The inception of the eCommerce industry not only brought about a drastic change in the lifestyle and shopping habits of people. But it also opened new opportunities for retail businesses. Today, we have many multi-vendor eCommerce websites like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc.
The success of these giants has inspired many businesses to look for the best eCommerce website development company. Today every businessman wants to create their own multi-vendor eCommerce platforms. But one thing that every aspiring business owner wants to know about is what are those multi vendor eCommerce website features that make these eCommerce websites successful.
So, here we will be illuminating the 5 must-have multi vendor eCommerce website features that a successful multi-vendor website should possess.
Some important stats about the eCommerce industry
As the e-commerce industry is rising by leaps and bounds around the world, online businesses are setting new records. The following are some amazing statistics related to the eCommerce industry.
- According to Statista, cross-border eCommerce sales are estimated to reach 3.53 trillion US dollars by 2022.
- Gen X and Millennial population is the biggest online shop with a share of 56% of Gen Xers and 97% of Millennials.
- 85% of customers start shopping on one device but finish the purchase on another device.
- eCommerce marketplaces are showing globalism with 57% of online shoppers buying products from an overseas retailer.
- Credit cards are the preferred method of shopping globally.
- Some simple fixes can help you reduce your online store’s lading time by even 50-80%.
- 67% of shoppers want to buy from over-search merchants due to lower prices.
What is a Multi Vendor eCommerce Website?
A Multi-vendor eCommerce Website is a common selling point for multiple vendors. It means this is a huge online marketplace where different vendors can sell their products instead of having eCommerce sites of their own.
By paying a certain amount which is much less than the cost of custom eCommerce website development; these vendors access a vast platform to sell their goods easily and safely. Many small or large-scale businesses are taking advantage of these ready-to-use platforms to sell their goods and it saves them huge costs that are incurred when creating separate online stores.
5 Key Multi vendor eCommerce Website Features
When it comes to multivendor e-commerce platform development numerous factors have to be considered including what functionality and features it should have. Before opting for the custom eCommerce development services, you should make all your preps and plan.
The following are the key features that are essential for a multi-vendor eCommerce store to attract more sellers:
Multi-Vendor Control
When a merchant will join your online multivendor e-commerce platform, the merchant will require certain control. After joining, the merchant should have control to manage their business and products sold on your eCommerce platform. With the control of their business, merchants can manage different aspects like delivery time, price, modes of shipping, and many other details. To provide this control a multi-vendor eCommerce website needs to offer:
- Automatic splitting of payments and orders to corresponding seller’s accounts.
- Control over the management of individual inventory.
- Control over making updates like COD, product change, shipping, discounts, etc.
Secure Platform
Undoubtedly, security is the most crucial feature for any website found on the internet. And, in the wake of rising online frauds and cybersecurity threats, having robust security is inevitable for a successful multivendor e-commerce platform. Integrating the best multivendor eCommerce website features for security not only help you protect it from all kinds of malicious activities, but is also the reason for both online buyers and merchants to trust in your website. Hence, this is necessary to choose the best company that can accomplish website development for eCommerce with effective security measures.
To meet this end, you should:
- Add a strong layer of protection.
- Use HTTPS.
- Ensure your site is PCI DSS compliant.
- Choose a secure eCommerce development platform.
- Secure user-level information.
- Never store sensitive user data.
Robust Reporting
Vendors should have access to data regarding their sales and business. With the graphs and data available from the backend, vendors can evaluate sales trends and promote the business accordingly. Therefore, a robust reporting system is essential for creating a successful multi-vendor eCommerce website. Your store needs to offer the following functionality in this regard:
- Details and information that are necessary for making forecasts like top search items, last 4 orders, etc.
- Instant tracking of abandoned carts and sales.
- Data about the highest sold products.
Automated Tasking
At the custom eCommerce web development stage, you will encounter many functionalities to be implemented in your website that can be automated. Tasks like calculating shipping costs or sorting products if done manually on your site can be troublesome from a customer’s point of view. So, you need the right technology to automate such tasks and improve the customer experience. In this regard, your multi-vendor website should offer the following features:
- The sales data on a supplier’s dashboard should be consolidated automatically whenever a new order is placed by customers.
- Real-time computation of sales, shipping cost, and tax and provide the details to customers.
SEO-Friendly CMS
Today, we have a lot of content management systems (CMSs) like Magento, WordPress+WooCommerce, Shopify website development, PrestaShop, etc that are being utilized for developing eCommerce websites. If you want to go with Magento then you will need to find the best Magento website development company or if WordPress+WooCommerce is your choice, then you can choose a WooCommerce development company to build a robust website.
However, before you choose any of the popular CMS, you must first learn about them to choose the right CMS for your website.
Besides dozens of factors, SEO is an important aspect that you must consider to choosing a perfect content management system for your website. To get a clear idea of which CMS is the most suitable website development platform for your eCommerce website, you can read our blog “Magento Vs Shopify Vs BigCommerce Vs WooCommerce “–Which eCommerce Platform Is Best For You? and get a complete analysis of the top eCommerce CMS.
