7 Must-Have Features In Your Enterprise Marketplace Software

Are you planning to launch your enterprise marketplace?

Juggling your choice of marketplace software but not able to zero in on the best one for your brand?

Need advanced marketplace software that can be tailored to your brand’s unique needs? 

Let’s make the task easier for you by doing some reverse engineering. So let us first define the goals and then find the means, i.e; the best marketplace software to help you get started.

Top reasons to build an Enterprise Marketplace

We know that the multi vendor marketplace model comes with a host of benefits and is a virtual goldmine for all the parties involved. Here are a few trends that further highlight the growing popularity of the marketplace set up:

• $ 4.5 trillion is the value of the global B2C e-commerce market in 2023
• $ 96 billion is the estimated increase in the Indian B2C e-commerce in 2024 
• 47% of global online purchases are done via online marketplace platforms 
• 37% of repeat buyers buy from an online marketplace
• 31% of the first-time buyers prefer buying from an online marketplace 

Clearly, online marketplaces are loved by the buyers. Reason enough to consider the business model and build a marketplace website.

But that’s not all. Here is why brands are increasingly opting for a marketplace portal for their business. Building a marketplace website helps enterprise brands;

• Create a niche brand by onboarding the best vendors on your marketplace
• Create multiple revenue streams without investing in inventory
• Experiment with hybrid business models for disruptive growth
• Build a scalable business model for quick growth
• Easily diversify to new product/industry verticals

Well, with the goals clearly lined up, you now just need to find a marketplace website builder that helps you achieve these. Before we go into checking out the features let's first understand what an enterprise marketplace builder comprises.

What is enterprise marketplace software?

An enterprise marketplace software is an advanced ecommerce platform enabling large enterprise brands to sell their products or services to their customers. The enterprise ecommerce platform is different from regular marketplace solutions in ways that they are designed to handle the complex and unique requirements of high-volume businesses. 

The enterprise ecommerce platform comes with advanced ecommerce features to make innovative, custom marketplaces for B2B, B2C or hybrid business models. With the right enterprise marketplace software brands can experiment with various business models and create disruptive enterprise marketplaces. To do so, marketplace software should be easily customizable, agile and support a variety of business models like multi store solutions, multilingual websites, hyperlocal ecommerce features etc. 

StoreHippo is an inherently scalable, fully hosted, and managed enterprise marketplace platform that offers comprehensive enterprise-grade features for building big marketplaces with a large vendor/dealer network. StoreHippo can easily manage the complexities of large businesses allowing them to reach and grow in new markets. 

7 must-have features in your enterprise marketplace software

Building, managing, and growing a large marketplace is no mean feat. It takes a host of advanced features and tools to build a successful enterprise marketplace. To build, run, grow, and stay ahead of the competition, enterprise brands need to be future-ready with futuristic features in their enterprise marketplace software. 

Here is a list of 7 must-have features in your enterprise marketplace software

Future-ready tech

Well, there’s no denying the fact that two enterprise businesses never have similar requirements. Given the current market scenario, businesses need to remain agile and customer-centric. To build innovative marketplace solutions attuned to the dynamic market trends, enterprise brands need greater creative controls and cutting-edge technology solutions that help them design tailored solutions. 

Brands need next-gen technologies that future-proof their business and offer 360-degree enterprise marketplace solutions to run and grow the business in a hassle-free manner. 

StoreHippo is an advanced multi seller solution provider powered by next-gen MEAN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS, and NodeJS) stack and SPA (Single Page Application), that helps build cutting-edge ecommerce solutions for businesses of every scale and size.  Built on the powerful MACH architecture, StoreHippo enables enterprise brands to experiment, innovate and scale without compromising on performance. With the decoupled headless commerce solutions, brands can easily create highly personalized buyer journeys and go for targeted marketing for faster growth.

End to end vendor management solutions 

With a vast vendor/dealer network for their online marketplace, it can be a daunting task for enterprise brands to manage their vendors, their products and catalogs, orders etc. In such cases, enterprise businesses need a marketplace solution that offers automated solutions and an easy to use vendor management module that streamlines day-to-day business processes and operations. 

