Innovation and meeting customer’s expectations have always been two important factors that power the growth of retail stores. For this, business owners constantly keep in mind this crucial question: What's the best way to stay current, intriguing and convert customers? As an online retailer, you have to up the bar and create strong roadmaps and operation strategies that would propel your business to more profit and customer retention.
Transforming your business into an online marketplace could be one effective solution to this problem. Launching a marketplace can check many of the issues in the retail world:
- keeping up with the velocity of the omnichannel demands on the supply chains,
- the fast change from offline to online,
- the continuous requests from the customers,
- the emerging competitive stores that can gain ground ahead of you.
However, it takes a few questions that you have to ask yourself to understand if your store needs a sustainable transformation and if it’s the right time to make the move to a marketplace. Here are some signs indicating this. And if you spot them in your business, maybe it is a good idea to make a change to that marketplace.
1. Business stagnation: remaining idle between the market boundaries
If you are an industry leader, but you notice a decrease in revenue and conversions, maybe it is necessary to consider widening your array of products and services. Thus, creating a horizontal marketplace with items that complement the existing offerings.
- Retailer’s marketplace benefit: enlarging the offerings with multiple services and products, reaching new audiences, experimenting new marketing models, more revenue, brand expansion
2. Substantial logistics costs affecting your profits
When you experience business growth, on some occasions, the spike in the volume of orders may exceed its logistics capabilities. An online marketplace enables you visibility to warehouses, courier companies and smaller delivery brands. These can allow you access to different product ranges and can help you decrease the costs for items that require special deliveries. Marketplaces suppliers can completely handle the logistics for those non-perishable articles or those that are not immediately required.
- Retailer’s marketplace benefit: analysis of the existing services on the market, pricing, shipping costs, enabling fast delivery, offering various retail offers
3. Customers requiring alternative verticals in their searches
The market trends are usually given by the searches conducted for the desired items. Yet, to stay relevant to the industry, you need to be able to offer your customers a variety of options. Otherwise, there is the risk of losing clients if they do not find what they are looking for during their searches. What you can do in these circumstances is to transform your store in a marketplace and continuously add various verticals once you notice a high interest for a particular product.
- Retailer’s marketplace benefit: customer loyalty and retention, more retail offers, adapting to new demands, understanding the customer’s needs, making the brand relevant
More red flags and reasons that respond to “why you need to launch a marketplace” can be found on the VTEX blog. In this comprehensive article in Romanian, you will find details regarding everything you need to consider in order to lead your business to success. Continue reading and get started with your marketplace!
Where to start?
More than half of the global eCommerce transactions today are conducted via marketplaces. At the same time, this is the preferred business model of 48% of the worldwide consumers. Considering these facts and the signs mentioned earlier, you should perhaps stop and wonder: isn’t this the right time to transform my business?
If the answer is yes, then Zitec can help you achieve this transformation. We are VTEX’s implementation partner - an eCommerce platform that offers marketplace capabilities and allows you to instantly change your store. Let’s talk!
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