Marketplaces have long dominated online retail. In 2019, online marketplace sales surpassed $2 trillion, accounting for 52 percent of the worldwide retail sector. It’s no surprise that in the United States, 59 percent of shoppers begin their product search on Amazon rather than Google.
Starting a ready-made online business is no longer a difficult task. A retailer may launch their own multi-vendor website in a month without investing a fortune.
Why Retailers Are Shifting Their Attention to Readymade Online Marketplaces?
Shoppers abandon brick-and-mortar establishments and shopping centers. Hundreds of shopping malls, for example, are closing in the United States right now. They’re known as “dead malls.” These are not only closed shopping malls but also malls that are losing customers. Malls are also fading in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Shoppers nowadays do not visit their local physical mall to look for things. They even don’t utilize Google. They immediately launch Amazon. Modern markets provide exceptional service, including the chance to try on clothes and shoes before purchasing and a simple return process. As a result, the purchasing experience on marketplaces is quite similar to that of shopping in traditional malls.
Why do Shoppers Choose Markets for Traditional Brick-and-Mortar Retail and Internet Stores?
There are three causes for this.
- Reduced Pricing. Thousands of independent merchants sell similar or even identical products on marketplaces. This results in fierce competition. Product pages on marketplaces may feature a list of sellers who sell this product as well as their prices. Of course, a consumer will buy from the seller with the lowest price.
- Incomparably Broader Product Offering. A marketplace may have tens of thousands of sellers. Can you imagine how many times this occurs at a physical shopping mall? You can find anything on Amazon if you look for it. Amazon had hundreds of cases in a matter of minutes.
- Outstanding Customer Service. Customers can enjoy the shopping experience of traditional malls in today’s huge markets. You can try on your new sneakers and easily return them if they don’t fit. A courier will bring your new jeans right to your home and return them if you don’t like them. If you receive a damaged item, you can easily return it, and the marketplace will quickly reimburse your money.
Why do Large Merchants Need to Launch their own eCommerce Marketplace?
There are three causes for this:
- Obtaining a strategic advantage. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is currently developing and promoting its online marketplace. And it’s not just Walmart. Retailers recognize that the online marketplace business model outperforms traditional offline retail. Retailers do not need to negotiate prices and terms of business with suppliers while using an online marketplace. A marketplace provides a retailer with strategic benefits over slower competitors.
- To make the purchasing experience the best it can be. A retailer can respond to changing buying tastes and product trends more quickly. A marketplace enables a shop to provide extra services as well as better tailor product offerings and recommendations.
- To increase brand recognition. A marketplace website improves the company’s SEO without requiring any more investments. And having a presence online means reaching a new audience.
Benefit in Establishing your Own Readymade Online Business
A niche market can benefit smaller retailers. This type of marketplace is a really novel concept in global eCommerce. It is much easier to crush your competitors and become the top in your field if you run a marketplace in your industry.
Niche marketplaces are those that specialize in one or a few product categories. It means they can exhibit a product better and offer a greater range of products to customers. These marketplaces provide a better user experience and present products in the best possible light.
For a retailer, the key benefit of a niche market is the high customer LTV. When you launch a specialty marketplace offering restaurant cookware, you are guaranteed to attract repeat business from coffee shops, restaurants, and other public catering enterprises.
Companies recognize that the specialized marketplace is the business strategy in which they should invest right now. Many niches are now occupied by marketplaces that did not exist a year ago. We have over 1,500 examples of marketplaces established with CS-Cart in a variety of specializations.
Is it Worthwhile to Launch a Readymade Online Marketplace in this Market?
Without a question. According to a study performed by Retail Week in collaboration with Mirakl, 48 percent of retailers believe that a marketplace facilitates business collaboration with suppliers. It’s a crucial element in B2B.
Let me explain: working with suppliers may frequently be a living horror. To organize supplies for your, say, private clinic, you must phone hundreds of vendors in person, negotiate with them, manage mountains of paperwork, and so on. This takes a significant amount of time and work.
This procedure is eliminated by a B2B marketplace. Simply go to the marketplace website and get all of the products you need at the best pricing and from recommended vendors. Furthermore, the marketplace ensures the security and dependability of your transaction.
Why the Need to Launch a Ready-Made Online Business now?
It is now easier than ever to start your own eCommerce mall. There were no ready-made solutions for developing a multi-seller website when it all started, I mean the growth of marketplaces. Companies had to build markets from the ground up or redesign their current websites to allow multi-vendor functionality. It also entails months of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Everything has changed. You no longer need to build your multivendor website from the ground up, nor do you need to spend months and thousands of dollars doing so. Buyers have grown accustomed to doing their buying on online marketplaces. And starting your own online shopping mall is now a lot easier and faster.
How can a Merchant Launch a Ready-Made Online Business from the Ground Up in a Timely and Cost-Effective Manner?
The software foundation on which a marketplace is constructed is at its heart. When starting a marketplace, the platform is usually a large portion of the costs. A business has two options:
- Create the marketplace software platform from the ground up.
- Make use of a ready-made marketplace CMS like Amazon Clone.
The first option is both complicated and costly. The company must select a contractor to create the platform. And the corporation will be reliant on that contractor for as long as the market exists. It can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish such a large and complicated platform.
The second approach is simple and inexpensive. A readymade ecommerce website like Amazon often has all of the necessary functionality, is regularly updated, and is ready for use right away. The cost of a ready-made marketplace CMS is always less than the cost of development.
The majority of today’s ready-made marketplace platforms are SaaS. They are quite simple to set up and allow you to quickly create a marketplace. However, the majority of SaaS marketplace solutions are frequently constrained in terms of functionality and are always limited in terms of code customization. So, if you want to build a large, long-term marketplace, you should consider on-premise platforms.
A ready-made on-premise marketplace CMS typically costs ten times less than custom development, and you can launch a fully-functional website in a month. The platform already has all of the features you’ll need for the launch, such as a distinct backend panel and storefront for each seller, seller payment plans, a configurable privilege system, an automatic money distribution system, and others.
What is the Most Common Blunder that Entrepreneurs Make While opening a Marketplace?
The most typical mistake is believing that you can spend two years developing the marketplace, its functionality, and design before launching and reaping the benefits of success. This is not how things work. Starting a marketplace does not necessitate a lengthy development procedure.
What you need is a couple of days to set up the platform and a month to launch the marketplace MVP. Then, as it grows and earns you clients and money, improve it over time.
Conclusion
Offline retail, on the other hand, does not feel particularly good these days. Physical shopping malls are losing anchor stores—large retailers—as the focus shifts to eCommerce. We are confident that online marketplaces represent the future of retail, and that future is rapidly approaching.
