How to Rule the Hyperlocal Ecommerce Market for Home Services

Which is the first brand that comes to your mind when we say an Online store for Home Services? UrbanClap (Urban Company), isn’t it? 

In recent years, people have grown used to the convenience that this brand offers to its customers. Right from salon services to maintenance, cleaning, repair and pest control - you can get everything at your door-step.

So how about opening a similar kind of an online store, especially in times of need? With the lockdown restrictions, more and more brands from the grocery and FMCG sectors are turning towards online sales. It is estimated that even the home service industry will follow suit and flourish. 

Why is that so? A hyperlocal ecommerce market for needs like plumbing or carpentry reduces your customers’ problems of finding local expertise. At the same time, it also helps in creating work opportunities for hundreds of technicians who are otherwise struggling to make ends meet amidst the pandemic. 

How does a Hyperlocal ecosystem for home-services work?

A Hyperlocal ecosystem works on the concept of geography and time. For domestic services, this model is no different. It works by helping technicians and professionals connect with people for different needs such as plumbing, repair and more. 

Individual electricians, carpenters or small shop owners can become vendors at your multi-vendor ecommerce. When a customer from a particular area raises a requirement, the service-provider closest to the customer’s location or matching the need of the user’s request can accept it and provide the service. 

However, you wouldn’t be the only one thinking about this grand idea. By now, a bunch of entrepreneurs might have jumped into the ecommerce arena and fused their ideas with the concept of hyperlocal.

So how do you think you can survive the cut-throat competition and rule the market? 

How to rule the Multi-Seller ecommerce market for home services

If you haven’t ventured into the ecommerce world, then the first thing you need to know is this: You will require an online platform to build your multi-seller store.  

An online platform helps you come up with your store instantly. It comes with inherent features that can help you design your website and manage your business processes- from listing and organising your vendors’ activities to marketing and shipping. With an online platform, you can; 

1. Onboard different expertise through multi-vendor support

Unless you do not invite the vendors on your website, then all you have is an empty architecture that will not be able to drive traffic. Hence, listing vendors on your Multi-Vendor Ecommerce is an important step. 

This is referred to as the vendor onboarding process. You can either invite technicians to list their services for free or charge a registration fee.  

An online solution helps you with the onboarding of vendors and compartmentalising them. Each of your vendors is provided separate seller space to list down their information and services and to receive payments. 

As the admin of the store, you are provided with an admin dashboard from where you can control your vendors’ approval flow, commissions, etc. This way, you can keep an eye to the overall vendor activities. 

2. Have Automatic Order Routing

Like we mentioned above, the whole concept of Hyperlocal ecommerce depends on geography and time. This means you need to serve your customers from the nearest service-provider and mostly within 24 hours. 

Say, for instance, a customer places a request for plumbing service in an XYZ area. One of your vendors is located at a distance of 3 KM from your customer’s home and another at a distance of 5 KM. 

In this case, the order automatically gets diverted to the nearest vendor to speed the process and service. 

An online platform should be able to provide you the facility of automatic order routing. This is a must-have functionality to beat the services of just any other multi-seller business for home services. 

3. Start selling on mobile

The majority of your customers will look up for your services through their smartphones, at least more than 80% of them. Also, most of the customers prefer apps they use frequently. 

If you haven’t thought of a Mobile app, now is the time. Today, when customers do everything on their phones, providing them with the best mobile experience is the least you can do.  

To enhance user experience while at the same time managing the cost of your multi-vendor ecommerce, you can opt for Progressive Web Apps. These are accessed by users in the web browser itself and have all the features of native apps, for example;

• App shortcut installation on the mobile home screen
• Ability to access the app offline
• Push notifications

Saying so, a hyperlocal ecommerce could be a gamechanger for your business, provided you sell on mobile!

4. Have multilingual stores

We live in a cosmopolitan culture where people from various cities and cultures are located within the same neighbourhood. However, not all of them prefer to communicate in English. 

Providing customers with an option to read content on your hyperlocal ecommerce in their preferred language makes your business more relatable and a local favourite. That’s not it! You will see the sales cycle completing faster. 

Language is a great barrier to any community. If you can overcome this hurdle, you can rest assured that your concept is sold! 

The Multilingual feature of an online solution makes it easy to build your store in multiple languages. Hence, choosing a platform that offers the ease of auto-language change can be extremely useful. 

5. Offer multiple Payment options

Marketing Gurus agree that it’s a good business practice to offer your customers multiple options to make payments on your multi-vendor ecommerce. But it’s not hypothetical alone. Some statistics support the fact that your conversion rate will increase if you offer customers various options for payment. 

Online shoppers comprise all different kinds of customer mindsets and having various expectations. Multiple options are necessary to meet all of their demands.

Also, offering your customers to pay through debit/credit cards, eWallets or COD, makes your company for home services look professional and trust-worthy. 

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

StoreHippo online solution is a modern-age ecommerce platform that offers end-to-end solutions to create and support a business model of any size and niche. 

With its inherent features like those mentioned above your startup for home services can get at par with experienced players.

StoreHippo helps you lead the hyperlocal ecommerce market with;

• Appealing and SEO optimised location-based sub-stores
• Location-based services and location capture with Google Map
• Unified notifications to keep your customers and agents informed about individual order and service-completion process
• Integrated logistics support with its shipping aggregator platform, ShipKaro

With StoreHippo online platform, you can not only create a multi-vendor ecommerce website but also leverage its tools to market your business. In this way, you can give your business a quick head start and ensure sustainability. 

So are you ready to go the hyperlocal way? Learn more about our extensive features with a 14-day Free Trial store or connect with us at [email protected]