Why this is the right time to launch your niche marketplace

Planning to launch your niche marketplace? 

Well, if there's one thing we've learned from the digital revolution, it is that timing is everything. 

And guess what? 

It's 2024, the year that's not just ripe, but bursting with the opportunity to build an online marketplace for your enterprise business.

Wonder why this year is your golden ticket to success in the digital commerce arena?

From shifting consumer behaviours to technological advancements and learnings from the pandemic, it is just the right time to seize the digital reins and ride the wave of innovation to unprecedented success. 

Yes, 2024 is your year to shine!

Why Your Business Needs To Build A Niche Marketplace

If you have been in a dilemma about building your marketplace website, here are some trends to guide you.

Check out why a marketplace website is your pot of gold:

• $8.7 trillion of sales forecasted via multi vendor marketplaces by 2025
• 62% of global online retail sales come through online marketplaces
• 48% of buyers go directly to a marketplace when shopping online
• 37% of buyers would prefer to make repeat purchase at an online marketplace
• 18% is the forecasted CAGR for online marketplaces for the period 2020-2025
• 56% of online retailers prefer to sell on marketplace platforms
• 37% would prefer to make a repeat purchase at an online marketplace
• 53% more user engagement on niche websites that general topic sites 
• 29% higher conversion rates for niche e-commerce sites than broader marketplaces
• 67% of consumers trust niche websites for specialized product recommendations.

Source:  Statista, Indie Media Club

The seismic shift in consumer behavior has led to shoppers embracing the convenience and accessibility of e-commerce like never before. With the evident higher engagement on niche marketplaces, brands are attracted to building their own presence. If you have been waiting for the right time to launch your niche marketplace, look no further than 2024. 

Why niche marketplace websites are popular?

A niche marketplace is a vertical marketplace that caters to a niche industry or buyer segment. A niche audience can be defined based on various demographics like their needs, preferences, and shopping interests.

Since niche marketplaces serve a narrow range of audiences, brands need to focus on the granular attributes the target audience might have. Also because of the highly defined target audience in a niche marketplace set up, brands face less fierce competition as compared to broader markets. 

Niche markets are also known to have a more loyal customer base and a higher customer lifetime value. 

Here are a few real-life examples of niche marketplace brands that deal with a specific niche category of products. 

Nykaa (cosmetics, beauty and personal care, apparel) 

Nykaa experienced exponential growth since 2018. The brand which started with a revenue of only a little more than five billion Indian rupees, amounted its yearly revenue to 51 billion rupees in the fiscal year 2023.

FirstCry (baby care, baby fashion, and accessories) 

FirstCry has over 380 stores across the country as of January 2020. The brand saw over 50% growth in its scale in the fiscal year ending March 2022. 

7 Reasons to launch your niche marketplace in 2024

As the global ecommerce marketplace has become more interconnected and accessible, the future of retail is digital, and the right time to stake your claim is now. 

Here are 7 reasons why you should launch your niche marketplace in 2024:

1. Greater ecommerce adaptability

Ecommerce has transformed the way consumers shop. Right from everyday essentials to luxury goods, customers can not only shop but also browse through multiple options in just a few clicks. Ecommerce has become an integral part of the consumer’s daily life for millions of consumers and has revolutionized the market by introducing a B2C or B2B niche marketplace. With greater ecommerce adaptability, chances of niche marketplaces (catering to unique buyer requirements) becoming popular has increased manifold. 

You just need to create a user friendly and technologically advanced marketplace for targeted audiences and onboard the best vendors to nail ecommerce success. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions is a fully hosted and managed enterprise ecommerce solution that comes with advanced enterprise-grade features to build a futuristic niche online marketplace for your business. Powered by a next-gen MEAN stack technology that helps build a cutting-edge enterprise ecommerce solution. Built on MACH architecture, StoreHippo solutions help enterprise brands experiment, innovate, and scale without having to compromise on the website’s performance. The decoupled headless architecture and modular approach give your teams the creative freedom to build niche marketplaces loved by buyers.

2. Easy availability of white label marketplace software

With a wide range of white label solutions available in the market to take your enterprise business online, now is just the right time to launch your niche B2C or B2B online marketplace. With the advanced multi vendor solutions available at a fraction of cost of building a marketplace from scratch, brands no longer need to spend heavily in terms of time and resources to build and launch their niche online marketplace. 

StoreHippo is a leading SaaS-based multi vendor platform that offers a comprehensive solution to build B2B, B2C, B2B2C, and custom white label online marketplaces across diverse industry verticals. StoreHippo comes with 300+ native features and 120+ integrations to help enterprise brands build their multi-channel presence and cater to a wide audience base. Brands can secure their place in the ecommerce market using StoreHippo’s white label marketplace software.     

3. Wider customer base Due to mobile channel adoption

74% of website visits happen via a smartphone and 73% of the orders come from mobile devices. Now as mobile phones have opened up new markets for business growth, tier II and III cities buyers are also opting for online shopping on the go. As you create your niche marketplace apps to target audience groups from aspirational markets, you can multiply your userbase manifold.

