According to a recent report from Statista, cross-border e-commerce sales may reach $3.53 trillion by 2022. This means that we can now shop for a wide range of products from the comfort of our home. The e-commerce industry has changed our shopping habits and lifestyle considerably.
The e-commerce industry has made shopping easy and convenient for customers. This has led to the launch of several multi-vendor e-commerce sites, such as Alibaba, eBay, and Amazon. These sites allow businesses to grow and build a strong online reputation.
What Is A Multi-Vendor eCommerce website?
Many people have probably bought products from websites that sell more than one type of product. However, most of these customers don’t really know what a website or store that sells more than one type of product is. Multi-vendor stores or websites are platforms that allow different sellers to sell their products in one place. This means that on a multi-vendor website, you can find a variety of different products from different sellers all in one place.
A recent survey found that about 21% of e-commerce businesses are selling on multiple vendor marketplaces. This is great for customers because they can get more products and services from a single source. In comparison, single-vendor marketplaces have less variety.
Multi-vendor marketplaces offer more products than single-vendor stores. This is because there are multiple sellers on these marketplaces. Apart from that, multi-vendor marketplaces are also a cost-effective solution for vendors who want to sell products online.
Now let’s take a look at some of the features that are important for a multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace.
1. Multi-Vendor Control
Merchants who set up shop in a multi-vendor e-commerce marketplace need to be able to control their business. This includes managing, handling, and keeping track of their activities without any problems.
Multi-vendor e-commerce websites should be able to offer merchants the following features: price management, delivery time management, shopping mode management, and other business aspects management. Among them are many big eCommerce businesses men. Such companies as Amazon, Joann Fabrics, Alibaba Express.
- Being able to manage your inventory effectively
- You have more control over shipping, product changes, when people pay (COD), discounts, and more.
- Order and payment splitting is a process that happens automatically.
2. Robust Reporting
Vendors need access to information and data about their sales and business. This data is available in the back-end of the system. The graphs will help vendors understand sales trends better so they can promote their business more effectively. This is why it is important for multi-vendor e-commerce platforms to have a good reporting system.
A multi-vendor e-commerce platform should be able to offer the following details to all its vendors and merchants.
- Here is some information about the top-rated and highest sold products.
- Information and data are used to make forecasts. Forecasts can be about the last four orders, top search items, and more.
- This feature allows you to keep track of sales that have been abandoned and carts that have been left behind.
3. Secure Platform
All multi-vendor e-commerce platforms need to have security features. Customers will not feel safe buying things from stores that are not secure. Vendors will also be less likely to sell on such a platform. So, make sure that your platform is safe and secure.
You need to have good security practices to protect your online store from bad things happening. This will make the store look more trustworthy to customers and other businesses. Here are a few security practices you should use on your multi-vendor e-commerce platform.
- Use HTTPS
- Don’t store sensitive user information or data.
- Make sure that the store is compliant with PCI DSS security standards.
- Make sure that user-level information is kept safe.
- Select a platform that is secure.
4. Multiple Payment and Multilingual Options
Multi-vendor e-commerce platforms need to offer a lot of payment options for customers. You should strive to connect the platform with as many payment methods as possible. In addition, you could also consider including the Cash-on-Delivery (COD) payment option. Cash on Delivery is a popular payment method in several countries.
You can make sure that customers have a good experience shopping online by letting them see the store in their preferred language. If you let customers pay in their currency, they will be more likely to shop with you again. To get more ideas about this topic stay with the Rainbow Blogs.
Conclusion
There are many features that can be useful for multi-store e-commerce platforms. However, in this blog we have highlighted some of the most important and must-have features for every multi-vendor e-commerce platform. This will create a perfect online marketplace.
Talk to our experts to help you build an online store that is results-driven. We can provide you with a comprehensive suite of e-commerce development services.
