.

Well, a built-in ecommerce tax engine in your ecommerce platform can simplify all the tax calculations related to your vendors and their online sales. StoreHippo comes with a powerful tax engine and full GST support for multi vendor marketplace. You can apply different tax rules for multiple product lines, buyer locations, and vendors. With the powerful tax engine of StoreHippo, you can create different tax rules based on countries, order amounts, and products. You can also add multiple taxes under a single tax. With Storehippo native tax-feature multi-level taxation on your marketplace website is easily taken care of.

3. Easy adaptive payments

Starting an online marketplace is a great idea but when there are multiple sellers in the fray, it becomes very difficult to calculate and manage the payments. Usually, buyers tend to add multiple products to their cart and these products might be from different sellers. After the checkout, streamlining different products’ payments to their respective vendors can be challenging if an automated system to do so is not in place.

 Fortunately, StoreHippo has an automated payment system to handle the admin and seller payments seamlessly. It gets much easier with the adaptive payment feature under which the order amount gets automatically split between the admin and one or more sellers from the payment gateway itself.

4. Powerful Discount Engine

To grow your multi vendor marketplace, you need strategic marketing and promotions that engage and convert your buyers. And the best way to attract and convert your buyers is by offering them discounts. We bet no customer can ever resist the pull of discounts and deals. But how do you implement multi-level discounts for different product categories, brands and sellers on your multi-seller site?

While a cutting-edge marketplace platform is essential for your online business but marketing is what rules the business. The right marketing strategies, technology, and automation is the key to your online success. StoreHippo multi vendor website builder comes with a gamut of marketing tools along with a powerful discount engine. Using the discount engine you can create a variety of coupons and promotions to boost the conversion rate on the website. 

You can also drive personalized marketing campaigns based on product choices, devices, order volumes, time, sellers, and much more. You can also compare the results of these discounts and offers and use the best-performing ones in future to grow your business. Isn’t this an easy and assured way to boost your marketplace brand’s visibility and win customer loyalty?

5. Shipping Management And Automation

Logistics can make or mar your online business. Getting your marketplace website up and running is one thing, but managing shipping processes for hundreds of your vendors can be quite a task. As soon as a customer places an order, checking the ordered items, allotting them to their respective vendors, and arranging their timely packaging, pick up and dispatch is no mean feat. To keep your supply chain streamlined you need to give automated shipping features to all your vendors.

StoreHippo understands the importance of logistics for eCommerce success and comes with 30+ integrated shipping solution providers.  With StoreHippo your vendors can use one or many of the integrated shipping partners, manage their shipping, avail discounted shipping with chosen partners, manage product pickups, and even use their own fleet of delivery boys to deliver the orders received on your multi vendor marketplace. By offering automated and integrated shipping solutions, StoreHippo helps in making selling effortless on your marketplace.

6. Seamless Third-Party Integrations

Building a successful marketplace requires not just the best multi vendor website builder but also a unique eCommerce environment. And to build this tailor-made solution your brand will require integrations with multiple third-party software and service providers. From managing your internal teams to customers to handling your accounting and compliances, third-party providers can work wonders to make your processes efficient and your business like none other.

You might even feel the need to integrate some of your existing business systems like ERP, marketing and mailing software etc. into the new ecommerce platform. Having marketplace software that enables seamless integrations is a prerequisite for the success of your marketplace website. StoreHippo comes with 160+ integrations and its API-based architecture allows you to seamlessly integrate with your preferred software and solution provider thus streamlining your ecommerce business operations.

7. Mobile Apps to Run Business On-the-go 

Mobile is where we are, as vendors, as customers and as business owners. While building marketplace apps for your buyers ensures you can leverage m-commerce to your advantage, it is also important to enable your vendors and internal teams to manage the business on the go. Equipping your multi vendor marketplace to make the best use of mobile commerce for all parties involved is the best way to future-proof your brand.

We at StoreHippo have understood this concept long back and that’s why we built our platform on a mobile-first approach. What’s more? StoreHippo not only helps you build customer-facing mobile apps and PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) stores, it also gives you mobile apps for your vendors, admins, delivery boys etc. With storehippo m-commerce capabilities you can operate your marketplace website on any device and from anywhere. Isn’t this the surest way to grow your business in a competitive market? It sure is!

8. Hassle-free Returns and Refunds 

Even the most successful business have to deal with the menace of returns and refunds. While no business wants to have more returns or refunds a certain percentage of refunds and returns can be a good way to establish your brand as customer-centric. After all the trade-off boils down to losing a customer forever or returning/refunding an order. Any business will certainly choose the latter.

With a vast number of products on your multi vendor marketplace, the everyday number of returns and refunds will also be substantial. Also, there might be scenarios where in a multi-product order, buyers might wish to keep certain products from some sellers and return some products from some other sellers. Managing such complex returns and refunds on a daily basis needs a well thought, quick and easy-to-execute module.

Giving a simplified dashboard to your vendors for returns and refund management is a great idea. Just like StoreHippo does. With our multi vendor marketplace platform, you can easily manage returns and refunds of various vendors with a central dashboard. Vendors can also manage returns and refunds on their own. Doesn’t this simple approach simplify the overall operation of your marketplace website a great deal? We bet it does and makes your brand stand out from the others. 

With so many features to make running your marketplace seamless, StoreHippo multi vendor website builder is the best solution to build a variety of B2B, B2C, B2B2C, service aggregator, hyperlocal and other marketplaces for enterprise brands. 

Why choose StoreHippo multi vendor website builder?

There is no doubt that online marketplaces are promising and give a competitive edge to your business. Launching your marketplace and growing your online business needs a future-proof solution to help you build your niche.

StoreHippo offers a 360-degree marketplace solution for brands planning to leverage the multi seller model for business growth. Here is what makes StoreHippo the best-fit marketplace platform for your brand:

• Future-ready technology and MACH architecture that helps in building agile and scalable solutions
• Decoupled headless platform that helps in creating omnichannel touchpoints and makes personalisation easy
• 300+ built-in features to help implement desired features and flows on your marketplace website
• M-commerce advantage with built in mobile apps builder and mobile-first approach
• Complete vendor management solutions with separate dashboard for vendors to manage their business
• Built in support for a variety of business models like B2C, D2C, B2B, international businesses, multi store network, multilingual, multi-currency etc.
• Gamut of inbuilt marketing tools and easy integrations with top-notch marketing software
• Integrated shipping and payment solutions

StoreHippo’s well-rounded marketplace solutions make it possible to build disruptive marketplace websites for enterprise brands.

Conclusion

StoreHippo offers an easy-to-use, one-stop, cutting-edge marketplace platform for businesses planning to make the most of the win-win multi-seller business model. There is a strong reason why we call ourselves a one-stop solution. We do not only provide you a future ready technology to create a marketplace but also provide end-to-end solutions to run your B2B, D2C or B2C business successfully. 

StoreHippo multi vendor website builder has been powering domestic and international marketplace websites across industry verticals. Ready to make your business idea a reality? Check out the amazing features of StoreHippo multi vendor marketplace platform by starting your 14-day free trial now.