Hey entrepreneur! Launching a multi vendor business is one thing. But that’s not all! Your journey actually begins when you start having customers to the storefronts and your venture makes a good amount of profit.
Unfortunately, very few multi-seller stores achieve this big milestone – where they attract sellers and buyers consistently.
There is no rocket science to build a marketplace website that actually sells. All you need is a good ecommerce platform and a few handy tools to help you come up with unique marketing strategies.
The trick is not to keep looking for out-of-the-box ideas (you will soon run out of them). Instead, reuse the same ideas, tweak them according to your business needs, be consistent in your efforts and win your customers.
In today’s blog post, we will run you through simple marketing hacks using some of the most basic tools of an online platform to help you build a marketplace website that actually sells!
Table of Contents
1. Look into the details
There are details in the design! The design you choose for your web pages, storefronts and especially your home and product pages translates your entire business idea in less than 3 seconds.
It is also the very first virtual impression that you can make on your customers’ on the basis of which they will decide whether to further navigate your website or not.
This does not mean that your website should just be beautiful. It should also be simple and functional with easy-to-locate buttons that offer ease of browsing.
StoreHippo ecommerce platform helps you build a marketplace website that provides an unforgettable user experience. Its DIY theme designer helps you create your pages with simple drag and drop customisations.
What more? The rich theme library comes with a developer-friendly interface to help you design without the need for any coding, mix and match your desired themes or switch to any other design whenever you want.
2. Focus on the content
In the yesteryears of ecommerce shopping, entrepreneurs used content marketing to set their brands apart from their competitors. However, in recent times, this is the main driving force behind the most successful digital marketing campaigns for any online marketplace.
In an online survey, 78% of customers said that they prefer getting to know a company via articles than ads. So if you systematically optimise your content through blogs, product descriptions, reviews and most importantly videos – it can help your customers understand your value proposition.
StoreHippo helps you scheme a strategic content marketing plan using it’s various tools specially designed to boost your SERP rankings. The solution gives you an SEO friendly online marketplace and lets you;
- Create different tags from your dashboard including canonical tags
- Define microdata on the pages
- Leverage its powerful blog engine
- Create long-tail keywords for reviews and product descriptions
- Incorporate videos for enhanced user-engagement
- Integrates with a variety of Google tools like Google Adwords and Google Analytics
3. Keep handy tools to boost your average order value
Having more customers to your online marketplace is not the only way to increase sales. Contrarily, you might want to look for ideas that help you boost your average order value. This way, despite an average flow of customers, sellers at your online marketplace will be able to make a good profit and you will be able to earn a decent commission.
Fortunately, online entrepreneurs have a lot of marketing tools at their disposal. Using them appropriately can help you achieve success and in no time you can see your store performing 10x better than your competitor.
So does an ecommerce solution have anything to do with this?
Well, of course, ready-made software comes up with various tools that can support your marketing plan and help you sell more.
StoreHippo offers all-round support by letting you combine different marketing gimmicks when you build a marketplace website. Using the feature-rich platform you can;
- Bundle two or more products together
- Upsell better quality product than the one in question
- Cross-sell different combinations of products
- Create wishlists for customers to remind them about their purchases
- Create enquiry forms to help your customers seek their desired product
4. Invite high-quality vendors and promote them
For your multi-vendor business to achieve success, you need to generate demand for the products on your storefronts. This is important to showcase an active proposition for your sellers.
Moreover, shoppers might not get drawn to an online marketplace that has few sellers or vendors on it. Hence you need to figure out whether to work on the demand or supply first!
To begin with, we recommend you to attract high-quality vendors with excellent products to display. StoreHippo also lets you promote your top-performing vendors. Once these are listed and you have worked on your product pages along with enough reviews and recommendations, customers will follow suit.
With StoreHippo, they can also have a fair vendor comparison to help them analyse, review or recommend products or vendors on your online marketplace.
Besides this here are a few things you can do, to begin with, when you are looking for a good vendor database;
- Identify your core group of sellers on online platforms, other similar marketplaces, social groups and even offline
- Provide your sellers with a competitive working space where they can manage their storefronts, inventories and individual business flow through separate vendor dashboards
- Run marketing campaigns and optimise your multi-vendor site to drive traction for your vendors
- Provide them ecommerce logistics support and other indirect or extended support for taxes, payments, etc. when you build a marketplace website
- Keep loyalty or reward points for customers to give them a chance to visit your online marketplace time and again
Integrate with reliable shipping carriers
The majority of online shoppers have to say that good shipping services are one of the primary reasons why they prefer one particular website over another.
A good shipment strategy helps to speed up your business revenue by simplifying the purchasing process for customers. Efficient and secure shipments can influence buyers’ decisions, boost sales and create return visitors.
StoreHippo ecommerce platform integrates your online marketplace with its shipping aggregator, ShipKaro. This way you can help your vendors connect with reliable shipping partners at reasonable rates. The automated services enable seamless logistics along with the facilities of real-time tracking of shipments, bulk order uploads, partial deliveries and more.
With StoreHippo, you can be rest assured to have a well-functioned logistics backup and ship globally.
Designed to sell
Owning a multi-vendor business is like having a chicken that lays golden eggs! When you build a marketplace website you already have an upper edge to make more profit than just a simple web store.
The only real investment you need to focus on is for a good ecommerce platform that is equipped with all the tools to help you promote your business.
The best way to go about it is by partnering with a reliable name in the market that helps you create your unique multi vendor store with in-built and custom modules.
StoreHippo helps you with all the necessary steps that are required to create a buzz about your online marketplace. You can experience the feature-rich platform with a 14-day trial store and know it all!
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