How to choose the E-commerce marketplace software platform that is right for your business

05 Apr 2018 How to choose the E-commerce marketplace software platform that is right for your business

As demonstrated by companies like Amazon and Flipkart, the multi-vendor E-commerce marketplace is the right online platform that enables the growth of retail sales for multiple third-part vendors. It allows third-party vendors to focus on the manufacturing and shipping of their products, while the marketplace takes care of the customer prospecting and selling process.

As an E-commerce enabler, you can either create an E-commerce website on your own, or opt for any of the popular E-commerce marketplace software platform solutions, available in the market. While the former approach can be quite time-consuming, choosing the E-commerce marketplace platform that is right for your business model can also be a daunting task, simply because of the number of available solutions from a variety of software vendors.

This article evaluates the factors that you must consider when choosing the right E-commerce marketplace software solution for your business.

Essential features

An E-commerce marketplace solution must offer the following essential features:

• Simplified vendor registration and product listing

Your E-commerce marketplace must be simple enough for third-party vendors to register and create their product listings. Along with an impressive profile page, vendors would want online buyers to access their products easily.

• Online vs Offline marketplaces

Marketplace solutions must not cater to either online or offline retail but offer a more omnichannel combination of enabling both online and offline channels for third-party vendors. You must ensure that your solution is designed for both channels.

• Easy and fast search functionality

Product (or brand) search functionality is of significant importance to multi-vendor marketplaces. Online retail customers must be able to easily search and find their products among the large number of third-party products.

• Ease of posting product reviews

Your marketplace solution must make it easy for online buyers to post their reviews for purchased products, along with creating a quality ranking for each third-party vendor.

• Easy payment structure

As a marketplace owner, your business must be able to earn a commission on every product sale that vendors make on your E-commerce platform. Your marketplace solution must enable easy commission structure, along with the ease with which your vendors collect their payments from product sales.

• Integration with other marketplaces

Does your E-commerce marketplace support integration with marketplaces such as Amazon or Flipkart? Marketplace integration can grow the online market potential for third-party vendors by integrating their existing system (including their product data, listings, and sales data) with other marketplace systems with their own criteria for vendor accounts and product data.

Additional selection criteria

As an E-commerce marketplace enabler, selecting the right marketplace solution is critical for your business growth and is enabled by criteria, including:

• More control and customization

As compared to licensed solutions, open source marketplace solutions offer more control over your online retail store, along with higher degree of customization to suit your business needs. With the availability of new plugins and extensions for your solution, your marketplace can provider higher flexibility and functionality through the customizing of your extensions and code.

• Scalability

With the continued market growth potential for E-commerce businesses, a marketplace solution that is extremely scalable to respond and adapt to your business growth is highly recommended. The marketplace solution must also enable the scaling of a vendor’s online store to a comprehensive multi-vendor marketplace.

• Cost

Marketplace solutions in the market are priced differently according to their bundled features and software support. Cost is an important criterion to consider when selecting the right solution for your business, based on the benefits they offer for your E-commerce platform.

Conclusion

Designing and hosting of a multi-vendor online store or marketplace can be hugely productive, provided they are done with the right software tools and according to the business needs. Selecting the right marketplace solution that can be customized according to your business model is very crucial for your business success.

This article highlighted the important factors to be considered when selecting the right marketplace solution for your E-commerce website.

Not sure which is the best software/platform to take your business onto marketplaces? We can help.