An online marketplace brings together a buyer and seller onto a common platform and also both sides of the transaction. It creates a network effect that enables you to scale your business using multiple revenue streams. You never have to worry about inventory or even logistics. With an online marketplace, you create a sense of community that automatically organizes itself around your platform. You can easily grow your operations without worrying about capital, workforce, or inventory.
However, building a marketplace from scratch can be cost-prohibitive as well as time-consuming. That is the reason many entrepreneurs are open to whitelabel marketplace applications. Here, there is no need to design and develop the marketplace from scratch. Instead, you can a template with everything you need and you can customize it based on your requirements and business model.
While you will find many whitelabel applications, you should take your time to select one. Make sure you check the features out. Some of the must-have features are as follows:
One-Click Ordering
One of the best ways to make your online marketplace more user-friendly is by allowing customers to place an order using a single click. Here, the customer enters their billing, payment, and shipping details once, and thereafter, they just need to click the button to place their order. Once they do it, they can continue shopping and add other items to their shopping cart.
User Registration and Profile Creation
When you are using retail marketplace software, you will have two types of users – sellers and buyers. Make sure you provide both types the ability to register and update their information so that they have up-to-date profiles. When it comes to sellers, they should necessarily provide the name of their company, address, contact number, and tax details. They should be able to edit the information that they input and choose their preferred mode of payment. Buyers, on the other hand, should provide their names, email IDs, delivery addresses, payment option, and set their own passwords. You can also enable buyers to check their order history, reorder a product, and also create a wishlist.
Ability to Switch Profiles
Remember, a buyer can always become a seller. So, rather than sending a buyer to another marketplace to sell their products or services, you should look to retain them. You can do this by allowing buyers to change their profiles to a seller using the same user account. That will enable them to do the switch conveniently and they will not have to bother creating multiple accounts to do that.
User-friendly and Informative Homepage
Whether you are using retail or service marketplace software, make sure you create a user-friendly homepage. That means having clear and easy navigation, allowing visitors to search for products using different search parameters, suggesting products based on their buying behavior, highlighting the most popular products on the marketplace, and enabling them to see their purchase history.
Individual Product Pages
Allow sellers to create individual product pages with details, like product description, price, warranty, delivery details, and high-resolution images. Set a standard for these details so that sellers have to follow them. Remember, this information influences buyers’ decisions to purchase and does wonders for SEO. You can make the process easier for sellers with features like auto-complete, category recommendation, and the ability to correct errors.
Individual Product Videos
While product images help to boost sales and you should have fixed image standards, do not ignore product videos. Encourage sellers to upload product videos that provide a 360-degree view of the product and also highlight the benefits and features of the product. Videos are known to increase conversion rates.
Wishlist for Buyers
When you operate an online marketplace, it is important to engage buyers. That will help to increase sales. One of the ways to do this is by allowing buyers to create a wishlist. That enables them to save the products that they would like to buy at a future date. Allow users to share their wishlist so that they can share it with family and friends so that they can receive the products as gifts. Enabling sharing is also a great way to increase traffic and convert visitors into paying customers.
Admin Dashboard
Your marketplace’s backend should be user-friendly and intuitive. It should come with a multi-functional dashboard that allows the administrator to customize settings. So, settings such as shipping, listings, filters, payment options, and categories can be customized. The admin dashboard should also be the recipient of messages that come when visitors or users fill in the contact form.
Ratings and Reviews
Thanks to social media, purchasing has become a social activity. Prospective buyers read reviews of other customers before making a purchase. Make sure that your online marketplace has this feature. However, ensure that the whitelabel marketplace software that you use can perform an IP check of review submitters and acceptance should be just from buyers who are registered. Also, ensure that sellers can respond to reviewers and make a request to remove incorrect reviews.
A Variety of Payment Options
Provide buyers with a range of payment options and reduce the steps required to checkout. This will minimize shopping cart abandonment. Allow buyers to not only use PayPal but also credit cards, debit cards, and e-wallets. If you like, you can also have region-wise payment options so that buyers from a specific geographical location can use the payment method that is the most convenient.
Payment Reconciliation
Since your marketplace will have multiple vendors, it is necessary to generate payment reconciliation reports. The sellers can use these reports to compare the payment records from the marketplace with the records from the bank to ensure there are no inconsistencies. Recommend the registered vendors to check these records every day so that there are no discrepancies at the end of the month.
The Bottom Line
When you are looking for the right whitelabel retail or service marketplace software, make sure that the software includes these must-have features. That will allow you to quickly get your site live without a problem.