Building A Multivendor Marketplace Platform from Ground Up
What is a Multivendor Marketplace?
In simple terms, a multi-vendor marketplace is an online shopping platform where multiple sellers/vendors come together to sell either same or different products. The relationship between the sellers/vendors and buyers in such a platform is “many-to-many”. This helps the buyers to select from a diverse range of products and plays a crucial role in deriving traffic to the website.
Revenue Models
The ‘TOP’ and ‘MUST HAVE’ revenue models are:
- Advertising Revenue – Displaying ads from 3rd-party ad services like Google AdSense or similar and earning money through Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and Cost-Per-Impression (CPI). You as a site owner can also rent some space on your website for banner ads or featured ads.
- Membership Revenue – Providing your customers with various membership plans. The customers will have to subscribe by paying some fixed amount each month or on yearly basis. All such subscribed customers can access special discounts and offers. Thus you as a site owner can earn money both from the subscription fees and sales commission.
- Featured Listings – Giving the sellers/vendors an option to showcase their products in a featured section of the website and get special customer attention by paying a fee to you as a site owner.
- Sales Commission – You as a site owner can charge a commission to the sellers/vendors depending upon the products they are selling on the platform. Thus for each sale, you can get a commission from the sellers/vendors.
- Affiliate Revenue – You as a site owner can earn profits when there are affiliates working for selling products. You can choose to pay affiliates based on the number of leads they have produced or the number of products they have sold.
- Email and Social Media Promotion – You as a site owner can promote either a particular category or a product through email or social media promotion by charging an extra fee from the sellers/vendors. This is a kind of sale promotion.
Suggested System Architecture
The overall system architecture of the multivendor platform is as illustrated below:
The platform will have mainly three types of users:
- Admin – Site owner or other person who can manage all aspects of the website.
- Seller/Vendor – Who wants to sell their products.
- Customer – Who wants to buy products.
Features Overview
Following are few of the suggested features which can be there on this platform:
Admin Area
- Dashboard – This section will display information like total number of active products, sold products, active deals, expired deals, customers, merchants, stores and client enquiry, charts like new customers month wise (bar chart), total customers, products & deal counts (pie charts) and last 1 year transactions report (bar chart).
- Settings – This section will have features like general settings, email & contact settings, social media settings, payment settings and image settings.
- Banner Images – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), and block/unblock banner images, etc.
- Attributes – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search product attributes like colours, sizes etc.
- Countries – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search countries, etc.
- Cities – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search cities, etc.
- Categories – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search categories and subcategories of various products, etc.
- CMS – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search pages and related contents, etc.
- Ads – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search ads, etc.
- FAQs – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search FAQs, etc.
- Newsletters – This section will have features like list (with pagination and sorting), search, delete, subscribe/unsubscribe newsletter subscribers and an option to create and send newsletters to all or few selected subscribers, etc.
- Coupons – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search coupons, etc.
- Deals – This section will have features like deal dashboard showing total deals and active/expired/inactive deals (pie chart), deal transaction count and total amount for today, last 7 days, last 30 days and last 12 months, statistics/bar chart of last 1-year deal transactions. Furthermore, there will be options like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), block/unblock deals and deal reviews, list and view sold and expired deals, etc.
- Products – This section will have features like product dashboard showing total products and active/sold/inactive products (pie chart), product transaction count and total amount for today, last 7 days, last 30 days and last 12 months, statistics/bar chart of last 1 year transactions. Furthermore, there will be options like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), block/unblock products and product reviews, product bulk uploads and manage shipping delivery details, etc.
- Customers – This section will have features like customer dashboard showing total customers and website/Facebook/admin/Google+ customers (pie chart), customer login count for today, last 7 days, last 30 days and last 12 months, statistics/bar chart of last 1-year website customers. Furthermore, there will be options like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), block/unblock customer accounts and enquiries, etc.
- Merchants – This section will have features like merchant dashboard showing total merchants and active/inactive merchants (pie chart), merchant registration count for today, last 7 days, last 30 days and last 12 months, total stores (pie chart), merchant stores count for total stores, admin added stores and merchant added stores, statistics/bar chart of last 1 year merchant details. Furthermore, there will be options like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search, block/unblock merchant accounts and store reviews, etc.
