How get a Magento Marketplace site in easiest 8 steps?
The term marketplace is not new to the eCommerce marketplace. It was a time when someone has to go through a lot technical coding and planning for implementation of an eCommerce site. With the introduction of CMS and eCommerce platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart,etc. the gap between an excellent business mind and an online site is now has been reduced to the minimal. Marketplace site is a more advanced form of eCommerce site which allows a site admin to accept seller registrations and start selling with them on the same site. All the sellers who get themselves registered on a marketplace, get their own dashboard on the main site, and this dashboard allows the sellers to upload and manage their own product. The importance of a marketplace site need not any introduction in today’s era.
8 Easy Steps to get your own Magento Marketplace site and start accepting seller registrations: Case 1 - When you are new to the eCommerce marketplace and you do not have an eCommerce site already: If you are a complete beginner to the eCommerce world, It's would be easier for you to get a fresh Marketplace site. You need to follow these steps:
Step 1: Decide a CMS or eCommerce platform- Deciding a CMS or eCommerce platform is the toughest task in this guide. A large number of CMS platforms like Drupal, PrestaShop, Magento, Shopify, OpenCart etc are already available. So it becomes tougher to choose from them as all of them are really good in their domain. Well, at least for those who are completely new to this world of eCommerce market it would be very hard to choose. Consider these point when you are deciding a platform for your site: a.
Decide according to your business requirements.
b.
Decide the quantity or scale of products you want to sell on your site.
c.
Start with an Open source platform : I.
OpenCart - For a small number of products.
II. PrestaShop - For medium number of Products. III. Magento- For handling products on a very large scale. d.
There other competent platforms like Drupal Commerce, Woo commerce, Shopify etc. I have mentioned the above in the list as they are highly used Open-source platforms across the globe and their modules are easily available as compared to other platforms.
I will explain taking Magento as an example. Steps for all other platforms are very similar to this one. Step 2: Install the CMS platform of your choice (Magento as an example)- As I explained earlier, Magento is a widely used platform and can smoothly handle a considerable amount of products. A large number of Magento extension are already available in the market that can extend the basic functionalities of your Magento site. A marketplace extension is one of them and it is the fourth step in this procedure. Step 3: Configure your Magento site- After installing the Magento site, you need to configure your web shop and personalize it. Set up your shop by customizing the settings, permissions, shop name, shop banners. You can decide Magento theme or Magento template according to your shop. Step 4: Choose and install a Magento marketplace extension- Choosing a Magento Marketplace extension is even a tougher task. A large number of developers are already offering their competent Magento extensions and some are very popular too. While choosing a Magento developer to develop your marketplace extension, you can have a look at this article, it will help you to hire a perfect Magento developer for your site "How to hire a Magento development company". A perfect Magento extension for marketplace site would be one : a) Which is competent to accept seller registrations. b) Which is competent to manage even a large number of sellers. c) Which allows admin to approve and disapprove sellers registrations and even block the already approved sellers at any time.
d) Which allows the approved sellers upload and manage their own products. e) Which allows the sellers to control manage their own delivery and shipping process. f)
Which has an efficient reporting system that allows the admin and sellers both to track all the respective sales and transactions?
g) Most of all, which allows the extension of the marketplace functionalities by able to choose from a large number of already available Marketplace addons. There are a large number of expectations you can make with a marketplace Magento extension, but these are some basics that all marketplace extension should possess. Step 5: - Find a competent marketplace Magento extension and install it on your Magento site like any other Magento extension- You can follow the above suggestions while choosing a marketplace Magento extension, that information could be helpful for you. I can suggest the Magento multi-vendor marketplace extension which has all the above-mentioned features plus has some more exciting features. Well, it's a paid version, however, you can also try the free version of the same and later upgrade to the paid version when you find it satisfying. It’s a demo version to check the compatibility and testing, has some restrictions but can be useful in testing the compatibility with your Magento site. Step 6: Configure your marketplace extension - After installation, almost all of these marketplace extensions provide a configuration panel where you can personalize and set up the extension for use. You have to enable the extension from the back end and then perform the configurations. You can set the commission rate or fixed commission price you want to take from the Sellers. Step 7: Enable the seller registration access on the front end- After configuration, your new Magento extension is ready to use. Now you are ready to accept the seller registrations. The front end customer registration panel will now show an option to the users to also register as a seller. Any registration request will now be notified to the admin. You can set your email id to received the notification when one arrives. Step 8: Accept or review the seller request- Now you need to review and accept the seller registration requests. Any seller who is approved will be allowed to show his products on your site and upload any number of products. All the products uploaded will be first reviewed by you and after you approve them they will be visible on your site.
Case 2 : When you already have a site on any platform: In this case, you will have to follow the steps from "Step 4" and choose the marketplace extension /module according to the platform you use. There is already some competent marketplace module for PrestaShop too. These are the 8 easy steps you can take to get a marketplace site for you. Take the advantages of a large number of modules and extension that are already available. Always choose a CMS platform whose modules and extensions are easily available.