A good SEO makes it possible for your website to attract more traffic as well as a better ranking on search engine results pages. You need to do many things to improve your search engine ranking like:
- The content structure should be well organized to make editing easier.
- Automation of sitemap generation.
- Images, meta descriptions, and optimized tags.
When you create a multi-vendor eCommerce site that entails these features it acts as an easy solution for retailers who are looking for a readily available eCommerce platform to sell their products. Indeed, you can build a robust solution with the right approach to multi-vendor eCommerce development. For these retailers choosing to sell products on multi-vendor websites brings greater ROI, than investing in a standalone online store.
So, this method not only cuts their costs but also helps them avoid all the pains that come their way during custom eCommerce development services. However, to be more competitive in the market and to ensure that more retailers choose your multi-vendor store, you need to provide the exact functionality that they are searching for.
Top Multivendor eCommerce Website Features/Trends 2022
Online marketplaces are rising around the world and we have many top marketplaces already ruling the world like Amazon, eBay, Flipkart, Walmart, etc. With time, multi-vendor websites are becoming more feature-rich and gaining better functionality as new trends in web development take place. Here we will discuss the top online marketplace trends that will be prevalent in 2022.
AR and VR Technologies
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are not new technologies, they are here for some time. Both of these technologies are quite useful for online marketplaces because they enable customers to experience an in-store shopping experience as well as visualize products as they would do in a brick-and-mortar store. They are the next level of technologies that take user experience to a different level.
AR and VR have become a prominent trend in web development and it will also remain a leading multi-vendor eCommerce website trend in 2022. The major impact of these technologies will be on product returns which will certainly reduce because customers buy products after visualizing them.
Voice search to find products
Websites are becoming more smarter and functionality-rich with new and advanced features being available thanks to the evolution in technology. Voice User Interface or VUI is the testimony to this fact. Unlike a GUI that works by interacting with the icons or graphic objects on the screen, a VUI enables users to interact with a device through voice. Today, the market is flooded with tons of different voice-enabled platforms like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.
Thanks to voice-enabled platforms users can do all browsing activities through voice easily. Thus optimizing your website for voice search has become essential for eCommerce businesses and it has emerged as one of the top trends in web development.
Another main reason for optimizing a website for voice search is because voice searching is going to change the phenomenon of SEO. Marketers no more need to rely on SEO because voice searching is taking over control. It will be a prominent multi-vendor eCommerce trend in 2022.
Search identical products by image
Searching a product by image can be a new concept but it is not new in online browsing as you can use images to search for related information on Google. Moreover, image-based searches are becoming more popular these days and it will come out to be a great trend in 2022. Image-based search can help both online businesses and customers.
While a buyer can easily find the desired product by using an image, an online business can benefit from it after the matches with his products. Online merchants can start utilizing this functionality on mobile devices and language no will be an obstacle anymore for buyers to shop the desired products.
By integrating this functionality into their digital strategy, online merchants can derive a host of benefits for their businesses. These benefits include entry to new markets, new levels of ROI, and more. And, the result depends on the multiplicity and the quality of images being used.
Marketplaces becoming more local
Nowadays online marketplaces are becoming narrower in the kind of users they serve and their propositions. Broadly, they are getting more vertical and focusing on catering more to niche markets both locally and globally. For instance, Go-Jek is a company like Uber providing transportation services but only limited to Indonesia. So, these kinds of marketplaces are mainly focused on a specific market.
The key advantage of choosing this kind of business model is that they can serve customers with their specific needs and requirements. Also, organizations can serve customers with their target market’s requirements and unique cultural and local values. It is also becoming a popular trend in online marketplaces.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are not new technologies but they gradually became prevalent in every sphere of human intervention today. The importance of cannot be denied in today’s business context. Whether it’s about digging deep data to derive useful information, to learn customer behavior, or to make concrete predictions, AI is playing its role under the hood to accomplish these activities.
In the realm of the eCommerce business, AI and Machine Learning are proving to be powerful tools to maximize revenue by offering better products and increasing sales. Both AI and ML are used in conjunction to derive useful insights into data and make important predictions. Also, these technologies can help in analytics.
Final Note
Today, as online shopping is touching new heights, launching a multi-vendor eCommerce website is a wise decision. With this approach, you can allow different retailers to sell on your website and grow their businesses. However, developing an eCommerce website is a big and bold decision, so you need to choose the right technology partner that can accomplish this kind of project with success.
Whether you hire Magento developer or hand over your project to a custom eCommerce development company, you must be fully sure that they can provide the expected results. You can choose CSSChopper for the best eCommerce website development services.
We can develop advanced and highly secure multi-vendor eCommerce sites that will offer excellent functionality for merchants. Our developers will build the right eCommerce solution that will meet your expectations and attract more sellers. We’ve delivered successful projects to lots of customers around the world.
