Build a B2B Marketplace Website

Why enterprise brands should build a marketplace website

By deciding to build a B2B marketplace website enterprise brands can modernise, automate and make their business more streamlined. A B2B multi-vendor marketplace offers additional digital sales channels to the enterprise brands and its vast network of sellers, vendors, distributors etc.

Traditionally B2B and wholesale businesses work in a fragmented and disjoint manner. Bringing sellers, distributors, clients and other third-party vendors on a common B2B multi-vendor ecommerce website enables brands to organize and structure their business efficiently.

Here are the other benefits wholesale brands can get when they build a B2B marketplace website:

Organize and structure the business to get better control and view of all parties involved
Reach more clients by taking your business to multiple digital channels like building B2B marketplace website, marketplace apps, PWA store etc.
Cost-effective solution ensures huge CapEX savings
Easily onboard vendors from diverse geolocations and industry segments
Streamline, standardize and automate business processes
Make sales cycles faster with automation and self-service
Set your brand apart from competitors and build brand value
Easy to attract more vendors and buyers by effectively displaying your brand USPs through digital channels
Experiment with diverse business models using a modern, feature-rich B2B marketplace software
Get access to the huge data pool to strategically grow your business

While enterprises can reap a lot of benefits when they build a B2B marketplace website, they need to choose their ecommerce platform/software/ solution provider with due diligence. Going with a cutting-edge, future-ready enterprise B2B marketplace builder is essential for the success of large-scale businesses.

How to build a B2B marketplace website

You can choose to build your B2B marketplace website from scratch or use turnkey online marketplace software to get a readymade solution. Whatever your choice you will have to go through the following process:

Step 1: Decide the core idea you want to focus on

Step 2: Get all your paperwork done to comply with the law of the land ( to run a digital enterprise B2B marketplace) where you would be operating your business

Step 3: Buy a domain for your business

Step 4: Choose the solution provider(development company, turnkey solution or a combination of both) to build a B2B marketplace website

Step 5: Onboard distributors, suppliers and manufacturers on your multi-vendor ecommerce store

Step 6: Set up your payments gateways, store credit system and logistics partners

Step 7: Set up a support team to help your customers with their orders and vendors with their technical support queries

Step 8: Get your site live and roll out a marketing campaign to create a buzz about your business

Step 9: That’s it, get ready to earn commissions on every order!

StoreHippo enterprise B2B platform comes with a comprehensive solution to build a B2B marketplace. StoreHippo's built-in multi-vendor marketplace solutions along with B2B features make it easy for brands to create their own tailor-made B2B marketplace platform in record time.

How much does it cost to build A B2B Marketplace Website

Depending on how you build your multi-vendor ecommerce website your cost can range anywhere between $25,000 to $180,000. Your overall costs totally depend on the complexity of your project, the type of solutions, add-ons, third-party software and on the type of B2B marketplace software solution you chose.

To build B2B marketplace from scratch would require anywhere around 6-12 months for a dedicated team of developers to complete the development, test the marketplace end-to-end and get it live.

Also, if you want to go for Android and iOS mobile apps, that would cost a few hundred thousand bucks additionally. Add to this the cost of maintaining and upgrading your B2B marketplace platform regularly. This whole exercise would require additional effort, resources and regular recurring costs.

How to build a B2B Marketplace Website in a cost-effective manner

With StoreHippo you can roll out your B2B multi-vendor ecommerce platform for less than $500. The B2B marketplace platform offers a cost-effective and feature-rich online marketplace software for enterprise businesses. Built on cutting-edge MACH architecture, StoreHippo enables brands to build their tailor-made B2B marketplace website.

When enterprises build a B2B marketplace website with StoreHippo they get over 300 inbuilt features along with support for diverse business models like B2C, D2C, B2B2C etc. StoreHippo’s well rounded solutions not only help enterprise brands in easily managing their you end-to-end business, it also offers a fully hosted and managed solution which frees brands from the hassle of maintaining the website.

What’s more, enterprise brands can build their Android and iOS marketplace apps right from their admin panel at ZERO additional cost. There is no coding or additional cost involved in building these apps for the B2B multi-vendor marketplace. Also, all stores built on StoreHippo are PWA( Progressive Web Apps) that look, feel and function like mobile apps on all devices.

StoreHippo’s B2B marketplace software offers a scalable and flexible multi-vendor marketplace solutions that is cost-effective and and quick to roll out for businesses of every scale and size.

How to attract distributors and manufacturers to a B2B Marketplace Website

Following are a few steps to get enterprise brands started with onboarding sellers, merchants, distributors and manufacturers on the B2B marketplace:

Choose an area of focus(industry, geography etc.) and invite merchants
Offer them some early bird offers like preferred merchant status or positioning
Do some hand-holding to acclimatize them to your online marketplace software
Assure a steady flow of traffic that attracts customers with discounts, promotions and free shipping
Assist them with a streamlined supply chain and customer support services

Along with this ensure that when you build a B2B marketplace website, you go for a feature-rich platform like StoreHippo that takes care of user experience. A user-friendly multi-vendor ecommerce website tends to be a customer magnet and eventually helps your distributors and manufacturers get more orders.

StoreHippo B2B marketplace software also offers features like 360-degree product display, easy search and navigation, automatic abandoned cart follow up etc., as they help in getting faster conversions for your vendors.

Why choose StoreHippo to build a B2B Marketplace Website

The business-to-business model has evolved rapidly in the past few years, especially after the pandemic-related disruptions and digital business mode adoption by B2B merchants and clients. Conditioned by their everyday B2C purchases, B2B buyers are now more open to digital channels and self-service.

StoreHippo’s comprehensive B2B marketplace software offers a mobile-ready solution which is flexible and scalable to any number of users, vendors and products. We have taken care to incorporate advanced search and quick navigation to make the ordering process smoother. Along with this, you get customizable entities and the option to create new entities as per your requirements.

By adding features like request for quote (RFQ), wholesale and retail pricing, location-based pricing we have taken care of the unique pricing structure of the business to business model. Also, when you build a B2B marketplace website with StoreHippo you get a host of inbuilt and customizable forms, customized invoicing, a tax engine to implement multi-tier taxation, and 60+ payment gateways to handle the payments of vendors, distributors and clients. We also allow integration with custom ERP to offer streamlined revenue management. StoreHippo also offers seamless integrations to enable brands to integrate their existing software with the platform.

B2B Marketing With StoreHippo

Business-to-business marketing strategy requires a set of strong and flexible tools. We offer a powerful discount engine along with SEO friendly multi-vendor marketplace platform that helps in offering a variety of personalized discounts and promotions. Also, unified notification can be used to keep the clients engaged in real-time. You also get a blog engine to promote your marketplace with targeted content for your users.