Online Marketplace – What is it and how does it work?

An online marketplace is a fleet of eCommerce stores huddled together in a single site. The admin, vendors and the customers constitute the business ecosystem of a multi-vendor marketplace. The vendors sell their products on the marketplace, which is owned by an admin/marketplace owner. So when a customer purchases the products from the marketplace site, the payment is received by the vendor and the admin in turn receives the commission from the vendor.



What is the reason for the widespread acceptance of a Marketplace?

With the proliferation of smart phones, online access has become simpler. So people no longer prefer to wait in queues and carry beefy bags for shopping. They prefer to opt for a smarter shopping. Now let us see why shoppers visit a marketplace.

Vast choice of products

In a marketplace there is an expansive range of products like clothing accessories, cookeries, stationary, household items and so on. In fact currently marketplaces are planning to sell properties as well. As customers are flooded with an ocean of products in a marketplace they ditch out brick & mortar.

Discount offers that make shopping economical

Online shopping is cost effective to customers. If you compare the products being sold on a brick and mortar and the ones sold in eCommerce marketplace, you will realize that the products are much more cheaper in a marketplace. Also they offer discounts on a regular basis.

Faster and a secure shopping experience

No customer prefers to waste their precious time in shopping. Going by that, shopping in a marketplace is very quick and simple. They can find out products to their taste and budget using smart search options. Nowadays most of the marketplaces have secure payment gateways integrated. Hence the billing process is very secure and of course quick.

Affordable for vendors

Not everyone can afford to pump in money to create an eCommerce store. In that case a marketplace is very profitable to vendors. Because their investment is comparatively low and also the probability of drawing in customers to their products are higher as a marketplace is visited by numerous customers every day.

Profitable for the admin

Apart from the initial investment for erecting a marketplace, the admins need not shell out money. Once their multi vendor eCommerce site gets a good reach they can earn substantially through commissions alone. In that manner the risk factor associated is tetchy

So is it really profitable to invest in Marketplace?



The answer is a big yes. If you see the real life cases of Amazon, eBay, Alibaba they have been raking enormous profits year after year. Take the case of Amazon, they have a generated a turn over of $22.9 billion in the first quarter of 2015. So obviously in the present trend it seems to a viable decision to go in for a marketplace.

What does it take to build an online marketplace?

There are two ways to create your own online marketplace.

First option is to develop your own marketplace by coding from the scratch. But if you opt for it then you need cross these hurdles.

- Employ adroit and experienced developers and designers.
- Develop smart features and optimize your site’s speed to woo your customers.
- Hire an office space.
- Deploy SEOs to improve your site’s visibility.

And the list goes on. The entire process is very time consuming and requires huge investment.

The second option is to go in for a readymade marketplace script. Never under estimate the power of readymade scripts. They give you the passport of creating an online marketplace without any technical expertise. Firms that offer readymade scripts help you during the installation process and renders professional assistance in case of any technical issues.

One interesting aspect is that the features that come along with these scripts are similar to the ones available in the popular sites like Amazon, Alibaba, etc. One more big advantage is that these scripts can be customized based on your specifications. You have the complete authority to decide on the features and the design aspects of your website.

So we have collected some of the popular and top quality readymade scripts like

1. Apptha Multivendor Marketplace
2. Webkul Marketplace
3. Unirgy Marketplace
4. VnEcoms Marketplace

We have also tabulated their features along with their charges. Have a look at the table below.



The table suggests Apptha Marketplace script to be beneficial to the marketplace owners owing to the features and the cost. However opinion differs.