Marketplace Examples: Country-Specific Vendor Portals

The Value of Country-Specific Portals for e-Marketplace

To give a specific example for marketplace eCommerce, we’ll go over country-specific vendor portals. As you’ll see, this is quite an interesting topic. Many of our clients take advantage of the ability of the marketplace platform to have subdomains and subdirectories from a specific country code or unique identifier for that marketplace. This capability enables our clients to scale and offer specific branding and workflows, product data, customer-specific information, and industry-specific information based on their subdomain or subdirectory.

With a specific country code for their subdomain, this means we would be able to look up the Geo IP to find the eCommerce marketplace. For instance, the subdomain would be something to the effect of country1.marketplacewebsite.com; country2.marketplacewebsite.com. And a subdirectory would be something like www.marketplacewebsite.com/country1; www.marketplacewebsite.com/country. It’s also possible to have www.marketplacewebsite.com and then have Geo IP look-up, and we can identify where a particular user is—or rather, we essentially make an educated guess using our Geo IP technology. Then we allow the user to select from a number of options, so they can override these settings and delineate for us where they are located or what country, region, or other portrayal of the site they want to visit.

In addition to countries or regions, we can also look at things like languages, currencies, or industries. Oftentimes, we’ll have a marketplace that sells a certain type of part, but they might cater to four or five different industries, each of which have unique permutations of that part or product system; or it might be a solution that has different product subsets based on the industry, for example. Our marketplace platform allows for these modifications and unique situations within the vendor portals.

Example for Region-Specific Portals

One project we recently completed was with a distribution group that makes designs for unique, artistic products that are highly valued within their industry and space. These designs are executed at different manufacturing facilities, and then distributed in different regions.

These different regions have different pricing and inventory and availability information, so the marketplace that we implemented for this particular client took advantage of this Geo IP look up capability as well as subdomains. Therefore, if someone already knew a particular site that they wanted to visit, like country1.marketplacewebsite.com for example, they can go directly to that URL or they could go to www.marketplacewebsite.com and then the Geo IP look up is going to allow them to select it for that particular country.

Once they’re in that particular region or country subdomain or subdirectory in the marketplace website, the data within the site actually changes based on their selected location. This is made easy with our central database feature.

We have a central database that houses all of the information, and this prevents duplication of data and possible human error, such as putting the same product in multiple times for different locations or regions. It’s a centralized database and the access and listing of contents is dependent on the particular region selected, for what’s available in that region.

This is a really powerful capability for eCommerce marketplace. Our client can take advantage of inheritance of their content, which by our platform’s nature and the way we implement it, we can do this many different ways.

See Which Regions Correspond to Different Products

We can have variants that are based on a product master, and the variants are different SKUs or segments of an account pattern that would be selected based on country. So they can track and use forensic accounting and see which items are in which region. We can get much more detailed with the data and capabilities and tie back to the accounting system based on the country. We can also prefix or suffix country-specific information to the SKUs whenever the order is processed there.

There are many different ways of doing this, but the man takeaway is that there’s a centralized database where the end users within the administrative team and marketing team can manage content in a single location. They can then extend or clone content down from a master record into country or region-specific records or other delineations, and then just override the aspects of the product details or categories that they need to.

That way, they don’t have to redo everything for an entire product or a unique location, but they can update the meta information or pictures to reflect a particular country’s style or language, for example. Or maybe the videos that are tied to a particular product need to be translated, etc. These are opportunities that you’ll have with the international and multi-site marketplace capabilities that we have with our enterprise marketplace eCommerce.

Various Levels of Access and Pricing

In addition to having different products and categories available, we also have different pricing and access levels, so customers may not be able to access certain countries or industries based on the rules that you determine you would like to enforce within the marketplace. They may have to request access and go through a manual or automated approval process.

Similarly, with pricing, we can present different pricing options using a centralized database, and change the pricing information based on the region, country, language, etc., that they’ve selected. Usually, this will include currency. You may want to default to a specific currency for that region, have us incorporate business logic during checkout for customs and duties that apply, and show the customer inventory information based on location and the nearest warehouse distribution center that has the items in stock. You’ll also want to show them lead time and accurate shipping information and shipping costs.

These are all aspects to consider with marketplace eCommerce whenever there’s a multi-site opportunity. And again, this can include multicurrency, multilingual, and in many cases, there may be different payment providers for different countries or particular differences in the industry. These are all nuances that are really important to be able to deliver with a very specific multi-store eCommerce platform offering.