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solution is built on a mobile first technology that comes with a built-in mobile app builder. Enterprise brands can seamlessly build Android and iOS mobile apps directly from their admin dashboard without coding at zero additional costs. The marketplace websites powered by StoreHippo are PWA stores that look, feel, and work like mobile apps even on entry-level devices. StoreHippo also offers multiple mobile solutions for different users like admin, vendors, delivery boys etc to help them handle their business operations on the go. 

4. Targeted conversions with personalization

It’s 2024 and personalization has taken a front seat in driving sales on your niche marketplace. When you offer a hyper-personalized user journey to your customers, you can retain loyal customers. Implementing multi-level personalizations helps you push your customers to impulsive buying. As customers stay hinged to your brand, you can easily nudge them into buying more by sending out personalized notifications about upcoming offers and discounts. 

StoreHippo is built on a decoupled headless architecture to help you implement multi-level personalization on your enterprise marketplace. When you build an online marketplace, you can segment your customers and cater to the unique needs of your audience based on their locations, product choices, etc. You can offer multi-level discounts using the powerful discount engine and send out personalized notifications to your customers. You can also recover abandoned carts by contacting your customers in real-time. You can also customize your shipping solutions, logistics partners, payment methods, etc. with StoreHippo.

5. Access to global markets

Over $3.3 trillion in cross-border ecommerce transactions will be conducted in 2028, implying that a large chunk of customers prefer to buy from cross border brands today. As you build a niche marketplace, you get the freedom and agility to go beyond borders. With quick and easy access to global markets, it has become easy to tap into a wide audience base and capitalize on emerging market opportunities. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with a host of go global solutions to help enterprise brands take their global route seamlessly. You can create multiple online stores for various locations and cater to each audience segment. StoreHippo also helps you convert your marketplace into multiple languages including Right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew, etc. You can seamlessly translate content on your niche marketplace and create language-specific sub-stores for your customers. With StoreHippo’s 60+ domestic and international pre-integrated payment gateways you can also offer multi currency frictionless payment processes and enable customers to choose their preferred payment option. StoreHippo’s built-in tax engine helps you simplify and automate your taxes with full support for GST, CGST, SGST and inter-state IGST. You can also set different tax-based rules to define when a particular tax will be applicable.  

6. Easy to influence customers with data-driven marketing 

A niche marketplace gives you the perfect opportunity to tap targeted buyers with high buying intent. Afterall, only those who intend to buy lipstick will land on a beauty and personal care vertical marketplace, right?

By addressing the targetted buyer segment you already have half the battle won. As you implement insights from data-driven analytics, customer demographics, their buying preferences, browsing history etc, you can further ace your marketing game to engage and convert buyers. A niche marketplace helps you gain loyal customers and create personalized campaigns for social media and dynamic content for websites, so you can target the right person at the right time.   

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions offer a gamut of marketing tools to help enterprise brands create data-driven marketing strategies. With StoreHippo, you can create personalized landing pages and capture rich customer data by creating custom forms to interact with customers using the built-in forms builder. StoreHippo also helps you integrate with several data tools like Google Analytics, Zoho, etc. to get access to rich customer data. With other marketing tools like email, push notifications, SEO engine, data analytics, etc, you can leverage a conversion-oriented marketing strategy. StoreHippo white label marketplace software also helps you recover abandoned carts by sending out personalized notifications to your customers in real-time.      

7. Improved delivery with tech-driven fulfilment solutions

Customers love quick deliveries. COVID disruptions changed fulfillment forever and brought in new, better, faster, and streamlined fulfillment services. New shipping aggregators became market disruptors by making 1 day or even same day delivery possible. Well isn’t that the mantra to win buyers on your niche marketplace. A niche marketplace helps you leverage tech-driven fulfillment solutions and offer a streamlined delivery solution to your customers and win them for eternity. 

StoreHippo ecommerce solutions come with 30+ pre-integrated shipping solutions to help you offer a seamless flow of delivery to your customers. You can integrate with multiple shipping solutions to optimize the shipping charges. StoreHippo also helps you integrate with a local delivery partner of your choice for efficient delivery solutions. With the built-in delivery boy management solution, you can also manage your fleet of delivery boys and offer quick deliveries to your customers. 

Conclusion

To successfully build an online marketplace in today's saturated e-commerce landscape requires more than just creating a website and listing products. You need to understand the market dynamics, trends, customer preferences, and competitors that will help you identify gaps, opportunities, and potential niches to target.   

2024 is just the right time to launch your niche marketplace, all you need is a robust white label marketplace software like StoreHippo. The next-gen ecommerce platform, StoreHippo comes with 300+ enterprise-grade features to help you create a conversion-oriented niche marketplace. Built on headless architecture, StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce solutions give complete creative control and flexibility to build innovative niche marketplaces. With the advanced features and tools from StoreHippo you can handle complex ecommerce business models like B2B, B2B2C, D2C, B2C niche marketplace, or create any hybrid business model. 

All set to launch your niche marketplace in 2024 with StoreHippo? Explore the wide range of features by starting your 14-day free trial now.