If you search Google for the greatest revenue generating ecommerce businesses, you will get the names of multi vendor marketplaces like Amazon, eBay etc. Even if the names, brands, and owners are different, the common thing is that the business model is a huge success whatever be the industry vertical.
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Why is the multi vendor marketplace a winning business model?
The successful companies like Amazon, eBay are proving themselves in the ecommerce industry. The multi vendor business model has gained a lot of popularity as this model benefits all, the owner, the vendors and the customers. There are plenty of reasons why you should launch your online marketplace. Some of the benefits are listed below:
- Expansion to new geographies and product verticals
- Commission on every order placed on the portal
- No inventory management
- Multiple revenue streams to earn more from your marketplace website
- Complete control over the products, vendors, business outputs
Building a marketplace app like Amazon is not as difficult and costly as it seems. With ready-to-go options to enter into the world of ecommerce, there is nothing that can stop you from online business success.
How to build an online marketplace?
Well, there are various methods of building multi vendor marketplace but there are varied factors attached to this decision including the cost factor. Another important factor is the time spent on developing the marketplace solution. Every method has its pros and cons but the clear insight will help you evaluate the options on most important factors – cost, customizability, IT skills requirement, go-to market time. Let’s compare different methods of building a marketplace website to ensure the best for your business.
8 Easy steps to build a multi vendor marketplace on a budget
1. Choose a suitable ecommerce software
The right software must offer all a set of inbuilt features to run everyday business seamlessly. It also helps in automating your routine business tasks like marketing, inventory management, order management, and much more. StoreHippo helps you to ease the challenging process of vendor onboarding in a few clicks. And also help the vendors in managing their products, orders, customers, and payments. The e commerce marketplace website also requires to distribute payout commissions to multiple vendors that can take a lot of time and effort as a business owner. But StoreHippo eases even this process with the hassle-free payout commissions management features.
2. Purchase a domain name and hosting
Next step is to buy a domain name, SSL, and web hosting. These are the basic requirements for launching your online store. With StoreHippo, you can get a free SSL and fully-hosted solution without any additional cost.
3. Choose the right plan
It is important for an ecommerce plan to support your business model. So, always choose a plan that matches your budget and customized business requirements whether you deal with B2B or B2C products. StoreHippo offers a variety of plans to launch your multi vendor marketplace and flexibility to update your plan anytime.
4. Select a Theme and Design
Once you have chosen the suitable business plan, it is the time to decide the theme and design of your multi vendor website. With StoreHippo, you can customize your website theme and even blend the elements of the old theme into the new theme.
5. Add products and upload information
Next is to get ready with the product pages to complete your ecommerce marketplace website. With the easy-to-use dashboard, you can onboard new vendors in a few clicks. The vendors can upload products, descriptions, images, prices from their individual dashboard without any hassles. The store owners can approve or reject the products according to their choice.
6. Set Shipping Channels
Shipping is a backbone of a marketplace website business as it supports your vendors by offering multiple shipping options. An integrated logistics solution of StoreHippo ensures wide coverage and discounted pricing. The high-end shipping features support your vendors in a multi vendor marketplace by offering multiple shipping options. Some of the other top features of shipping solutions include discounted shipping, automated processes, shipping globally, add multiple logistics partners of your choice, and much more.
7. Setup Payment Methods
Getting all the key functionalities of a multi vendor marketplace like payment, shipping, and all other business processes at one place is a happy solution. StoreHippo comes with 60+ integrated payment gateways to offer seamless payments to your customers. The adaptive payment features of StoreHippo allow you to provide seamless payment options where the order amount gets split between admin and sellers right from the payment gateway.
8. Go Live
Once everything is ready, test your marketplace for internal errors. Besides getting a live website, you can get fast loading mobile websites and PWA (Progressive Webs Apps) stores technology with StoreHippo.
Conclusion
How StoreHippo helps you build a best-in-class multi vendor marketplace?
Choosing the right multi vendor marketplace platform is important for your online business success. And the features of an online marketplace ensures the successful launch of your online store and its continued success.
If you are new to ecommerce and don’t have enough time to build an online store from scratch, Storehippo is your one-stop solution. The ready-to-use platform is designed to build an easy-to-use marketplace platform. Schedule a free 14-day online trial store to explore features and launch your online marketplace on a budget.
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