StoreHippo offers a comprehensive admin dashboard that reflects the overview of everyday business activities and vendor performance. Admin can access the fine details of the business like vendor-specific sales, revenue, best-selling products, etc. from the admin dashboard of their marketplace website. The marketplace admin also has the power to add, approve, or reject vendors and their products, view complete vendor details, calculate their commission and payouts, and analyze performance of the vendor, online store and traffic.

Scalability

Is your brand able to offer a seamless buying experience to the buyers even when it scales up to millions of customers and thousands of products? Many enterprise businesses tend to ignore the speed and scalability of their site whilst dealing with a high volume of products, users, customers, and orders. Scalability and performance should always go hand in hand and your marketplace website builder should be designed to offer top-notch speed even if your brand scales up astronomically. This is one of the most important features to look for in your marketplace software as you build a marketplace website.

StoreHippo comes to your rescue with its secure and inherently scalable cloud-native infrastructure. It supports the growth of enterprise brands and helps them plan growth strategies without worrying whether the marketplace platform will be able to accommodate their growth or not. The elastic scalability of the cloud-native infrastructure along with auto-provisioning of servers ensures that enterprise brands need not worry about peak load tolerance or growing exponentially. 

Flexibility

Choosing a flexible ecommerce platform is the ultimate shortcut to your business growth. A flexible platform helps your enterprise marketplace to adapt quickly to the dynamic market and customer requirements. Rigid platforms that fail to offer quick and easy customizations can be the biggest deterrent in your enterprise brand’s growth. To race ahead of competition your brand needs to be equipped with tools and features that make customizations a breeze.

StoreHippo multi vendor marketplace platform can be completely moulded to fit the unique needs of your business and make your disruptive business ideas a reality. Unlike some of the major ecommerce platforms that can be only limited to front-end changes, StoreHippo platform can be tweaked in and out. StoreHippo comes with built-in entities which can be extended or customized to suit the unique flows and requirements of enterprise brands. With the ease of tweaking the frontend as well as the backend, building a future-ready enterprise marketplace becomes a reality for brands. Brands can also add different flows to grow their revenue streams.

Omnichannel ecommerce

Did you know that 90% of the customers look for consistent omnichannel interactions with enterprise brands. If you have not yet implemented omnichannel enterprise ecommerce solutions to target, engage, and convert your customers. Now is the time to get started. With customers looking forward to a brand presence across their favorite channels, going omnichannel is the fastest route to better customer engagement and boosting your conversions manifold. Building an omnichannel presence for your multi vendor marketplace also gives your enterprise marketplace a modern appeal. So your marketplace software should come with built-in omnichannel solutions to help you leverage multiple sales channels for business growth.

StoreHippo offers native omnichannel solutions for the multi channel needs of your brand. The omnichannel solution helps enterprise marketplaces offer personalized customer experience on channels your customers love to shop on. With omnichannel solutions at hand, brands can target product-market mixes for increased customer engagement and build a loyal customer base. StoreHippo omnichannel solutions enable the enterprise brands to :

• Quickly add new customer touch points using the same backend logic and APIs
• Create consistent buyer experiences across all channels
• Centrally control all the sales channels
• Get better customer insight on multiple channels
• Build data-driven strategies for growth by analyzing data from different channels

With the omnichannel solutions from StoreHippo, you can set your online marketplace to race ahead of your competition. 

Support for different business models

Enterprise brands often feel the need to scale or diversify to hybrid business models as their business grows. Also, businesses that start digitally native or offline , eventually like to create their phygital presence. To be able to shift from one model to another, it is important to build the business on an ecommerce platform that supports multiple business models like B2B, D2C, B2B, B2B2C and custom hybrid business models. 

