Learn how to create an online marketplace with a few steps to scale your eCommerce business.
There would be always many or atleast one plus way to do anything, similarly there are two ways to go on with developing an online marketplace today. One – you can use any of the ready-made platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, or even other options. Two – create your own online multi-vendor marketplace from scratch.
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But what’s the big deal here?
No matter how good the platform you choose is, without a good plan nothing goes in the way you wanted it to be.
The above statement brings true if you’re even going to use an existing platform that you be having in your hand. All you need to do is to spend quality time on little research on the following aspects of the business as mentioned below:
- Analyze the market
- Go and look for competitors
- Research about buyer persona
Why you should want to do all these pieces of stuff? Nothing but to come up with a streamlined and successful workflow.
Here everything is interconnected in the development process, so every process you carry since from the idea generation are needs to be thoroughly investigated.
A proper business analysis will help you to determine the features that you need to merge with the eCommerce app that you intend to develop.
Also, you must not forget to determine the set of functions that help your app to work seamlessly because it has some direct impact on the nature and scope of work.
So finally, how you’ll create an online multi-vendor marketplace platform?
Create an Online marketplace website – A platform to sell more
Do marketplace business analysis
This would appear a common procedure for any business, but it becomes a bit crucial for eCommerce marketplace business. In general, not all business needs such act but an eCommerce project which is huge and has complicated functionalities need this absolutely.
The main task to carry in business analysis is to visualize all the business and functional processes to develop a perfect eCommerce marketplace solution. On top of all, it is assumed to meet conceptual characteristics – such as,
- Nature of the products offered on the platform,
- The target audience,
- Audience interests and
- End users’ need
A business analysis checklist:
User behavior
Check for the actions that your user possibly does on a website along the side than making a product purchase. Generally, you’d heard of many end-user looks for the filter options to choose the most suitable product. In addition to it would be great to offer a wishlist so that users can add products and keep them insight.
Admin console
Here in the admin console, what do you analyze? It is simple, like what functions can a marketplace admin perform? Mostly admin will do manage products on the eCommerce website. Admin carries this through an effective tool called CMS that allows you to add or remove information about products sold on the platform.
It applies to an ordinary marketplace platform, but when it comes to the large online marketplace, you need advanced functionalities like sophisticated CRM, extensive ERP, etc. for better control over the platform.
Inventory and logistics management
How to have the inventory and logistics-based data updated? Before that, it is difficult to manage whole inventory-related data when a business is busy with development, it is pretty hard for anyone. Therefore, don’t neglect the development of an automated system in advance to control the flow of products in your marketplace platform.
Order fulfillment
Order fulfillment is the stage where the users complete their purchase session, but what is the best way to complete an order for users here?
Today many eCommerce platforms have started developing and implementing sophisticated chatbots or voice assistants to place orders quickly. This is considered the most convenient way to make purchases for most young online shoppers. These chatbots and other technologies benefit the users and the business by cutting operational costs up to 35%.
Therefore, all this is in the hands of business analysts as they determine the apt way for your target audience and development experts to help you to materialize the functionalities.
Checkout and payment
Checkout is a process where the buyers pay for a product, but how can a user pay for a product? How can a user pay for a product?
Many eCommerce companies out there in the market request the customers to create an individual account to start with the payment process. But for betterment, you can offer your users variable options to check out as – a registered user and guest user.
Extra necessary services
Do you know what helps your business to grow? Nothing but simple by providing any additional services to your business. These additional necessary services have become an integral part of the eCommerce business and are been demanded by modern users in the modern world.
Sometimes such services might include content management, real-time data collection, analytics, promotional support, and much more. With no doubt, these services would definitely grow your eCommerce business if it’s been properly implemented. You can also add more automation to your website to maintain the whole business if needed.
Create MVP design
None would definitely even I’d never recommended to start working on the whole development project immediately after business analysis. So it is better to go with designing an MVP(Minimum Viable Product).
The most important part about creating a prototype of any product is getting support from the idea and provides value to end-users. Let’s dive deeper into the term:
M – minimum
Even a minimal number of functions are available and allow testing ideas that been arisen in the first place with less effort and investment. Here you’ll need to focus on the core functionality of your product development.
V – viable
The name viable itself meant to provide your customers with real satisfaction with MVP in hand. Keep them with the most feasible solution for their current problem.
P – product
Here the product lies right between the “viable” and “minimum”, you are likely to create a product that people can be interested in.
Also, a complete SWOT analysis (stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) and neatly designed MVP will reduce the risks for the business investors to a greater extent while developing a product that is ready to be released on the market.
During the MVP design stage, you’ll be able to add, remove any features, functionality, and other real values that bring to end-users.
Develop a final product to sell via online marketplace
Developing the final product would the last step in any development process or on creating any stuff. Here it is not the place where you hesitate to start developing the final marketplace platform for a long time. It is the step where you transform your product concept into an end product.
This is the crucial stage at which one can make appropriate changes and important improvements, and even you had a chance to work on any unseen problems with the ongoing project. These hiccups can be detected by both types of analysis such as – Business analysis and SWOT in general.
Also, it’s time to pay attention to advertising, marketing, and other parts of the business process such as taking it to the end customers along the side while developers are working on the technical side of your project.
Our expert eCommerce developers are at their desk to create you an online marketplace from scratch. Contact us for a free marketplace development consultation today.
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