With the advancement of the internet, business owners, and entrepreneurs can now find customers and vice versa online and this has created a great opportunity for them to take advantage of the demands and fulfill their customers’ needs so that they can increase their profitability. This marketing concept is not new and even though it has been around for a very long time, businesses are now realizing the importance of it and joining.
A great example of this can be eBay and Amazon. These platforms are multi-vendor and buyer marketplaces and they allow you as a seller to create your shop online based on your products and services which allows you to target a certain niche of audience based on your business model. This platform brings together buyers, sellers, vendors, and customers and allows them to communicate with each other to meet their needs. It doesn’t require a physical store, a lot of time, or energy as long as your product quality is up to the mark you can sell your customers affordable products as well as your supply chain partners.
Selecting The Right Business Model
With the pandemic at large, customers are no longer going out to buy their products and avail of their services, they are shopping online. This is one of the main reasons why a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs have started joining an online platform and building a marketplace online where they can sell their products, services and also communicate with sellers and vendors. It also allows sellers to communicate with buyers which makes it a win-win situation for all involved.
Before you jump into creating a marketplace, you need to understand the importance of a two sided marketplace. Understand this, even though there are many brands online selling skincare and body care products, each brand has something unique which differentiates it from its competition. You can have an eCommerce marketplace but also join an online market platform, you can even have rentals, services, home deliveries, and more. The main focus of this is to get your product to the consumer while communicating with them in the best way possible. You need to build a community and connect with your consumers before you create the actual marketplace – trust is very important here as a brand.
Creating Your Market Platform
When it comes to creating a B2B marketplace platform, there are a couple of options that you need to keep in mind. Firstly, consider that unless you’re a coder or have great technical skills, customizing the look and feel of your online marketplace will be quite challenging. This can be time-consuming, expensive if you need to hire outside help, and can take weeks if not months to finally create an error-free structure. By the time you do all this, your competition will have already created a niche in the market and will be doing better than you making your amazing business idea stale.
So, what can you do? Here are some options to consider.
Your eCommerce Store
If you have an in-depth knowledge of plugins or even certain features then you can host an eCommerce store using various programs like WordPress. Here, you will have complete control over how your store would look right down to the display, font, and colors however, this can be done only if you’re well versed in this kind of software. If you aren’t, it will take a long time to find the right plugins, test them, add your products and market your services to get a superior user experience.
Using Marketplace Software
Service marketplace software is one of the quickest, most efficient, and easiest ways to build a space for yourself while using the software. Depending on the type of business model you have you can pick your choice of software to meet your needs. There are a ton of software alternatives that you can use to create your marketplace in no time and not only this but you can have complete ownership and control over the area you create. If you get stuck, all you need to do is call the software provider and they will offer you advice, solutions, and hacks to make any technical process easy. Since this doesn’t take a lot of time, you’ll be setting up shop pretty quickly and be ahead of your competition.
This is a great feature for small businesses and start-ups so that they can identify the features and tools that they want and get in touch with the software provider to customize their site to suit their business and customer needs. It’s efficient, quicker, more affordable, and a great way to focus on your clients, products, suppliers, and vendors instead of focusing on building your site and creating the marketplace.
How To Choose The Best Features To Meet Your Needs
A B2B marketplace software platform is cost-efficient especially for smaller brands who want a feature-packed platform that is affordable for them. Here are some of the essential points and features that every big or small brand needs to ensure their marketplace has:
A Homepage
When customers visit your website, your homepage is one feature that will either keep them hooked to buy more products or make them log out and head elsewhere. This is why it’s so important that your homepage needs to be engaging, it should show your customers the kind of brand you are, grab their attention and push them to check out your products and services. Your homepage should also have all features and sign-ins as well as buttons marked clearly and should be properly organized – it should inform visitors of your purpose and how it meets their needs and tell them why they should go for your brand.
Simple Navigation
It’s said that customers nowadays have the attention span of a goldfish which isn’t more than a couple of seconds. This means that if your site is complicated with a lot of ads, promotions, and whatnots, customers aren’t likely to stick around. It’s time to avoid the long-drawn process, confusing sign-ins and make it easier for customers to subscribe, join, pay and enjoy their products. This in turn will improve your conversion rate.
Encourage Sales
A great way to know how your customers love your products and to encourage them to buy more is to put a review system up. This will allow you to find your bestsellers, what you need to improve, and what your customers don’t like -so that you don’t end up making more of them. Customers will feel heard and know that you care about their experience as well as read these reviews before purchasing
Attention On Quality
If you want to get other local businesses like suppliers to sell high-quality products, consider focusing on them. For example, if you are a skincare brand and you get your ingredients from a seller who sells you exceptional fresh ingredients, you can choose to promote him and get rid of those suppliers whose ingredients aren’t good enough. This will encourage other suppliers to boost the quality of their ingredients and help you attract more customers.
To Summarize
When it comes down to a two-sided marketplace, you need to be smart if you want to make a profit. Think about your needs, your customer’s needs, and what you can do to create a feature-filled, user-friendly, and quality-conscious marketplace.