10 Features To Start An Online Marketplace Platform That Stays Ahead Of The Competition

Today, everything has been digitized, from groceries to clothes and so the multi-vendor marketplaces.

According to internet retailer’s analysis, the sales on marketplace sites like Amazon, eBay account for more than 52% of the global web sales and are increasing over time. It is also expected that online marketplace sites will mark sales of more than $3.1 trillion by 2021.

Are you still wondering if this is the right time to start an online marketplace platform?

“Yes, it is”. And in fact, there is no better time to become a marketplace business owner. Before you decide to enter into the online world, the first thing you should know is the top features that can help you stay ahead of the competition. Well, you don’t have to beat the existing giants like Amazon to get success. 

But you need to know the secrets to make your online marketplace on the top.  Let us help you with the top secrets to creating your niche in an online marketplace that stays ahead of the competition. 

Top 10 features you need to have in your multi-vendor marketplace

1. Amazing mobile shopping experiences

Mobile and ecommerce go hand in hand. A great online marketplace offers three mobile solutions. First is to ensure a mobile responsive view that accommodates the content on different devices. Second is the Progressive Web Apps (PWA) that make the website look, feel and work like mobile applications. The mobile-specific template of a multi-vendor marketplace optimizes the website well and generates a very less loading time. Lastly, the mobile app solution as it has become the most preferred shopping channel for online buyers.

How about getting all of these solutions on a single ecommerce platform? Yes, StoreHippo makes it possible for you with its mobile-first approach. It offers the most amazing mobile experience and helps you build a future-ready online marketplace.

2. Product ratings and reviews

Adding product ratings, reviews, and recommendation features to your website is one of the top strategies in the ecommerce industry. Surely, there is a strong reason behind it and that is “Trust of customers”.

The existence of ratings and reviews build the much-needed rapport and trust for the website. It clearly acts as social proof and personal recommendations that contribute well to the conversion ratio of your multi-vendor marketplace platform. The easy product review features of StoreHippo allow your customers to rate and review the products of your marketplace website. It gives a boost to customer engagement as well as the sales on your website.

3. Attractive design and high speed of the website

The modern online businesses are based on design and speed factors. An unimpressive website kills the interests of the customers and the slow loading of web pages frustrates them even more. In fact, research on website performance and conversions clarifies that a delay of even a single second decreases the satisfaction of customers by 16 per cent and impacts the conversion rates by 7 per cent.

Isn’t it a worthy decision to start an online marketplace platform that helps you with beautiful design themes and lighting speed? StoreHippo provides you just the same with their rich themes library to make your best-in-class online store.

4. Multiple payment gateways

A great ecommerce website always has multiple payment options to ease the buying process for customers. The process of integrating payment gateways may seem a daunting task, but a full-fledged ecommerce platform can make it as easy as pie for you. 

StoreHippo comes with pre-integrated payment gateways that help you offer multiple options to your customers along with “Cash on Delivery”. 

5. Customized marketing

If you have a multi-vendor marketplace, building and maintaining customer relationships is very important. Whether you are focusing on turning your website visitors into customers, engage with the existing customers, or convert the lost customers, the customized marketing features of StoreHippo can help you.

 The gamut of inbuilt marketing tools helps you to

• Offer customized coupons and discounts

• Create dynamic marketing pages

• Integrate with mailing software to run email marketing campaigns

• Bring back your incomplete checkout customers, and a lot more.

6. Integrated shipping

A seamless shipping process is a great source of customer satisfaction. It does not only make your shipping services easier but also ensures that your customers get real-time updates of their orders.

StoreHippo provides a dedicated logistics integration with ShipKaro to provide you a simplified one-click solution. The best part is that Shipkaro works with multiple logistics partners, helps you with automated logistics processes, and increases your market reach globally at zero setup fees.

7. Unified communication

Today, communication is everything because it helps you connect with virtual users wherever they are. For the same reason, you cannot plan to start an online marketplace platform without considering the paramount importance of unified notifications.

StoreHippo provides a state-of-the-art provision to manage vendor and customer communications through email, SMS, web, and push notifications. It helps vendors to be informed about order and payment status. And at the same time, it engages the customers in the best possible ways.

8. Advanced search and navigation

The search and navigation functionalities surely have the potential to increase the sales conversions of multi-vendor marketplace. Just imagine, you are shopping on a website and inadvertently type a wrong spelling into the site search, the website should take you to the right product instead of showing an error message or no results.

It means that the search and navigation capabilities can drive the scenario of winning or losing the customers. Keeping this importance on top priority, StoreHippo offers a powerful site-search and also helps you analyse the search behavior of customers for increased website sales.

9. Customer engagement

With the growth of the ecommerce market, the competition in online business is also growing. The easiest way to stand out of the crowd is to engage your customers on every platform. But it is not feasible to have a dedicated team for different channels like mobile, website, social media etc.

The one-stop solution to engage your customers is StoreHippo. It engages your customers on multiple channels through live chat, suggests products to cross-sell or upsell on the website, send customized messages on mobile to boost your conversions.

10. Fully secure portal

Of course, the security features cannot be ignored as it ensures that the crucial data of your multi-vendor marketplace such as credit card information is not compromised. StoreHippo takes care of the security of your website with SSL certification and highly secure payment gateways. The passwords are not stored in readable formats, web pages are protected by security layers, servers are secure using state-of-the-art infrastructure.

 Final words

Choosing StoreHippo to start your multi-vendor marketplace platform can help you build a full-fledged customized ecommerce solution. Explore how it can help in setting up your online marketplace and build your brand by starting your 14-day free trial.