Multi-vendor Marketplace Extension Development – Magento 2

In this era of e-commerce, customers have an endless number of options for buying products online. Loyal customers can stay adhered to their favorite brand’s website. Or they can find a marketplace giant like Amazon to find the same product and its alternatives.

Ecommerce marketplaces have always offered the upper hand by providing a wider range of products, variants, related accessories, additional discounts, and more. Above all, the platform provides ample space for third-party vendors to sell products tailored for customers which add up to their immense popularity.

For example, we have this Mug on Amazon offered by more than one seller. It is worth noticing that the prices of both the mugs are different even though they are the same. Seller’s services matter here.

With that, this seems like a win-win situation for both the users and the local vendors on the e-commerce marketplace. And, it is. While the users can find more than one option to buy the same product, the sellers can offer added services for their customers on a global platform.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Challenges for Multi-vendor eCommerce on Magento

The likes of Amazon, Etsy, and eBay are highly popular for aspiring online sellers.

By 2019, Amazon has nearly 2.5 million active sellers. 

Managing that lot of sellers and their individual services is never easy. It gets only more difficult when the marketplace lacks the desired infrastructure to support the heavy functions. As a result, both the sellers and the business owner on a custom Multi-vendor marketplace are likely to suffer.

Challenges for the vendors:

• The freedom to add the products of their choice
• Managing the cost of the services
• Self-branding in the marketplace

Challenges for the Business owners:

• Managing the sellers
• Managing the commissions

Added to that, the owner comes across issues that are common to an eCommerce business like fulfillment, a 24×7 running e-store, an effective payment channel, and more.

At this, the eCommerce development agency at The Brihaspati Infotech recently helped a client establish a custom Multi-vendor Marketplace for Magento2. The Magento marketplace extension not only helps the client managing the sellers and their products but also automates the commissions.

The blog discusses the complete development cycle, the challenges, and how our expertise at eCommerce helped the client achieve the feat.

Multi-vendor eCommerce Magento Development

Magento is the first-hand choice for businesses that expect scalability in the longer run. The e-commerce CMS offers a well-built platform to deliver a convincing backend that can carry out bulk tasks pretty smoothly. 

The platform comes with several in-built functions that can be used directly for store development. The community of dedicated Magento developers can handle the rest.

In our case, the client offered custom printed shirts online. The client hired special designers who sold their art as printed t-shirts. The basic idea was to provide the raw t-shirts to all the sellers and the latter can offer a custom-designed shirt, in return. The client can either approve it as a product for the marketplace or can reject it. The seller’s role is confined to managing the products. The client handles the products, the commission levied, and fulfillment.

Thus, the need was to develop a well-defined architecture on the Magento backend where multiple roles can co-exist with a variety of functions and access to the data.

Separate dashboard for sellers

Challenge:

The default Magento sign up form asks the user for details like name, email address, and password. The client wanted to add a field for the seller’s store URL.

Solution:

We tailored the default Magento sign up form. The Seller’s registration form now has an additional field for adding the Shop URL. The difference between the default and the customized sign up form can be seen from the picture below:

While developing the Magento multi-vendor store extension, we have offered an entirely new dashboard for the sellers where they can manage their products and gain crucial insights like:

• Order tracking
• Top selling designs
• New customers
• Total sales
• Categories
• Ratings
• Complete order details and their status

The insights are provided on a highly user-friendly interface. 

For a better understanding, we have added custom filters that arrange the data in a more readable format. The seller has the option to find the sales on various time ranges like yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily. 

Managing products with custom Magento 2 Marketplace solution

Challenge:

The ease to create products online and their variants.

Solution:

We offered a custom product builder solution on the seller’s platform. The seller can select the original product, the variants and can add the uploaded design for printing, as shown in the gif file below:

This section imports all the products from the client’s product listing, along with the variants. We have added a custom button to upload the seller’s design(Swan, in this example). The seller can create innumerable combinations of products, variants, and designs right away. They can add a name and category before publishing the newly created product in the marketplace.

Commission Reimbursement on Magento marketplace extension

Challenge:

Lack of transparency for the seller with the commissions.

Solution:

We streamlined the commissioning between the sellers and the client with the help of a third party Magento extension for commissions. The extension has been customized to the client’s requirements. As a result, the seller can find the exact earning on his platform.

We have furthered the ability of the commissioning by an easy withdrawal button. Just hit the button, once the owner approves the request, the amount is transferred to the seller’s account.

Full-fledged store for the sellers

Challenge:

Self-branding is a challenge for the sellers on the Magento multi-vendor marketplace. Plus there is a high chance that the customers are restricted to the current product in spite of the seller’s ability to design products of every kind.

Solution:

We offered independent stores to the sellers where they can store their custom-designed products. Every product has the URL of the seller’s store, as shown in the picture below:

The customer can thus browse through the seller’s personal collections.

Custom admin control on Magento2 Marketplace

The Magento Multi seller marketplace extension is customized at every front for the eCommerce owner, allowing them to have complete control over their business. We have customized the panel for not only handling the much-needed functions on the platform but also to manage the subsequent user roles.

The dashboard contains a Marketplace management section that accumulates all the major functionalities at the same place. From managing sellers to their products and commissions, the section literally gives you command over your marketplace.

Managing sellers

The Magento2 marketplace owner can centrally manage all the sellers in the store. He can find their status, their age in the store, and the ability to remove them, all done at the same place.

We have added custom options to place orders, deny their continuation, and connect the seller’s platform with Stripe, everything on a click.

Managing commissions

The eCommerce owner can manage the commissions from the custom Magento dashboard. Our Magento 2 marketplace extension development offers a separate section for Commission rules. We have mentioned the third party commissioning extension that comes into play.

Furthering with the idea, we have a separate space for finding the earnings offered to the sellers and if the amount is reimbursed.

With that, our custom Magento 2 Multi-vendor Marketplace development proves as a full-fledged extension a Magento customer will always look for. The possibilities of customization are more based on the business model of the client. Our custom Magento development company is capable of converting the ideas to store functions.

Our experience with custom eCommerce Marketplace development

The Brihaspati Infotech is a pioneer with its exclusive eCommerce services. Our eCommerce development agency has been praised on some leading platforms business review platforms like Clutch for its offerings to the online business community. 

In the past, our developers had built a custom multi-vendor marketplace app for Shopify owners allowing them to equip their existing Shopify store with marketplace-like features.

Final words on Building Magento Marketplace Extension

Ecommerce technologies offer innumerable possibilities for business owners. Building a Magento 2 Marketplace store can help them make accurate business decisions. As a result, they can focus on more crucial business roles.

If your online store also deserves a custom multi-vendor marketplace integration or similar customization, you can always contact us. Our expertise can help you achieve the feat.