How to Create a Multi-Vendor Marketplace This Year

2020 was a complete digital year. We saw everything going online! From purchasing a single piece of an item online to experiencing work from home or study from home; we all witnessed a year full of technological advancements! And now 2021 will also follow the same rule of taking everything online. This tectonic shift to using on-demand services has created an opportunity for business owners to create a multi-vendor marketplace where both the buyers’ and sellers’ needs are met.

But What is a Multi-Vendor Marketplace?

What do you think Amazon, eBay, Uber is? What do they have in common? 

Yes, you’re right, these all are e-commerce multi-vendor marketplaces that act as bridges between the customers and the sellers. They provide a single end-to-end platform but along with multiple vendors. Each vendor has an account on the marketplace and they are allowed to add and display their products and services on the website. They can focus on their core competency, i.e., selling the products and providing the services.

On the other hand, marketplace owners are responsible for generating traffic, attracting customers, providing online marketing solutions for brand awareness, handling logistics, or facilitating payments.

One such marketplace platform which can help businesses to create a multi-vendor marketplace is Yelo. It is one of the industry-leading products with the maximum amount of highly scalable marketplace features. Learn about Multi-Vendor Marketplace Websites: What It Is and How To Make it Work for You to get more insights.

Let us begin with the step-to-step guide of how to build a multi-vendor marketplace –

Creating your own multi-vendor marketplace doesn’t need a lot of investment or any coding skills! Here’s a step-by-step guide for you to understand how to build a multi-vendor marketplace

1. Understand your target audience

If you wish to create your own online business, you have to undergo some market research to understand who your customers are (both buyers and sellers) and why they want to buy from you. 

Check what kind of demographics you want to target. For instance, you want to start your online grocery business. You need to decide who you want to focus on – younger people or older people? Which gender? Which location?

2. What is your USP?

Decide why people should prefer your marketplace rather than choosing Amazon or Flipkart. What kind of USP you’ll provide so that the customers get a better shopping experience. Whether it is the price factor that makes you unique or the local supplier support factor that makes you unique, be it anything!

3. Setup your Multi-Vendor Marketplace

As a multi-vendor marketplace owner, you need to ensure that the whole process of buying and selling goes seamlessly. For this, choose a multi-vendor marketplace builder that offers you the following necessary features –

• The platform should allow you to create an informative marketplace. It should be user friendly and not complicated.
• A proper consumer interaction channel to study their patterns and solve grievances. 
• Comfortable setting up and partnering options. Transparency and training programs for growth and development.
• New technology for delivering the products doorstep. 
• Maintain a database of the preferences and choices of potential consumers.

4. Grow your multi-vendor marketplace

Choose a marketplace builder that helps you gain traction, provide the marketing solutions to get the initial interest of the buyers as well as sellers.

You can also go to online forums and answer questions of the audience you want to target.

5. Choose the final components of your multivendor marketplace

There are many pieces of a multi-vendor marketplace that need to be together for it to work smoothly. Hence it becomes essential to identify and work on them.

• Onboarding multiple vendors and managing them
• Handling end-to-end transactions
• Ensuring the logistics running efficiently
• Sharing the revenue with your vendors once they bag order and complete it through your platform
• Managing inventory

Why a multi-vendor marketplace over a single online store?

What are the advantages of building a multi-vendor marketplace?

To know more, read 8 Major Advantages of Starting an Online Marketplace for Local Businesses.

How to use a multi-vendor eCommerce marketplace software?

We already told you the features and components to focus on how to turn your store into a multi-vendor marketplace. Now we will focus on how Yelo proves to be one of the best marketplace solution providers.

On Yelo, we will build your dream marketplace together without any coding skills and credit card required.

Features

Get robust features and a fully customizable platform with our ready-to-use software.

• Ordering Dashboard
• Customer Mobile Apps
• Ordering Website
• Merchant Apps
• Fulfillment and Delivery
• Seamless Payment Integrations
• Chat and Notifications
• Analytics

And many more!

Theme

This is how your marketplace can look like! Get a unique brand language and custom UI/UX for your platform. Yelo Platform comes inbuilt with a “themes engine”.

• Highly Personalized
• Enriched User Experience
• Professionally Designed

Signup with Yelo and get a 14 days free trial. 

Conclusion

Now that you know how to build a multi-vendor marketplace and how to choose a solution provider so that you get the best marketplace, get started with building one of your own. 

Plan out your USP, do the research, find your target market, onboard multiple vendors, and be ready to grow exponentially. Choose Yelo which is the best E-commerce Software to build a marketplace. Try it free for 14 days and set up your own multi-vendor marketplace.