Quick Guide to online e-commerce marketplaces

Online marketplaces have become extremely popular in recent years, they make buying and selling products more accessible and convenient. In this article we will be providing some key information about online marketplaces and what we feel are important to know before you get started.

1. What are online marketplaces?

Online marketplaces are platforms, usually as a website and/or app that facilitates transactions between the customer and the retailer. They seek to make the transaction process smoother for customers and buyers, constantly innovating their tech by providing support to both the customer and buyer.

True Benefits On Online Marketplaces For Sellers

Online marketplaces are incentivised to drive as many transactions possible for both the customer and buyer. While there are varying platform fees tax onto each transaction for the sellers, below are the cool features that prove the worth of the platform fees imposed.

a. Payment Gateway 

Forget the risk of fraudulent transactions and the hassle of chasing for payments. Most online marketplaces offer secure payment services to both the customer and seller, effectively mitigating much risks. They also save time for sellers who deal with high volume of sales.

b. Seller Insights & Performances

Unlike traditional receipts from the offline point-of-sale systems, sellers get to monitor their sales performances real-time in the form of a slick dashboard. These insights are what you would expect from any top analytic tool and can easily show data at the product level of any date range. 

With access to those statistics, sellers can constantly adopt new strategies accordingly to improve on certain metrics on their sales performances. There are mainly 4 key metrics, usually summarised on the dashboard for quick glances:

Traffic - Shows the number of new and repeat users who visited your store/products on a date range. 

Conversion - The calculation of traffic over number of orders. This determines the relevancy between the customers to your products and can be used as a benchmark for sales forecast.

Average Check-Out Value - The calculation of total revenue over number of orders. This determines the buying behaviour of your customers and the effectiveness of sales bundling.

Total Revenue - That magic number you wish it will forever be increasing. 

c. Dedicated Account Manager

As the platforms are being incentivized to drive as many transactions as possible, an account manager from the platform would aid sellers to reach a common goal. Though their specialisations vary from each platform, they will be happy to reach out and explain each features and on-going campaigns on their platform.

d. Delivery Options and Integrations

Respectable platforms have partnerships with logistic companies to process the customers’ orders. While it is still the seller’s responsibility to pack and fulfil the order, the courier will perform the end-to-end delivery after their pick-up. 

Depending on the costs involved, sellers would be pleased to find that most logistics partners available have integrated to the platform systems. Both the customer and seller are able to track the order status and the process to arrange for pick-up is seamless.

2. Important metrics for high-performing stores

A high-performing store profile is a store that enjoys high organic traffic, decent conversions, great overall ratings, responsive ratings and less than 3-5% cancellation rate.

a. Listing Consistency

That first impression you want to give to your customers as soon they visit your store. Consistency comprises standardised champion images, categories and listing titles. 

b. Ratings & Review

The metrics that provide the assurance impression to your customers. Arguably the longest time and effort to build and maintain but extremely rewarding in the long term. 

c. Chat Performances

Determined by response rate and the speed in which they respond. 

d. Cancellations

While getting cancellations are inevitable, sellers should manage inventory well to prevent cancellations from happening too frequently. 

**Check out our Official Rigorer store on Shopee Singapore here.**

Start selling online today!

Online marketplaces have been on the rise for many years and continue to grow at a rapid rate, every business should look into operating online in order to continue staying relevant in the following years to come.

Our resellers will have access to media assets in which they can use to bring about consistencies on the listings. Chat with us for more information!