Top 10 global online marketplaces (B2B+ B2C)

Did you know that the cross-border ecommerce market value is expected to reach $ 4 trillion by 2027? 

Surprising right?

Well, there's no second-guessing the fact that ecommerce is thriving all around the world. 

And online marketplaces have a big role in this growth.

Wonder how?

Let us take you through the maze of global ecommerce.

Why the online marketplace model is important for cross-border ecommerce

Let us look at a few global ecommerce growth trends to understand the market well. 

• 17% cross-border ecommerce transaction growth registered in 2020 alone
• 47% of global online purchases are done via online marketplace 
• 27.4% CAGR of global cross border ecommerce between 2019-2027
• ~4X growth in international cross border ecommerce market value from 2019 to 2026

Source: Statista, Zion Research

The trends are speaking things pretty clearly. Cross-border ecommerce is on the rise and people are flocking to global marketplaces. 

This is just the right time to start your own global online marketplace!

Top 10 global online marketplaces in 2023

Let us look at the top 10 global marketplaces to take inspiration from in 2023: 

1. Amazon global 

Amazon is indeed a household name all over the world. What started as a bookstore, is now the most popular multi seller portal in the US, Asia, Europe, the Middle East etc. The marketplace website sells products across various categories like apparel, electronics, furniture groceries and apparently everything you can imagine. Amazon onboards millions of vendors from across the globe, to become the largest international marketplace website.

2. eBay

A whopping 62 million users use eBay apps every month. eBay enterprise marketplace is popular for selling both old and new products in various categories such as electronics, fashion, entertainment, home appliances etc. eBay is a buzzing marketplace with millions of active users and products listed on the platform.

3. Alibaba

Alibaba is a famous buy and sell online marketplace with 270 million active buyers. What started as an online B2B wholesaler, has become China’s ecommerce king in over two decades. Alibaba Group works with the mission to make it easy to do business anywhere.

4. Etsy

Etsy is one of the quickest, cheapest, and the easiest ecommerce platforms to sell handicraft products online on. It is a diverse and thriving platform with over 43 different categories for its 40 million buyers. Etsy is no more just a marketplace website with craft supplies or vintage items, but also sells clothing, face masks, personal accessories etc. 

5. Catch.co

Catch Marketplace is an Australia-based e-commerce marketplace with a huge variety of products like health & lifestyle, home decor, fashion, accessories, sportswear, groceries and many others. The achievement and success of Catch.co has attracted a lot of sellers on the online marketplace with about 450,000 visits and 8,000 orders every day.

6. PayPay Mall Japan 

The largest online marketplace in Japan, the PayPay mall has over 2.1 billion visits monthly. It has attracted more than 39 million users in the two and a half-years since its launch. The merchant handling fees for the marketplace were set at zero for smaller firms until 2021 and are still as low as possible while covering costs. It sells apparel, jewelry, cosmetics, home goods, electronics, and sports products.

7. Walmart

The American multinational ecommerce marketplace offers unlimited free delivery and free shipping with no minimum order value. Walmart is the second biggest online retailer across the globe with a net income of $13.9 billion in 2022. 

8. Mercado Libre 

The enterprise marketplace is leading in South America with a unique user base of approximately 139.5 million in 2021 and has operations in 18 Latin American countries. Its expertise in selling electronics, clothing, home items, garden supplies etc. 

9. AliExpress Global

The AliExpress marketplace is widely known for selling products in almost all categories. As of January 2021, the number of visitors on AliExpress was 528 million. AliExpress is one of the largest marketplaces in the world and is active in 220 countries, available in 18 languages for enhanced user experience.

10. Rakuten 

Rakuten is Japan’s number one shop-centric online marketplace where sellers can fully control their storefront, product pages, and customer experiences. Rakuten is a virtual mall where each of the sellers looks and feels like a boutique or chain shop. With a customer-centric user experience, Rakuten is defined to attract sales. 

Well, these are a few of the millions of global online marketplaces that exist today. And we bet you are influenced by these success stories. However, to start your own multi vendor marketplace, to manage and grow the business, sellers need advanced enterprise ecommerce solutions like StoreHippo.  

Top features of StoreHippo that help build global enterprise marketplaces

StoreHippo is a powerful online marketplace builder that comes with advanced built-in multi vendor ecommerce solutions for seamless online buying and selling. With a host of best-in-class features, StoreHippo is just the right technical solution provider to seamlessly build, run and manage an online business.  

