Building a multi-vendor marketplace platform using Adobe Commerce

The thought of building a multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon or Etsy is not an easy task. You might worry about complexities like onboarding sellers, handling the logistics of third-party transactions, and managing the necessary technology stack. But to keep your customers from shifting to big marketplaces like Amazon, many organizations are now launching their own platforms. With a multi-vendor marketplace platform, everyone gets specific benefits – store owner, vendor, and buyer.

• Store owners will get better ROI with full control over marketplace activities
• Vendors will be able to boost sales by reaching a broader audience
• Buyers get a variety of products to choose from and they can compare products, prices, brands etc

To increase customer satisfaction, streamline operations, earn higher revenues and achieve faster growth, businesses are looking for developing multi-vendor marketplaces. So how do you choose an eCommerce platform for building a multi-vendor marketplace?

Choosing an eCommerce platform for multi-vendor marketplace

The process of multi-vendor marketplace creation can be time-consuming and expensive, with myriads of features to consider and match them with your business goals.

Here comes Adobe Commerce, a reliable, flexible, enterprise-level platform to create a multi-vendor marketplace packed with all the competitive functionalities by default. With Adobe Commerce, you create a unified, multi-vendor marketplace platform that lets you simplify your workflow, build unique eCommerce customer journeys, and deliver a seamless customer experience.

Let’s explore how Adobe Commerce helps businesses develop a marketplace platform and make enterprises thrive in the digital world.

Features of Adobe Commerce multi-vendor marketplace

Multi-vendor marketplaces have completely revived the eCommerce business model. In a marketplace website, a wide variety of products and services are provided by multiple sellers. It offers competitive prices, a commission revenue model to owners, and smooth order fulfillment and shipments operations. Adobe provides a seamless experience, integrations, ease of use and other advantages. Let’s look at the various selling features for a multi-vendor marketplace platform for customers, owners and sellers.

Why build a multi-vendor marketplace platform with Adobe Commerce

As a merchant, you need a robust technology stack with functionalities and extensions that offers seamless development of multiple eCommerce platforms simultaneously. Adobe Commerce is a scalable and secure platform that provides exemplary levels of user experience. With its next-generation PWA theme, you deliver enhanced customer experiences while fulfilling buyers’ and sellers’ requirements.

Let’s understand more about why Adobe Commerce is the right choice for building a multi-vendor marketplace platform :

#1. Adobe’s UI themes and extensions

Adobe Commerce (Magento) has a huge library of paid and free extensions that can be used on the platform for implementing modules like order management, vendor management, shipping, and more. Adobe Commerce has all the extensions available for seamless integrations; such as payment gateways, customer support, analytics, accounting etc., to improve the overall functionality of the marketplace. Along with responsive and customizable themes available in the Magento marketplace, you can tailor them as per your branding guidelines without having to build them from scratch.

#2. Adobe Commerce order management

By executing multi-vendor functionality, eCommerce business owners can manage their respective online stores independently. Vendors own all the processes in their online stores and can modify it as per their user base. Adobe Commerce helps vendors with quality control, order management, commission management etc., to maintain a balance between customers, vendors and admin. Magento’s inventory and order management capabilities allow multi-vendor admins with multiple brands, products and customers to create seamless cross-channel commerce experiences. This enables smooth management in organizations that are in a multi-vendor marketplace.

#3. Advanced product recommendations

Adobe Commerce Live Search provides AI-enabled interactive product search and recommendations from thousands of vendors. Live Search is a machine learning tool that ensures faster, personalized, and relevant results through an organized search functionality and product categorization to make product search easier for customers. Website owners can get customer insights that are further useful in personalized experiences.

#4. Marketing tools

Adobe Commerce is a well-optimized platform which gives website owners and vendors SEO-friendly multi-vendor platforms. It helps sellers and brand owners with customer insights to improve consumer journeys. Administrators can analyze data like the number of page visits to develop marketing strategies for more marketing visibility. Adobe Commerce consists of many extension modules like email marketing, CRM, SEO/SEM, marketing automation, and advertising that can be easily integrated with the platform for functionality extension.

#5. Checkout enhancement

Smooth checkout experiences is a critical attribute of your overall eCommerce experiences. Everyone likes one-step checkout, and with Adobe Commerce, various options exist to create a user-friendly checkout process. In multi-vendor eCommerce platforms, one-step checkout lets customers purchase quickly, and there are fewer chances of an abandoned shopping cart. Adobe Commerce allows customers to track orders and derive insights from the checkout page, enhancing the overall shopping experience.

#6. High standards and quality

Adobe maintains strict quality control and test processes for extensions added to the marketplace. In Magento, every extension goes through a three-step review process where functionalities are checked against business, technical, and marketing guidelines. This includes plagiarism, security, coding standards etc. While implementing any such extension, businesses owners and sellers can rest assured in terms of the business and ROI function of all these third-party systems.

#6. Adobe’s Vacation mode:

With Adobe’s multi-vendor marketplace extension sellers can go on vacation mode by raising a request to disable their store temporarily for mentioned time. It allows sellers to take a break from their shop for some time, if that is what sellers want. Sellers can still reply to customer inquiries and feedback.

#7. Streamlined onboarding:

With Magento’s features, onboarding vendors is as simple as possible. Magento gives plenty of options like registration with social media, email or phone numbers. This allows vendors to have a smooth experience to easily manage their profiles. In fact, customers can also easily register to the shopping site via their social, email or contact no credentials. They are providing vendors with an easy approach to an intuitive process of marketplace account registration and automated account notifications on approval.

#8. Interactive dashboards:

You can create an interactive dashboard through Adobe Commerce, showcasing essential data insights that are relevant for your business. Sellers can track orders, traffic, sales, conversions, shipping info, available product inventories, invoices, etc., by creating an easy-to-use and understandable customized dashboard. This way, sellers can gain valuable insights and use them for advertisements or product development.

Why should businesses build multi-vendor marketplaces?

• Creating your multi-vendor marketplace platform is a great way to future-proof your digital sales and get ahead of the competition. Hence, digital commerce is moving towards an ecosystem that emphasizes marketplaces.
• A multi-vendor marketplace is a great way to offer more choices in your online store without adding inventory.
• Multi-vendor marketplaces give you insights into customers like where they are located, how much they buy, what industries they are in, etc. This data provides valuable insights to help your business with marketing and product strategies.

Developing a multi-vendor marketplace platform with our Adobe Commerce experts

eCommerce giants such as Amazon and eBay did not grow overnight. To compete with leading brands in today’s leading digital world is not an easy task but with unique strategy it is more than possible. To build a marketplace all a business needs is a vision and choosing the right platform like Adobe Commerce. Adobe Commerce platform works seamlessly with multi-vendor marketplaces and delivers an exceptional eCommerce experience. Want to explore how Adobe helps in creating a platform which gives you incremental growth, improves customer experience and accelerates your business? Connect with our Adobe certified experts for a free consultation.