If you are keen to expand your eCommerce business, choosing a multi-vendor marketplace is a must-have step that you need to add to your marketing program.
Multi-store e-commerce sites provide tremendous opportunities and options for businesses. Currently, half of the online retail sales are carried out through marketplaces worldwide. To get the most out of your business, the first thing you need to do is find a specialized marketplace platform, on which to build a multi-vendor website.
All marketplaces have different requirements, range of products, admission charges, and target groups. Therefore, in order to choose the right platform, you need some kind of research – you’ll need to learn about the various integration strategies at different sites, to define which ones are the most profitable and promising for your brand, and find out how to provide a safe start.
Sounds complicated? Set your mind at ease! This article will help you figure things out.
A multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace platform is a site builder that allows you to create a marketplace with its software. Different platforms offer different options – your choice should depend on your needs and goals.
Here are some facts to consider when making a decision:
Popularity. Popular marketplace platforms are well studied by users and are easier (cheaper) to customize.
Functionality. It is important that the selected marketplace platform provides a maximum of useful functions, or the ability to expand functionality with ready-made modules.
Ease of operation. Sometimes the most functional platforms are the most complex. There must be a balance here too. The abundance of functions will be useless if they are difficult to understand.
Possibilities for customization. The marketplace platform must be customizable,
otherwise, you won’t be able to adapt it to your business and scale in the future.
Let’s take a look at the best platforms that make it possible to create a marketplace from the ground up or turn a current web store into a marketplace.
WooCommerce is a highly specialized plugin designed to build e-stores powered by the WordPress engine. It’s an open source e-commerce plugin with which you can sell any product or service with no restrictions. Free access and ease of management are two important factors to give preference to this platform – so you can launch a project without a large investment and with no special skills. WordPress and WooCommerce are open source, which provides a wide range of customization options for the platform.
Main advantages:
Flexible settings
Many payment options
The high degree of scalability
Own analytics system
Who is WooCommerce best suitable for?
The platform is best for small business owners who are looking for ways to reduce costs at the initial stage of launching a web store. The good news is that as your business grows and your sales turnover increases, WooCommerce doesn’t require replacement: the plugin is able to cover the needs of large sites, as evidenced by the statistics of its use.
Arcadier is a multidisciplinary SaaS marketplace providing ready-made solutions for different types of businesses: retail, booking, rental, etc. There are all the main functions for an immediate start of sales: a salesperson management system, multilingualism, flexible catalog and order management, a convenient shopping cart, and an excellent interface. Arcadier focuses on simplicity for the end user – from choosing the type of marketplace to serving. Even an unprepared person can handle the admin panel interface. Unfortunately, Arcadier (like all SaaS platforms) does not provide an opportunity to thoroughly modify the platform.
Main advantages:
Ready-made templates for different types of business
Ease of management
Who is Arcadier best suitable for?
The target audience of the platform is tech-savvy business owners whose priority is a high level of customization.
Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform. It was once owned by eBay Inc. and is now operated by Adobe. It is originally positioned as a platform for traditional online stores with one seller, but the functionality of the marketplace can be added with third-party modules.
Magento is one of the most functional CMS. The multi vendor marketplace module adds marketplace functionality: a dashboard for sellers where they can manage their catalog, view customer reviews, subscribers, and wish lists. There is also a commission system: you can take commissions depending on the type of goods, or you can set a fixed commission for everyone. However, simplicity is not Magento's greatest strength – it can be tricky to figure out the settings.
Main advantages:
The high degree of customization
Free e-commerce software
Excellent functionality
Who is Magento best suitable for?
Magento is best suited for businesses that require a customized solution. This platform is a common choice for field-specific marketplaces looking to add a marketplace to their current site.
Yo! Kart is a young boxed marketplace platform launched in 2015. It has already become popular among business owners due to its good set of functions and simplicity of the interface. The platform has everything you need to launch a marketplace and start selling: convenient catalog and order management, a simple and user-friendly interface, marketing tools, a convenient ordering page, and a sales management system. Also, users note powerful SEO tools. The developers don’t officially provide access to the platform code, so customization can be an issue.
Main advantages:
Effective SEO tools
Excellent usability
Great design
App availability for a mobile marketplace
Who is Yo! Kart best suitable for?
This platform is for business owners who choose a simple and convenient interface without worrying about the flexibility of the system – even the smallest change requires modification in the code.
CS-Cart is a standalone multi-vendor platform designed specifically for building marketplaces. Based on the core of the CS-Cart engine, it is known for its powerful functionality and simplicity. There are over 500 built-in functions and over 1,300 add-on modules. Also, there is a mobile application for buyers in the extended edition. CS-Cart has a simple admin panel that anyone who has ever used web interfaces can understand. CS-Cart is an open-source multi-vendor platform, so one can scale this CMS for marketplaces without limits. Third-party developers note the cleanliness of the code, so developing for CS-Cart is faster and therefore cheaper.
Main advantages:
Extremely rich functionality
One-time fee
Regular updates
Customizable
Who is CS-Cart best suitable for?
CS-Cart is a great choice for large businesses, especially those with an existing technical team.
Shopify is a fairly popular platform for a successful e-commerce business. Its use does not require advanced technical skills, as it is very easy to operate. Moreover, the platform provides a lot of templates to get any website up and running quickly and easily. Also, it offers advanced reporting features, higher priority customer support, the ability to handle high volume orders, and more.
Main advantages:
2 weeks trial period
Adaptive design
Add-on apps
Who is Shopify best suitable for?
It is ideal for small businesses and business owners who want to start their own projects without high financial costs.
No matter what marketplace platform you choose to create your online store on, Yojji team of experts will be happy to help you with that. We provide a wide range of e-commerce development services and are ready to deliver you a highly-effective webstore solution. Expand your business, increase profits and attract new customers with our help!
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