The one thing about ecommerce that none of us has control over is - its inevitable change!
And an enterprise business with chameleon qualities is bound to go miles.
Is your online marketplace ready to adapt to the changes and leverage various strategies to thrive in the ecommerce industry?
Wondering how?
Well, you can't just throw strategies at the wall to see if it sticks.
To help you chalk out a concrete plan StoreHippo brings a compiled list of 7 time-tested ways to future-proof your multi vendor marketplace.
Before we delve deeper let us check some trends about the growth of the multi-vendor marketplace.
- $3.5 trillion in sales to be generated by B2C ecommerce marketplaces by 2024
- 67% of global online sales are done on marketplaces
- 48% of buyers go straight to a multi vendor marketplace when buying online
Source: Statista, 123formbuilder
To claim your fair share in the growth of ecommerce marketplaces, you need to build a marketplace website that stands out.
And how to stand out of the pack?
The digital-age customers today look for tailored user experiences on multiple channels, right from brick-and-mortar stores to marketplace apps. Offering your buyers a one-stop shop for their needs with a hassle-free buying experience across channels can take your business places. Also, to stand out of the competition your business needs to stay ahead of the trends and implement changes that keep your brand future-ready.
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7 ways to future-proof your multi vendor marketplace
When you future-proof your business, you develop ways and methods for your business survival. With the unforeseen changes that the ecommerce industry throws randomly at enterprises, they need to come up with innovative solutions as part of their future-proofing strategy.
Here are 7 proven and easy ecommerce strategies to help you embrace the ecommerce distractions with much ease.
Go Omnichannel
If you own an online marketplace, we bet you are aware of the technological disruptions and the constantly changing buying behavior of customers. Customers today expect brands to engage with them at multiple levels with a stunning customer experience at each touchpoint. Customers tend to discover your store through ads, social media pages, visiting offline stores, etc, making it imperative for you to be present on multiple channels. This has made it a tad-bit tough to thrive and survive in the industry.
However, enterprise businesses can respond well by establishing modern omnichannel retail strategies. StoreHippo ecommerce solutions are designed on headless architecture making it seamless for your multi vendor marketplace to add multiple touchpoints using the same API and backend logic. With the ready-to-use omnichannel enterprise ecommerce solution for your brand, you can boost your customer engagement and increase their lifetime value. You can improve the overall efficiency across all channels and reduce costs.
Implement hyper-personalization
90% of customers are willing to spend more when companies provide personalized customer experiences. Personalisation has emerged as a strong ecommerce strategy that helps you target specific audiences, and form loyal relationships with the customers.
And to create an extremely personalized approach, good knowledge of customer insights is a must. Most of the online marketplaces are going miles to offer hyper-personalized user experience to their customers via content, pricing, payment methods etc.
StoreHippo helps you offer a personalized shopping journey and drive better sales on your marketplace. Using the decoupled headless architecture, you can give a seamless and personalized buying experience to your customers with easy storefront customizations. You can implement multi-level personalizations on your marketplace like building multiple storefronts for different locations, customizing your shipping solutions and digital payments to offering personalized multilingual content and pricing.
Leverage m-commerce
With more than 80% of the online orders happening through smartphones, you can’t future proof your business without leveraging marketplace apps. The new-age buyers are all on their mobile phones making it a primary sales channel. The other reason that makes mobile shopping an extremely easy task is the convenience of shopping from anywhere anytime. And when you target your customers on their mobile devices you can capitalize on impulsive buying and achieve better ROI.
StoreHippo ecommerce platform, built on a mobile-first approach offers a variety of mobile-ready solutions. With its in-built mobile apps builder, you can build mobile apps without any coding at no additional costs.
You can easily create separate marketplace apps for different sub-stores from the admin dashboard. Stores powered by StoreHippo are PWA stores that work, look, and feel like mobile apps. You can seamlessly run your business on the go with StoreHippo. It also offers pre-designed templates, mobile-responsive themes etc to help you offer the most engaging m-commerce shopping experience.
Enable quick deliveries
41% of the consumers are willing to pay a little extra for same-day delivery. Yes, as surprising as it may sound, customers are now paying increased emphasis on shorter delivery windows. Well, there's no doubt that streamlining quick deliveries and creating a seamless supply chain is a daunting task to achieve.
You can, however, future-proof your online marketplace with StoreHippo’s comprehensive shipping solutions. It comes with 30+ pre-integrated logistics providers to streamline and automate your delivery processes. You can choose and integrate with the best logistic provider for your enterprise brand. You also import orders from different sales channels and align them for timely deliveries through the automated logistics module.
Multi-channel customer service
Are you giving attention to customer service on your marketplace app and website? If not, it's time to gear up. Wondering what makes us say so? Have a look:
- 64% of businesses say they can notice sales growth due to good customer service
- 81% of people claim that receiving good customer service makes them more likely to make another purchase
Earning customer satisfaction is not a cakewalk. You need to be present on multiple channels and keep consistency in your messages.
StoreHippo offers seamless integrations with multiple social platforms that enables brands to connect with their customers at multiple touch points. StoreHippo also helps you connect with the best live chat software and chatbots.
You can also integrate your multi vendor marketplace with the best CRM software to answer a variety of customer queries like delivery tracking, cancellations and refunds etc. As you offer a multi channel customer support with a personal touch assigning support managers, you also offer your customers the luxury of being heard and seen.
Support for diverse business models
When we talk about future-proofing your business, we can not ignore the fact that your enterprise ecommerce brand might eventually have to diversify to hybrid models as the business grows. It is therefore important to build your online marketplace on an ecommerce platform that can support various business models like B2B, D2C, B2C, B2B2C, or hybrid models. You need features and tools that help pivot to a different business model easily.
StoreHippo ecommerce solutions offer a fully hosted and managed enterprise solution with battle-tested solutions to create disruptive hybrid business models. You can quickly switch or combine any new business model with their existing model in record time with StoreHippo’s inherent flexibility and adaptability.
Composable commerce
Wondering why you need composable commerce on your online marketplace? Well, consider this, how will you make minor changes in the front end or backend of your website when they are tightly coupled? Sounds complex right?
There’s a simple answer to the complex problem - composable commerce.
Yes, with each platform component being a separate service that can be deployed and scaled independently, making any sort of changes in the ecommerce website is seamless. If you are looking to have flexibility, scalability, and innovation on your multi vendor marketplace, adapting composable commerce is a wise option.
StoreHippo helps create tailor-made solutions for the unique needs of enterprises with no complex customizations or extensive codings. With the headless architecture from StoreHippo, enterprise brands can seamlessly integrate, try, replace, or remove multiple software. Brands can also integrate their preferred software or service providers with the API-based StoreHippo architecture.
Conclusion
The future of ecommerce is ever-changing. Making it all the more important for multi vendor marketplaces to stay on their toes and be ready to adapt to the market disruptions. However, with the aforementioned strategies, you can stand out in the ecommerce wave and create a niche for yourself in the industry.
StoreHippo offers a future-ready technology and MACH architecture that helps in building agile and scalable solutions for fast-growing brands like yours. With 300+ built-in features, you can implement desired features and flows on your marketplace apps.
Are you ready to future-proof your online marketplace with StoreHippo? Explore the enterprise-grade features by starting your 14-day free trial now.
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