Before Selling in Marketplace

A lot of changes have occurred in the E-commerce industry since its origin. Ecommerce nowadays has taken a faster pace. Selling own products solely to offering products from multiple-sellers is a trend ecommerce/business owners are adopting. Online stores are taking a quick shift towards Marketplaces. Sales through Multivendor marketplaces will account for almost thrice as compared to online stores by 2021. In comparison to single e-commerce stores, a multi-vendor marketplace helps in retaining up to 89% of the customers. Let’s see some influencing factors before start selling in Marketplace.

#Analyze picture and Metadata of products in the marketplace with your niche.

Metadata is a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. Photo metadata allows information to be transported with an image file, in a way that can be understood by other software, hardware, and end users, regardless of the format. By analyzing the existing products in the marketplace you will get an idea about preparation for your niche. Use the Google Keyword tool and Google trends to collect product reach and keywords for your niche products.

#Shipping rate and payment options. 

 Timely delivery is one of the important tasks that have to handle with care, if you can’t place an order within the time period demanded by the customer trust will be damaged so detail understanding of shipping procedure should be known from the appropriate marketplace. Different type of payment options will encourage more customers to do the shopping so don’t forget to check the payment options available in marketplace Inputting card data into a web browser is relatively easy, but a mobile browser is a different story, and that’s making all participants in the ecosystem more interested in using “one-click” payment buttons. Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and Visa Checkout are some of the examples.

#Update price and stock inventory.

Inventory management through a third party system enables employees to enter minimum input to get maximum results. They can automate the process of listing and de-listing (removing quantities so it cannot sell) across multiple marketplaces. Some older systems still require employees to remove the product from each marketplace, leaving the business wide open to selling items they no longer have. Sharing inventory across these marketplaces is also essential but almost impossible to do manually. Sharing inventory across marketplaces gives employees more time to handle important things rather than notifying angry customers about out-of-stocks. On marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, you're penalized if you get negative feedback from oversells and your products will actually show up farther down in the search results, causing you to lose sales.

#Commission for each sale.

To build a pricing strategy for your marketplace is not easy. What works for this marketplace might not work for the others. Many people may prefer high rate while others think a very low rate would be effective in attracting a lot of users to site. There’s no right or wrong answer since each marketplace has its own business strategy including pricing structure to remain competitive in the market while still being able to make a profit out of it.

The commission fee is the most popular business model whose pricing structure is also complicated to determine. How much should you charge? Should it be a same flat rate for every transaction or the percentage of the total sum? Who will pay the bill? The buyers, the sellers, or both? You have to study in detail.

#Competitors Selling Price.

Competitive pricing is the process of selecting strategic price points to best take advantage of a product or service based market relative to the competition. This pricing method is used more often by businesses selling similar products since services can vary from business to business, while the attributes of a product remain similar. This type of pricing strategy is generally used once a price for a product or service has reached a level of equilibrium, which occurs when a product has been on the market for a long time and there are many substitutes for the product.

#Rules and Regulation.

The Rules and regulations are required for the protection of the consumers in the market for the following reasons. 

(i) To check adulterations At times greedy traders try to play with the health of consumers by indulging in adulteration of edible oils, milk, butter, ghee etc.
(ii) To check powerful producer Markets do not work in a fair manner if there is a monopoly of few and powerful producers and when the purchase of consumer is small and they have no single voice. So there is a need for rules and regulations in the market.
(iii) False information Most of the time the false information is passed to consumers through media and other sources to attract the consumers.

#Marketplace Traffic

When choosing a place to sell your products online, it’s important to consider the number of shoppers visiting each site and how much competition you’ll get from other sellers. Using Semrush, a global web analytics company, we can get an idea of a marketplace’s traffic and online engagement. It’s important to understand the numbers before making any conclusions. Here are a couple of metrics to keep in mind:

• Site rankings:  This rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors to this site and page views on this site over the past 3 months.
• Unique visits: This is the total number of visits to the site from an individual IP address.
• Bounce rate: This is the percentage of visits to the site that consist of a single pageview before the user leaves the site.

Before you choose an online marketplace site, evaluate the various levels of traffic to get a sense of how often your items could be viewed. Refer to the Traffic & Online Engagement table below to see an overview of monthly traffic, bounce rate, and daily time spent on each of the top online marketplaces.

#Refund Policy

“Seller will submit a return policy (the «Seller Return Policy») using the form provided on the Portal. The Seller Return Policy must (i) apply to all Merchandise, (ii) outline the process for Users to return the Merchandise directly to Seller, and (iii) be at least as accommodating to User returns as the Sears Return Policy. Seller agrees to honor all User returns in accordance with the Seller Return Policy published at the time of the User’s purchase of Merchandise.”

What does this mean?
If you sell shoes and Sears’s policy is a 30-day return policy, you must allow a customer 30 days or more to return the shoes.

For most items, customers have 30 days from the date of their original purchase to make a return with some exceptions.

#Product Listing

An online marketplace is a type of e-commerce website where third parties sell their products or services. Usually, retailers sell products on leading marketplaces to increase sales or profits. But listing and managing products on marketplaces require in-depth domain knowledge, technical skills, and familiarity with specific rules of individual marketplaces.

#Order Fulfillment

Order fulfillment is defined as the steps involved in receiving, processing and delivering orders to end customers. A fulfillment service is defined as a third-party company that provides these order fulfillment steps on behalf of another party, such as an online seller. The orders are rolling in and your business is primed for explosive growth. Not so fast. While product-market fit and user acquisition are undoubtedly crucial to your business, e-commerce order fulfilments the engine that keeps your car running.

#Customer Review

A customer review is a review of a product or service made by a customer who has purchased and used, or had to experience with, the product or service. Customer reviews are a form of customer feedback on electronic commerce and online shopping sites. Reevoo found that 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. According to a 2011 study by iPerceptions, 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews. According to Reevoo, reviews produce an average 18% uplift in sales.