How Multi-store Platforms Support Global Marketplace

Expand Your Reach and Mobility with Multivendor Software

After expanding into the global marketplace, how does a multi-store platform with multivendor capability help you develop and scale your business? The vendors of your marketplace will be able to operate in additional locations, thus expanding the reach of your marketplace and increasing the vendors’ opportunities.

Location-Based Preferences for Vendors

In addition to having a multi-store marketplace platform, a multi-vendor platform can be key for a global marketplace. There are some major advantages for vendors within certain countries or regions as there may be strong preference for vendors in that region, or a preference for vendors that are local to the user. For instance, one vendor may thrive in a European region while another will do really well in an Asian region. This may be due to what they're selling being more popular in that area, their familiarity with the people there, or their knowledge of the marketing strategies that are most effective for people of that culture.

Increased Shipping Access

There are also major logistical advantages for having multi-vendor offerings in global eCommerce because the vendors’ physical proximity helps keep shipping costs down. It can also be really helpful for dealing with customs, duties, and taxes to have the shipping come from a particular region that certain vendors have drop shipping capabilities from. Customers can also get their items faster when they are shipping from a nearby warehouse. This drives up customer satisfaction.

Fundamental Features for Global Multi-Store Software

There are several key features for multivendor and multi-store global marketplaces. When you are looking for a software that can support your activities on an international scale, here are the top two things to consider.

Translate Content Accurately So Users Can Find Products

When it comes to a global eCommerce multi-store and multivendor marketplace platform, one of the most critical things is making sure the vendors can properly translate their content. Product pages and attributes need the right currency, language, and imagery that matches each region's expectations. Otherwise, users won't be able to find what they're looking for.

Having robust vendor management and platform governance is crucial to a global offering. This includes handling multilingual and multicurrency aspects as well as logistical aspects with the products and categories. This is how users will find things, and if this doesn't work well, nothing else really matters beyond that point because no one will be able to find anything to buy it.

Specifically, you need to make sure the translation capability for the site is really strong. To do this, you can make a plan with your internal team, enable vendors to provide their own translations and relevant pricing in different currencies, or do it dynamically using an API to provide reasonable translations. Though keep in mind that if the translation is done through an API or online translation service, most of the time it won't be as high quality as the site visitor would probably prefer. It's usually better if done by a human being. Then the question becomes how will will your team allocate or get the resources to do this?

There are some really powerful capabilities for translation with third party resources, and then if the site has the ability to interact with translators who use standard protocols for pushing and pulling their translations, this can logistically reduce the overhead for the translation teams to be able to download the content, complete their translations, and then upload the content. Having version control for the content is also really key, so you definitely want to incorporate that into your system and process.

Multicurrency Conversion Is Key to Global Expansion

It's necessary for a global eCommerce platform to have multicurrency not just for vendors within their own regions and subdomains, but also across different regions and countries. Some vendors might sell items in particular countries where the currency might differ for each purchaser. Some items may need to be shipped across country borders, so you need to be able to convert the buyer’s currency into the vendor’s and vice versa. It’s important to be cognizant of all this, so you can track transactions in the required currency, do any conversions necessary, and be able to properly represent from an accounting perspective what those conversions were, and persist those and then be able to deal with all the accounting and logistics around getting the funds to a particular vendor.

A lot of payment providers and payment gateways don't transact with all of the different currencies, which can be a logistical challenge. It's important to work with the right providers and offer the right gateways for where you're selling so you have the correct currencies. When dealing with high-demand vendors who add a lot of value to your marketplace, you need an infrastructure that can handle the nuances of where they're located, what kind of currency and language their data is in, etc.