The fully hosted and managed enterprise ecommerce platform, StoreHippo comes with inbuilt support for diverse business models. It also comes with battle-tested solutions to help enterprise marketplace brands go to the market in record time. The inherent flexibility and scalability offered by StoreHippo make it easy for enterprise brands to pivot to new business models easily or combine two or more models to create a hybrid business model. With the plug-and-play solutions from StoreHippo, brands do not require any additional apps or extensions to build hybrid solutions for their unique business needs.

Seamless integrations

To handle the complex ecommerce business ecosystem, enterprise businesses need a variety of third party tools and softwares. Using the best-in-breed software enterprise brands can create their very own unique ecommerce system that makes their processes faster, streamlined and efficient. Marketplace websites that use integrated services and software are better positioned to explore new growth opportunities and leverage data-driven insights for business growth. Many software solutions also help in improving customer engagement, shortening sales processes and reducing manual errors. 

StoreHippo offers seamless integrations with your choice of software to build innovative solutions using headless APIs. Enterprise brands can manage their business with hassle-free and quick integration of softwares like CRM, ERP, accounting, and so on. You can integrate with multiple delivery partners, payment channels, chatbots, live chat etc. StoreHippo comes with 120+ built in integrations and integrates easily with the preferred software and service providers of enterprise marketplace brands. With its integrated logistics and payment gateways StoreHippo amkes it easier for brands to implement faster checkouts and streamlined fulfillment.  

Conclusion

With the ever-changing dynamics of the ecommerce world, it is imperative to have a future-ready ecommerce technology partner for your enterprise marketplace brand’s success. The features listed above can help enterprise brands build a marketplace portal that enables their brand to create a niche.

StoreHippo is a one-stop solution for all the needs of your enterprise brand providing a winning edge over the competition. It offers comprehensive multi vendor marketplace solutions to build a variety of marketplace websites for businesses of every scale and size. With 300+ inbuilt features and 120+ built-in integrations brands can go for extensive experimentation to set their business apart from the competitors. The future-ready technology not only helps build an online marketplace but also helps run B2B or B2C businesses successfully. StoreHippo ecommerce solutions offer 360-degree solutions that include product and order management, marketing tools, pre-integrated logistic solutions, payment gateways, and go-global features for seamless international businesses. 

Ready to chart the success story for your enterprise brand as you build a marketplace website? Start your 14-day free trial now and explore all the features you can have in your enterprise marketplace software. 

FAQ 

Kws: enterprise marketplace, online marketplace, marketplace website, multi vendor marketplace, build a marketplace website

1. Will it be possible for my vendors to set their own prices on my enterprise marketplace?

Yes, it will be possible for your vendors to set their own pricing on your enterprise marketplace powered by StoreHippo ecommerce solutions. StoreHippo’s inbuilt tiered pricing helps you implement and manage multi-pricing on your marketplace. Your vendors can quickly set up multi-level prices like volume-based pricing, rule-based prices, min-max quantity-based pricing, customer segment, or customer-specific pricing to attract customers from various segments.       

2. Can the marketplace platform accommodate special offers and discounts for vendors on the marketplace website?  

Depends on your choice of marketplace platform. As you choose StoreHippo marketplace website builder, you can manage vendor-specific offers, discounts, taxes, shipping, etc., based on several factors. You can offer some special discounts to your premium vendors or relax shipping charges to promote them. StoreHippo enables you to set up vendor-specific discounts and shipping charges and promote the bestselling products or vendors. 

3. Will it be possible to handle transactions in different countries and currencies on my enterprise marketplace?

Yes, with StoreHippo it is possible to handle transactions in different currencies and countries on your multi vendor marketplace. StoreHippo comes with easy global solutions to help you take your business beyond borders. You can cater to diverse audience segments from multiple countries by creating multiple storefronts for different locations. StoreHippo enables you to build sub-stores right from your admin dashboard and create different URLs for each sub-stores.  You can also onboard vendors from different countries on your marketplace with the comprehensive multi vendor solutions from StoreHippo. The multi-currency support from StoreHippo helps your customers make payments in their native currencies. You can enable IP-based auto switches or set different currencies for different locations. Your customers can also choose the currency of their choice while checking out. 

