You might have come across the term ‘online marketplace’ a lot lately. Well, why not? Its trending and so happening that that’s where people are taking interest and investing in a lot today.

Giving an entirely new dimension to the entrepreneurs, online marketplaces are sky-rocketing with success and demand, encouraging each one to take a leap into it. Before bragging about the success of online marketplaces, let’s understand online marketplace at first.  

An online marketplace can be a website or an app that facilitates shopping from diverse sources. The owner of the marketplace has no inventory of its own but they present other sellers’ inventory before people to browse their products or services and acquire them, selecting the mode of transaction. For example, Amazon, Flipkart, eBay etc.  

So, what’s the big deal about it?  

Today when it comes to shopping, hardly a few of us would be still going shop to shop or malls to make a purchase, while the majority will on the spot open a website or an app and make the purchase at the very instant. Who had imagined online marketplaces and eCommerce will become such an integral part of our life?  

The credit for such a tremendous growth of online marketplaces and its fandom goes to the ease and convenience of it. No one likes or has to time to move around a number of physical stores to get what all they want when everything comes to us within a few clicks. It's not just the customers who are creating a big deal about online marketplaces but it’s the budding entrepreneurs as well who are going crazy over owning an online marketplace, hence the demand.  

According to a report from Coresight Research and data by Juniper Research, revenues for marketplace platform providers across the globe are predicted to cross $40.1 billion in 2022, driven by the sharing economy.  

Online marketplaces are not just limited to customers but now small-scale vendors and suppliers are also doing their businesses via them. Hence inarguably, it can be said that this is the era of online marketplaces 

What’s the secret to their success then?  

Online marketplaces can be of three types - B2B (business-to-business), B2C (business-to-customer), and C2C (customer-to-customer). Although the success of each depends on its type, there are few common factors that make the online marketplace a hit like;

•  Remarkable ecommerce marketplace software. Such software when integrated onto your site can do half the job for you and the features and benefits one gets out it are countless which makes the success limitless as well.

• They are the one solution to all. Be it, buyers or sellers, a multi-vendor ecommerce platform acts as one point for all. The time, money and effort invested by each gets results from it and everyone is happy at the end of the day.

•  Everything is wide in it. The customers get access to a wide range of products while the sellers get a wider audience to present their products to and talking about you the owner of the online marketplace, of course, the ROI is wider than you have ever imagined.

•  As the marketplace owner, you even can earn a good amount of commission from the vendors & advertisers, while customers can enjoy the better quality of service and competitive pricing, and sellers can sell their products without website setup & managing cost.

Since the market is already competitive, making an entrance with your online marketplace will never be easy. Hence, if you are planning a multi-vendor marketplace software, the following are some of the important features you must run a check to;

• Separate dashboard for vendors 
•  Multiple payment gateways
•  Ratings and reviews systems for buyers and sellers
•  SEO friendly and responsive website
•  Multiple administrative access
•  Advanced order management system
• Mobile apps for customers, admins & sellers
• Product catalogue system
• Simple navigation, checkout and shipping process
• Organised vendor pay-out system
• Automated task processing
• Reporting and data analytics for admin and sellers
• Integration with third-party tools & POS systems
• Registration pages for customers and sellers
•  Location-based search
• Request for Quotation feature (B2B)

For running a successful online marketplace your ultimate goal must be to attract endless customers, have positive recommendations, provide quality products or services and enjoy remarkable sales. The experience of your online marketplace must be seamless for all, buyers, sellers and vendors. You must connect with those who are experienced and can be trusted and helps you to keep going with your online marketplace without any hurdles.  

In a nutshell 

Online marketplaces undoubtedly have escalated to a whole new level but still, there is a greater chance of improvement as well. All you have to do is keep evolving and providing something different and unique solutions to keep your customers interested and reduce the risk of boring them. All of which is possible with MobiCommerce's ecommerce marketplace software.