Why do we need B2B Marketplace?
B2B eCommerce gets the most media attention these days and as we ( Webkul Software – Hook for Enterprise Businesses ) are the largest supplier of B2B marketplace products across the world and gaining popularity right at the moment.
Now a day’s most of B2B/B2C e-commerce companies are investing towards in online marketplaces just because of the huge success of such marketplace like Amazon and Alibaba or eBay.
For instance, below is the screenshot from Alibaba shows the annual revenue of the Alibaba Group, which is most popular right at the moment.
That’s especially true in order to start own b2b multi-vendor marketplace similar to eBay, Amazon, Alibaba, Indiamart and etc is not an easy task.
What challenges you will face?
To build a profitable marketplace you need to take care of multiple aspects like separate vendor portal, support multicurrency, support multilingual, mass product upload, Bulk product editing, stock notification, Database and much more.
No need to worry, there are plenty of e-commerce platforms available with all the necessary modules that are crucial to an e-commerce website and help you to start a multi-vendor marketplace.
But before you start you need to pick right e-commerce platform and should aware of the types of ways possible to launch the marketplace.
Pick right e-commerce platform
Develop from Scratch
By using programing language if you know, else hiring a skilled developer can build a multi-vendor marketplace for you.
I wouldn’t recommend building an e-commerce website from scratch. It would be a waste of time and effort.
It would require a lot of technical expertise leading to more development cost, maintenance cost, technical support need to be strong and overall marketing cost will also be high.
Open source and SaaS model
As you have no web development knowledge, I would suggest you go for hosted platforms(medium and large industry) or Software as a service(small industry) to build your online store.
These kinds of platforms provide you with readymade shopping cart solutions.
As a B2B business, requires customization in any stage of your business growth which is not only complex in SaaS but also will take a big part of your budget.
That’s why I would recommend you to choose open source solutions like Magento or Magento 2, Opencart, Prestashop or Odoo, a large number of extensions and add-ons are available for such platform in order to create a multi-vendor store.
In case you still have an issue and want more knowledge about which platform you should go further, you can refer below articles will help you to clear your all doubt.
eCommerce B2B marketplace must-have features
Here I’m drafting out some essential feature which is must for eCommerce B2B marketplace which helps to make better eCommerce B2B marketplace
1. Separate Seller Dashboard – For sure, to manage product, order history, shipping and transaction history and other functionality seller have to a dashboard, from where one can navigate to respective features.
2. Flexible payment options -Offering flexible payment option is a great way to increase your sale and customer base as well, this feature allows customers to make a payment from multiple payment options at checkout time.
3. Partners Profile – Buyers can easily approach to the desired seller who is perfect for their business based on their profile.
4. Manage bulk Ordering and quotes – We know that wholesalers deal in larger orders, Having features like managing bulk ordering allows wholesalers to manage a product catalog, inviteB2B clients to place orders online, & track orders in real-time.
Also, enable the customers to make a quotation request for purchasing the products in bulk.
5. Flexible payment options -Offering flexible payment option is a great way to increase your sale and customer base as well, this feature allows customers to make a payment from multiple payment options at checkout time.
6. Manage commission – Admin can set percentage based commission, which will be charged from seller/partner income for admin, according to products in orders and also edit the Category commission.
7. Mass product upload CSV file – If you have a large number of variants to update you have to use CSV import products, so must have functionality if you are dealing in the B2B marketplace.
8. Manage bulk Discount – B2B sellers usually buy a product in bulk, so might be offer discount based on the total quantity to be ordered. Your B2B e-commerce platform must have this functionality that allows offering bulk discounts.
9. Reorder previously purchased order – B2B buyers frequently place large-scale orders and purchase at regular intervals so this is an essential and most important feature for B2B marketplace.
10. Ability to ask the question to the admin – With this functionality, a seller can ask any query to the admin.
Conclusion
For sure, by picking any standard open source e-commerce platform which meets your business requirement and using associated extension one can simply transform B2B store into B2B marketplace and can start generating revenue as well.
If you are looking for any b2b shop or b2b multi-supplier marketplace or mobile app, Please contact us at https://webkul.com/contacts/
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