4. Can customers leave reviews for vendors and products on the online marketplace?

Yes, you can enable a custom feature for your customers to leave reviews for vendors and products on your online marketplace. However, it will entail extra customisation effort and cost depending on the requirements and efforts needed to build your tailored solutions. Based on your customization requirements our expert team will assess the time and effort and charges will be decided on a pro rata basis. 

5. Can we use our preferred analytics tools when we build a marketplace website?

Yes, StoreHippo supports multiple integrations with the tools and softwares of your choice. With its API-based headless architecture, you can integrate with multiple third-party tools like CRM, ERP, analytics, etc. However, StoreHippo comes with a gamut of analytics tools and solutions to help you analyze your customer base and make data-driven strategies for your enterprise marketplace. With StoreHippo, you can also build custom landing pages and forms to capture rich customer data that helps you make strategic decisions. 

6. Will it be possible to find an enterprise marketplace platform that supports multiple payment options like digital wallets, UPI, etc?

Yes, it is possible to find an enterprise marketplace platform that supports multiple payment options. StoreHippo is one such platform that comes pre-integrated with 60+ domestic and international payment gateways to help you offer a frictionless payment process to your customers. Your customers can choose from COD, net banking, digital wallets, card payments, etc, and pay  using their preferred payment option.    

7. Can vendors choose their shipping methods when we build a marketplace website using readymade multi seller software?

Yes, as you build a marketplace website with StoreHippo multi seller software, your vendors can choose their shipping solution from a host of options. StoreHippo comes pre-integrated with 30+ logistics solutions. You can choose to integrate with more than one shipping solution to optimize shipping costs and streamline a safe, error-free, and quick supply chain. With the built-in-delivery boy solution from StoreHippo, you can also onboard, manage, and track your fleet of delivery boys right from the admin dashboard and create a streamlined delivery solution for your multi vendor marketplace.

8. Will we receive support and training on how to use the enterprise marketplace platform?

Well, StoreHippo comes with an easy-to-use vendor dashboard that helps even novice sellers to easily sell on the ecommerce platform. The comprehensive vendor dashboard offers a separate vendor account for each seller to help them easily manage and perform their day-to-day business activities. Sellers can overview their order summary, sales report, etc in just a few clicks. However, StoreHippo enterprise marketplace builder offers a rich help center that comes with detailed answers to all your questions. Our rich help center contains all the information you need about working with StoreHippo. 

9. What features shall we look for in a multi vendor marketplace platform to be able to handle tax calculations for different countries?

When you choose your multi vendor marketplace builder, look for a powerful tax engine that helps you manage taxes from multiple countries seamlessly. For smooth global business operations, here are a few features offered by StoreHippo marketplace builder:

• Tax-based rules: You can set different tax based rules on your online marketplace to define when a tax will be applicable. You can set these tax-based rules on order amount, location, service type, product type, sellers, etc. 
• Tax-inclusive or exclusive pricing: You can specify if your product pricing is inclusive or exclusive of taxes. It will then be reflected in the final invoice. 
• Multi vendor support: You can also apply different GST tax rules for a multi-seller order. The taxes will be applied to products based on the vendor and buyer locations in a multi seller marketplace setup
• Full GST support: You can simplify and automate your taxes with full GST support for GST, CGST, SGST, or inter-state IGST. You can add different tax percentages, and easily compute different GST taxes for various products and services in India.
• GST-compliant invoices: Multiple readymade and editable invoice templates make it easy to create invoices and simplify the process of showing various components of GST in India. 

10. How secure is our data when we build our marketplace website using turnkey software?

Using turnkey enterprise marketplace software like StoreHippo helps you secure all your business data. StoreHippo comes with robust multi-layer security with an SSL certificate and highly secured payment gateways. You also get a free SSL certificate directly from the StoreHippo admin. As you build your website on the  PCI DSS compliant ecommerce platform, you can ensure payment safety and protect sensitive information like passwords, customer details, etc. seamlessly with StoreHippo ecommerce solutions.