Let us look at the top features of StoreHippo:

1. Comprehensive Multi-vendor Management

With thousands of vendors coming together on the global online marketplace, it can be a daunting task to manage them seamlessly. However, with automated solutions from a comprehensive marketplace builder like StoreHippo sellers can streamline their day-to-day business activities. 

StoreHippo enables the admin to quickly onboard multiple vendors and manage them right from their dashboard. The store admin can access all the details of the business like vendor-specific sales, revenue, best-selling products, etc. right from the admin dashboard. The admin also has the power to approve or reject the products listed by the vendors on the platform, calculate his commission, analyse vendor performance etc.

2. Multi-store solutions

With multi-store ecommerce solutions, you can cater to a variety of audiences and increase conversions and ROIs, test in the global markets and improve the overall shopping experience of your customers. 

The multi-store ecommerce solutions from StoreHippo help the admin to create a chain of multiple storefronts on their enterprise marketplace for different product lines, geographies, customer segments etc. With the in-built features from StoreHippo like unique URLs, store specific discounts, etc. you do not need to buy or integrate third party apps or plugins to create multiple storefronts. 

3. Mobile-commerce edge

Almost 80% of online orders take place on smartphones today, emphasizing the need to leverage mobile-commerce to your customers. StoreHippo helps you achieve the m-commerce edge over your competitors. 

Built on mobile-first technology, StoreHippo helps you build Android and iOS mobile apps right from your admin dashboard. The online marketplaces powered by StoreHippo are PWA stores that look, feel and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices in low internet connectivity.

4. Go Global

Since you are planning to build a global online marketplace, it becomes essential to choose an ecommerce platform that comes equipped with global solutions. 

StoreHippo ecommerce platform helps online marketplaces expand their businesses to global markets with its gamut of global features. You can automatically translate your website to up to 100+ languages (including Right to Left languages like Arabic). With integrations like international shipping partners, multiple domestic and international payment gateways, multi-currency payments, and features like multi-currency invoicing, built-in tax engine, location-based pricing etc. StoreHippo makes it easy for expanding your business to the global market.

5. Flexibility & performance

A flexible platform that has tools and features to make customization a breeze, helps marketplaces expand as the business grows and traffic increases. StoreHippo is a SaaS-based enterprise marketplace platform equipped with the latest technology for enterprise businesses. The StoreHippo platform can be tweaked in and out to customize according to the unique flows and requirements of enterprise brands. It helps you build high performance online marketplaces that can deal with the peak load spikes even if you experience load spikes across geographies at the same time.

6. Automated marketing tools

Once you have built your online marketplace, you also need to market it across multiple customer touchpoints. 

StoreHippo comes with a gamut of in-built marketing tools to help grow traffic and boost conversions. Enterprises can offer multi level discounts like flat or percentage-based discounts for products, user groups, device-specific audiences etc with the powerful in-built discount engine from StoreHippo. They can create dynamic marketing pages and offer coupons to their customers. Apart from this, they can also recover abandoned carts with personalized email and push notifications.

7. Customizations

Brands need to quickly adapt to the ever-changing market dynamics. With customizable turnkey enterprise ecommerce solutions brands can make quick changes in the front end as well as the backend . 

Built on the decoupled headless architecture, StoreHippo enables the brands to tweak the marketplace website platform inside out.  They can create customized offerings for their buyers and carve a niche for their brand. StoreHippo offers an array of options in theme, layout, font, colors etc to create custom themes and pages for the enterprise marketplace. Brands can customize their shipping solutions and digital payments to offer localization and personalization.

8. Integrated payment gateways

Offering a frictionless payment process is the key to a successful online business. Customers feel confident and comfortable when they get a wide option of payment gateways to choose from. 

StoreHippo comes with multiple pre-integrated payment gateways to help the sellers provide a fast and frictionless payment process to their customers on the marketplace website. Sellers can choose from 60+ domestic and international payment gateways to facilitate ease of payment from any corner of the world. You can also implement multiple payment gateways based on the locations/devices of the buyers supporting transactions in multiple currencies.

Conclusion

To build a successful B2B or B2C global online marketplace, enterprises need a comprehensive ecommerce solution provider. StoreHippo is a cutting-edge enterprise platform that can build highly advanced multi vendor ecommerce solutions for businesses across all industry verticals.

Built on MACH architecture, StoreHippo uses decoupled headless commerce solutions to enable all small and large brands to build tailor-made solutions for their brands. It comes with 120+ integrations and offers 300+ built-in features with plug-and-play enterprise solutions to build custom enterprise marketplaces.

Are you ready to explore the enterprise-grade features and build your own global marketplace website? Start your own 14-day free trial now.