How to Optimize B2C Applications for Sellers

Enterprise B2C eCommerce marketplace has the opportunity for the businesses operating the marketplace to deliver extreme value to the sellers, the businesses, that are listing and providing their products within the marketplace.

With a B2C marketplace, it’s essential to have a self-service, immediate capability for the businesses to be able to offer value to the consumers. Self-service includes the ability to manage the following.

Perform Manual Tasks with the B2C Application

To deliver the most value to the sellers in your B2C marketplace eCommerce platform, you want to have a robust web application as well as a mobile B2C application with the same capabilities, and have an omnichannel experience with your platform.

If a seller is travelling, they need to be able to access the dashboard to update products, manage categories and inventory, and essentially be able to perform manual tasks where they may do some bulk uploading within the website or desktop version. The seller still needs to be able to do precision updates, or manual updates to precise things while they’re on the go.

Ideally the business itself has access to role-based authentication and authorization so they can enable certain people within the organization to log in from their B2C mobile application and manage inventory, pricing, availability, etc.

For many of our clients, when they’re operating at scale, they want to offer more value than the competitors. It can be really helpful to automate their pick-and-pack process and fulfillment process. With the mobile B2C application, we can enable robust features with scanning and pick and pack. Sellers can use a smartphone or tablet, or a handheld scanner that can pair to the mobile application or tablet device to enable pick and pack of items and complete a fulfillment process using the B2C marketplace eCommerce seller application.

Many of the sellers will have a pick and pack system, a warehouse management system, and an ERP that they already work with, so it might be important that the B2C application be able to work with this existing software or that it interacts with the data that’s coming from this existing software.

However, small to medium size sellers may not have the resources to have a robust enterprise level warehouse management or pick and pack system, so the capabilities of the app itself can be really helpful for them.

Logistics and Notifications

It can also be helpful to have logistical resources within the B2C mobile app for the sellers. This might include being able to fulfill orders, access shipping labels, and interact with logistics maps (i.e., maps for UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, etc.).

The seller may also want to receive a notification when they get an order with details on what’s expected for arrival time, etc. Depending on the urgency of the fulfillment and the lead time promised to the buyer, the notification system in the B2C applications for mobile and tablet can make or break the experience for the customer and seller with the B2C marketplace.

This is a challenge for many sellers because they may be trying to sell their items on different mediums and marketplaces. Giving them a resources that provides friendly notifications can help them manage their schedule and make sure they’re delivering value for the end customer.

When you’re interacting with buyers in a marketplace eCommerce platform, the seller needs to be able to fulfill their items properly to the end user and interact with them rapidly and easily for there to be a positive experience. It’s the job of the marketplace to think about governance and understand what a standard optimal experience should look like between the buyer and seller.

The buyer will often have an incentive to follow these best practices and guidelines. It makes sense to have a review system within the marketplace where the seller can give and get feedback on/from the buyer. It’s helpful to have guidelines for the seller when they’re interacting with the B2C mobile app as well.

There could even be a point system, where if they fulfill all their orders within a timely manner or this notification window, they’ll be promoted within the marketplace and their search results will be featured.

If you want to improve B2C sales and grow the eMarketplace, you want to think about the experience for the buyer and seller, and what the seller needs to do to enable a better experience for the buyer. How can you as a marketplace administrator and business operator incentivize the sellers to execute on this?

Having a mobile application that allows the seller to interact with the user via chat for support, possibly helping them with refunds or returns and making sure the fulfillment is optimized, and that has the other features discussed, goes a long way toward achieving that goal.

At the end of the day, the marketplace is going to be reflective of the buyers and sellers. The level at which the buyers can receive support and service from individual sellers is going to be a large part of that experience. So, you want to think about it from that perspective, that each of these buyers is going to have a certain experience that could be completely different if the seller doesn’t adhere to these standards.

Mobile B2C applications can be a very immersive way to help influence that and keep the guardrails on for those sellers, and make sure they have notifications and interaction and immersive access to do what they need to do, and have reminders of this governance when they’re interacting with the B2C app.

Optimize Your B2C Applications

We hope this is helpful to you. There’s a lot of nuance to scaling and building your B2C marketplace platform. In particular, consumers have high standards because they’re operating with a lot of different competitive offerings that are available.

You’ll typically do really well if you focus on the niche or specific categories that make sense for your business and that you can deliver a lot of value into. You want to build relationships with sellers who are going to follow certain standards and processes that you can reinforce with your mobile experience and omnichannel capability.

Related Articles to Explore

• Intro to eMarketplace Platform
• Tips for Enhancing the B2C Experience for Consumers
• C2C Buyer Experience with Omnichannel eCommerce
• How Does a Mobile App Help a B2B Marketplace?