Top 10 Essential Features for a Successful Online Marketplace
Building a successful e-commerce marketplace in today’s fast-paced lifestyle is imperative for achieving your business goals. Whether it be a grocery store, fashion outlet, sportswear e-shop, or an online marketplace for home decor items, it should be stuffed with items. This helps generate the desired numbers. But, what are the essential features of a successful Shopify store? This post provides a clear insight.
When you visit popular online marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, Walmart, etc., you find one thing in common. There’s no dearth of products one is looking for. As top retail brands are fiercely competing with each other for the lion’s share, you have to be on your toes to understand customer sentiments. Most importantly, devise a foolproof online marketing strategy.
An internet marketplace provides access to an extensive audience who prefer shopping online, instead of visiting a physically located store. This is because of an extensive range and wide variety of items to choose from. Let’s delve deeper into it.
Must-Have Features of a Web Marketplace
Easy Onboarding Process
Third-party sellers of different products and services have multiple choices in the ever-growing e-commerce marketplace. So, providing them with a quick store setup process in an uncomplicated way is a perfect way to attract new sellers who plan to open stores.
Retail companies can offer step-by-step guidance to all first-time sellers on how to register, open an account, verify their identity, newly stock, and replenish their store. Moreover, companies can provide instructional videos, ‘how to’ articles, and FAQs to guide sellers. This not only helps them optimize their e-commerce marketplaces but also promotes their products on miscellaneous platforms.
Product Management
Apart from listing new products, companies can also help sellers manage their product inventory and product catalog on one such dedicated e-marketplace. It also comprises tasks like adding new products, deleting ‘out of stock’ products, writing user-engaging product descriptions, etc.
Other than these standard chores, product management includes adding product images & videos, updating stock & inventory, deciding prices & discounts, generating reviews, and more.
Well-Designed Pages
Your E-commerce website or WooCommerce store should have an attractive, engaging, and immersive layout. This helps generate interest among buyers and first-time site visitors who potentially convert into customers. With a secure payment gateway, e-shopping cart, and easy check-out features, your customers are in for a great user experience.
You can create product category pages, as it helps buyers or shoppers search for the right product easily and swiftly. You can also create ‘filters’ to provide users with advanced search options. A simple, user-friendly, and accessible web layout results in reduced bounce rate and increased conversion.
Customization
Shoppers always look for customized content that best suits their product shopping needs. All their search results should guide them to the right category of products listed in an online marketplace, making their search easy. Engage your visitors into playing an exciting spin-to-win or Wheel of Fortune game, which helps increase conversion rate and generate new Shopify leads.
Seamless Shopping Cart & Checkout
From the perspective of user experience (UX), a streamlined shopping cart, secure payment gateway and easy checkout help increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores. Other salient features like COD, crypto payments like (BTC, ETH, SOL, USDT, etc.), and free shipping, add a whole new dimension.
Every shopper or buyer wants a seamless online shopping experience. And, with a user-friendly web interface, you can achieve reduced bounce rates, shopping cart abandonment, and increased sales. This is exactly why a streamlined shopping cart and checkout flow matters.
Mobile Friendliness
With a mobile-friendly design, layout, and interface, your customers are in for a great shopping experience. This not only makes your store increasingly accessible to users with disabilities but also compatible across all mobile and Android devices with different screen sizes. A mobile responsive web marketplace enhances the overall customer experience and generates improved sales figures.
Order Status Tracking
For instilling trust among e-commerce buyers, internet-based marketplaces must offer their customers real-time order tracking and status-checking features. In this way, all shoppers can track their product and know estimated delivery time on a company App, by using a unique order ID. This helps provide genuine information about a product and its whereabouts.
Review & Rating
As e-commerce marketplaces offer a diverse range of product choices to customers, there should also be an easy review & rating process. It is essential to build trust among new buyers. The review feature allows shoppers to leave a comment after buying and using a product, service, or ware from a particular e-commerce store.
Reviews & ratings have a significant impact on a buyer’s decision-making ability. It serves as a key metric for influencing a buying decision, by having a fair overview of the pros & cons of a product.
Product Discovery
It is not only having the right products on the rack but also ensuring your buyers easily find what they’re looking for, without spending much time. With the help of advanced search features & product filters, product discovery includes custom recommendations and suggestions to guide users to the right ware. This helps buyers make informed decisions.
An intuitive product discovery process helps improve CSAT scores, enhance user engagement, and get repeat customers across the board.
Ensuring Secured Transaction
A foolproof and secure method of online transaction is beneficial, both for the seller and buyer. First and foremost, you need to effectively manage your Shopify store’s SSL certificate. It helps in establishing a secure connection between the server and the browser.
Make sure your customer data is kept safe and secure through HTTPS which encrypts all forms of communication, thus protecting consumer data from potential hackers. This is how online transactions are kept secure, safe, and private, free from phishing attacks & hacking threats.
As online marketplaces are growing bigger and faster, they should aim to provide the best-in-class user interface features to all buyers, sellers, and vendors. Here, a digital marketing agency in Tampa like VSF Marketing can provide valuable inputs to WooCommerce and Shopify stores on how to build a successful internet marketplace seamlessly. You can always consult their in-house web design & development professionals on how to build one such e-commerce store.