B2B Vs B2C Marketplace Platform & Portal Needs

Another example of this is with a B2B versus B2C marketplace platform and being able to have differences available for those. It’s very useful and helpful to be able to change the overall site presentation and business logic workflows. We can change the SEO for some of the static content for the site and multi-site capabilities. There can also be different workflows for different regions or countries. For this particular example, our client deals with different regions and needed specific workflows.

Region-Specific Workflows

We’re able to change the workflow for fulfillment, such that when somebody places an order in a particular region, the workflow is determined by the rules in the marketplace for that situation. For example, there may need to be a manual approval of the order, and an inventory check to validate that the inventory is going to be in stock. There could be a manual process there, or an automated email that gets send with an approval request to the appropriate distribution list that the order can be approved. There can also be an automatic response to finish processing the order, process the payment, etc. For some countries, there may be a need to complete a certain security check or clearance before the order is shipped, so we may have to go through certain steps to verify the company itself and that it’s authorized to receive these products from the marketplace. There are other things that are unique per country, region, industry, or other delineation of these multiple sites that feed off of the same database that we can apply.

Customer-Specific Branding Sites

Oftentimes, the eCommerce marketplace is heavily utilized for customer-specific branding sites, so it could be xyzco.marketplacewebsite.com and abcco.marketplacewebsite.com, or a subdirectory like www.marketplacewebsite.com/xyaco and www.marketplacewebsite.com/abcco, for example. And each of these could have its own logo, colors and specific pricing and products within their particular subsite that's available for them.

So these are just some examples of scenarios that can apply and we want to make sure that you know that with a marketplace eCommerce platform, Clarity offers a centralized database that can be used for multiple sites. This is extremely helpful as typically, there's a primary site or several primary sites with particular focus areas; and there can be very niche or customer-specific and region-specific focused multi-site capabilities.

• Key Marketplace Considerations
• Filtering and Categorization of Products
• Content Sourcing Practices & Workflows
• Best Buyer Dashboard Features
• Best Cart Features & Workflows
• Best Checkout Workflows & Payment Methods
• Establishing an eMarket - Vendor Portals
• eMarket Success - Vendor Portals
• eMarket Line of Business Integrations – Vendor Portals
• eCommerce Inventory Management – Vendor Portals
• Marketplace Advertising Best Practices – Vendor Portals
• Key Aspects of Split Shipment for eCommerce Marketplace Management
• Split Payment Utility in Marketplace Software
• Considerations for RMAs in eCommerce Marketplace
• How Multistore Platforms Support Global Marketplace
• Design Your Multivendor Marketplace for C2C
• How Is Multi-Vendor Marketplace Software Adapted for B2C?
• Market Development Strategies: B2B, C2C, D2C Cases
• How eCommerce Platforms Support Market Development Managers
• Building an International Marketplace Business Model
• Best Market Penetration Strategy for eMarketplace
• Marketplace Aspects that Improve Market Penetration

• Intro to e-Marketplace Platform
• eMarket Integrations: Products, Categories, & Marketing Content
• eMarket Integrations: Customer Specific Pricing Rules
• eMarket Integrations: Warehousing & Inventory Strategy
• B2B Marketplace Platform
• eMarket Integrations: Region-Specific Shipping Process
• Enhance Marketplace eCommerce Checkout Flow
• SSO Benefits for Your e-Marketplace Platform
• e-Marketplace Benefits of Single Sign-On: Case Study
• Benefits of Multi-Factor Authentication in Electronic Marketplaces
• Marketplace Examples: Country-Specific Vendor Portals
• Create a Multi-Vendor Marketplace
• e-Marketplace Platform Example for Buying Groups
• Marketplace Capabilities for Expanding Buying Groups
• Multi-Store & Multi-Vendor Marketplace Management
• Advantages of Multi-Store and Multi-Vendor Platforms
• Challenges for Multi-Store and Multi-Vendor eCommerce
• How Headless CMS Enhances Multi-Vendor eCommerce
• How Can Multi-Vendor eMarketplace Tailor to D2C?
• Key Platform Features to Enhance Market Development
• Ways a Marketplace Platform Improves Market Research
• Marketplace Business Model – Best Detailed Guide
• How Will Market Penetration Help Your Business Grow?
• How Does a Mobile App Help a B2B Marketplace?