Online shopping is blazing the Indian market swiftly. Since the pandemic hit, customer behaviour has changed. Most Indian shoppers choose to make day-to-day purchases online instead of walking into physical stores—giving rise to an ever-expanding ecommerce industry.
This new era has also brought forward the need for businesses to explore online marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon to reach their target customers.
If you’re new to ecommerce and don’t have a website yet, marketplaces are the fastest and most affordable way to get your business off the ground. In fact, research predicts India’s online marketplaces could be making sales worth as much as $350 billion a year by 2027.
Isn’t it an exciting and lucrative way to run a business with a promise of high profits? Well, registering and selling on a marketplace may seem fairly easy. But if your goal is exponential business growth, managing your marketplace business efficiently is the key. Let’s find out how to gain success on marketplaces while avoiding penalties, excessive fees, cancellations, and building everlasting customer relationships.
In this blog, you will learn what is an online marketplace, what is marketplace management, what are the marketplace management services available to ecommerce brands and how ecommerce brands can accelerate sales with Eshopbox’s marketplace management services.
What is an online marketplace?
An online marketplace is an ecommerce aggregator website where multiple ecommerce brands to a pre-established customer base provide a large range of products. A marketplace acts as a link between sellers and buyers over the internet. At the same time, the marketplace manages all transactions related to sales, orders and returns. For instance, the most popular online marketplaces in India are Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra, SnapDeal, Meesho, Tata Cliq, Ajio and more.
Why do ecommerce businesses should sell on online marketplaces?
Today, marketplaces are growing at a very fast pace in terms of traffic and sales. Let’s see the benefits of selling on online marketplaces:
- Access to an established customer base of crores
- No need to invest heavily in marketing or advertising campaigns
- Enhances brand reach and builds brand credibility
- Helps in attaining brand exposure and high product visibility
- Improves conversion rate, sales and revenue
- Enhances customer experience by being available on various platforms to connect with your brand
Now that you know the importance of selling on marketplaces let’s see how to manage your business on a marketplace.
What is ecommerce marketplace management?
The process of managing all the day-to-day operations and activities of a seller account on a marketplace is called marketplace management. These include marketplace registration, optimisation, inventory, ASIN management and more.
Ecommerce brands can either manage their seller account and day-to-day functions on their own or outsource marketplace management services to a 3PL provider like Eshopbox. Let’s see what all marketplace management services entail.
What are the ecommerce marketplace management services available to online brands?
3PL providers like Eshopbox provides bespoke marketplace management services to ecommerce brands, such as:
- Seller Registration
Creating an account and registering on a marketplace is the first step to starting a marketplace business. This service enables brands to create an account effortlessly, register on the particular marketplace and complete all the documentation required for onboarding. It also includes choosing the right marketplace for your business and integrating it with the sales channel.
- Cataloguing, listing and optimisation
The very first step of marketplace management is to prepare the catalogue. It includes creating product listings, mapping the information from product SKUs and incorporating the data provided into a template presented by Marketplace. This is done using best SEO practices and according to the ranking algorithms to garner the right kind of attention from desired target customers. The content is optimised on a regular basis, including price updates.
- Inventory management
Optimum inventory levels are maintained at all times to prevent stockouts, especially when demand is high through timely inventory replenishment. Moreover, standard inventory levels are set to help you avoid excess stocks for each channel and prevent unnecessary costs. Most importantly, when you sell a product on one channel, the inventory level should get updated on every channel. This will help you prevent overselling.
- Product promotions
Marketplaces run promotional events like festive sales and end-of-season sale. This service helps with guidance and assistance to run an ad campaign and drive higher traffic towards your products. The more clicks your ads get, the higher the probability of them getting sold.
- Feedback & review management
Gaining the confidence of the customer is vital. A service provider responds to all customer queries by sharing relevant information. Most importantly, these queries and escalations are forwarded to your operations team so that prompt action is taken.
- Multichannel account management
You can integrate all your marketplace platforms in one place to deliver a consistent brand experience to customers everywhere and manage inventory effectively.
- Growth planning
Marketplaces have seller performance programs where sellers are rewarded based on their performance, like Flipkart Gold, Amazon Premium and Myntra Gold. A service provider ensures all the criteria are met consistently. Essentially, you get access to a dashboard to see your performance across marketplaces and work with your teams to deliver business goals consistently.
Accelerate sales with Eshopbox’s marketplace management services
Eshopbox helps ecommerce brands to ditch the marketplace management stress with superior marketplace management services so that you can focus on the big picture while everything is taken care of.
- Eshopbox has 2-step integration with marketplaces and shopping carts to smooth onboarding on marketplaces
- You can manage product listings, orders and returns for all sales channels from Eshopbox’s actionable dashboard
- Eshopbox handles your day-to-day marketplace optimisation, inventory, and ASIN management
- Eshopbox gets your products listed on marketplaces by building A+ listings
- Eshopbox syncs the same inventory across channels without committing inventory to a specific channel
- Eshopbox takes care of inventory management by updating inventory in real-time to prevent overselling, avoiding stockouts with timely inventory replenishment and providing data to maintain optimal inventory levels at all times
- Eshopbox gives you access to premium badges like Amazon Prime and Flipkart Assured
- Eshopbox helps you participate in promotions, deals and flash sales and run ad campaigns
- Eshopbox’s brand managers assist you in responding to customer reviews and queries
- Eshopbox also offers ultra-fast and affordable fulfilment for Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Tata Cliq, Ajio, Meesho and more marketplaces
- Eshopbox meets every fulfilment criteria of every marketplace and enables you to get closer to win Flipkart Gold, Amazon Premium and Myntra Gold
- Eshopbox gives you access to an actionable dashboard that consolidates data and insights from all sales channels into one place so that you can discover essential business insights in seconds and gain a holistic view of your business
Bottom line
If you are one of the ecommerce business owners looking forward to creating attain success on marketplaces, then all you need is ecommerce marketplace management. A 3PL provider like Eshopbox can help you achieve sustainable growth with bespoke marketplace management and ensure seamless fulfilment for all your marketplaces.