- Transactions – This section will have features like list all orders, success orders, hold orders, failed orders, cancelled orders, return orders, replacement orders, all fund requests, success fund requests, pending fund requests, failed fund requests and all commissions, etc.
- Blogs – This section will have features like manage published blog posts, add a new blog post, manage drafted blog posts, blog settings and manage blog comments, etc.
Vendor Area
- Sign Up – Create a new account by providing details like:
- Store Details – Store name, phone, address, country, city, zip code, meta keywords, meta description and website.
- Personal Details – First name, last name, email, contact number, address, country, city, etc.
- Vendor Dashboard – This section will display information like total active products, sold products, active deals, expired deals and stores. Various charts (pie and bar) like total deals (active and archive), product details (active and sold), month-wise products and deals transactions will also be displayed. Furthermore, there will be an option to ‘Go To Store’, clicking on which the Vendor will be redirected to their store page.
- Attributes – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search product attributes like colours, sizes, etc.
- Deals – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search deals, list and view sold and expired deals.
- Products – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), search products, product bulk uploads and manage shipping delivery details.
- Transactions – This section will have features like list all orders, success orders, hold orders, failed orders, cancelled orders, return orders, replacement orders, all fund requests, success fund requests, pending fund requests, failed fund requests and all commissions.
- Stores – This section will have features like add, edit, delete, list (with pagination and sorting), block/unblock, search stores.
Customer Area
- My Profile – Update profile information like the first name, last name, phone number, address, email, password, shipping address, billing address etc.
- My Orders – List of all orders placed by the customer with their status.
- My Wishlist – List of all products added by the customer in their wishlist with an option to delete.
General /Visitor Area
- Home – The homepage of the website will display slideshow or carousel of products, deals of the day, category listing, top offers, most popular products, featured products etc.
- Search – Search products by category and keywords.
- Products – This section will display the list of all products available with searching options like search by category, search by colour, search by size filter, discount range, price range etc. Clicking on any product will display the product details. The products listing can be sorted based on price low to high, price high to low, title A-Z and title Z-A. ‘Add to Cart’ option will be there for each product, clicking on which will add the product to the user’s cart. For registered and logged in users, ‘Add To Wishlist’ option will be there.
- Deals – This section will display various deals available. You might also include a search feature with options such as select categories, price range and discount range. The deals listing can be sorted based on price low to high, price high to low, title A-Z and title Z-A. Clicking on any deal will display the deal details. Furthermore, most visited deals will also get listed in this section. ‘Add to Cart’ option will be there for each product, clicking on which will add the deal to the user’s cart. For registered and logged in users, ‘Add To Wishlist’ option will be there.
- Sold Out – This section will display all sold out products and deals.
- Stores – Vendors can create their own stores where they will be able to showcase and sell their products. This section will display a list of various stores created by vendors. Clicking on any store will display the store information, location on Google Map, products and deals associated with the store, store branches, overall rating and an option to write a review about the store.
- Nearby Store – This section will show nearby stores on Google Map as per the city selected.
- Contact Us – This section will show contact details, a contact us form and a Google Map displaying office location.
- Blog – This section will display various blog articles posted by the Admin. Users will be able to comment on the posts and share on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
- Content Pages – Pages like About Us, Privacy, Return Policy, Security, Terms & Conditions.
- FAQ – List of frequently asked questions and answers.
- Social Media Links – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn etc.
- Shopping Cart – List of products added to the cart with options to update quantity, delete, continue shopping and proceed to checkout. The cart total will also be displayed.
- One Page Checkout – Customers will be able to place multiple orders to buy products from multiple vendors. They can place only one order and make a single page checkout. For handling online payments, PayPal payment gateway can be integrated. For splitting the order total with vendors or handling commissions, PayPal Payouts can be used.
Recommended Technology Stack
The recommended technology stack for developing the platform:
Recommended Server Architecture
The recommended high-level server architecture for the platform is as illustrated in the below diagram:
