Types of the Market Place and its Management Services

 

Marketplaces are digital platforms that bring together buyers and sellers. Their main goal is to facilitate the transaction by connecting the buyers with sellers, providing them with a way to evaluate and compare offers, and helping them fulfill their exchange.

There are three main types of marketplaces: business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C), or peer-to-peer (P2P). Let's look at each type in detail and examine its strengths and weaknesses.

A B2B marketplace connects buyers and sellers within an industry. For example, a marketplace for hotels would connect travelers with hotels, but it wouldn't connect travelers with airlines or rental car companies. A B2C marketplace does exactly what its name implies: it connects customers directly with businesses. A P2P marketplace allows individuals to buy and sell from or to each other. For example, an online auction site like eBay is a P2P marketplace that allows buyers and sellers to complete transactions with each other directly.

Selling online, in particular, e-commerce is a trend that has gained immense popularity in the Middle East, especially among consumers and businesses. Recently, the retail sector in the MENA region has shifted from traditional sales channels to online stores, owing to an observed sudden change in customer behavior.

With increased urbanization and higher disposable income levels coupled with high internet penetration rates throughout the region, customers have become more demanding and selective of brands they buy from—especially when it comes to shopping for fashion and luxury items. To ensure that their products reach end users directly without any middlemen involved, retailers have started selling via e-commerce platforms.

The high demand for e-commerce platforms has also led to greater competition between Market Places like Amazon and Souq.com. The high level of competition among marketplaces poses new challenges to the management of these platforms. Traditionally, marketplace managers have relied on active monitoring of marketplace listings (content quality) as well as regular reviews of sellers (seller performance management) to ensure excellent user experience and maintain a high level of trust in the platform.

Here are some tips for managing an ecommerce marketplace

1. Product discovers:

Product discovery is a term that refers to the time period between when a customer first starts looking for something and when they finally decide to buy it. Shoppers today are flooded with products of all shapes and sizes—from clothes to electronics and everything in between. This makes it hard to find exactly what they're looking for, which can potentially cut down on sales if they're not able to find what they're looking for quickly.

To get an edge on the competition, Amazon has leveraged all sorts of data—from reviews and ratings to purchase histories—to figure out what customers want to buy. The company is constantly innovating new ideas and tools to make the product discovery process seamless and effortless. For example, Amazon has single-handedly changed how people browse for books by introducing “related titles” that were based on the books you were already browsing. This innovation increased conversion rates by 7%. In addition, Amazon has also reduced the length of time it takes for customers to discover a product by using personalized recommendations and relevant images.

The data bears out the result: according to a study, “72% of customers prefer Amazon over Google for product discovery”.

2. High-quality catalog

With the advent of the internet and easy access to e-commerce portals, the competition has increased manifold. Consequently, the sellers are trying their best to keep their customers engaged by offering something extra. One such measure is providing quality catalogs that not only add to the overall experience but also help increase conversion rates.

E-commerce catalogs are becoming an integral part of e-commerce portals. The catalogs loaded on a web page give customers a better idea about the product they have selected. 

Good quality images used in e-commerce catalogs help in increasing conversion rate as well as reducing return rate. With more than half of all returns happening due to incorrect or misleading information in an e-commerce catalog, it is essential for the sellers to load high-quality images on their website, which helps in increasing customer confidence and subsequently reducing return rate.

A quality catalog not only helps in increasing customer confidence but also helps in increasing conversion rates. A good quality image ensures that there are no doubts in the mind of a customer regarding the product being displayed and there is no scope for any confusion regarding product details, color options, availability etc. This leads to increased conversion and better sales for sellers.

3. Add features:

A good cross-selling strategy can bring you huge returns. Use it to build your brand, drive sales and boost customer loyalty. Check out these tips to give your existing customers more reasons to come back for more.

A recent study revealed that Amazon generates 29% of its sales from product recommendations, which is huge. While replicating Amazon’s model of product recommendation is tough and expensive, cross-selling through tabs like “Similar Products” and “Frequently Bought Together” is a viable option.

Cross-selling is a way of increasing the profit margin by selling more than one product to customers. By offering multiple versions of the product on the same page, you make it easy for customers to find what they are looking for.

4. Proper navigation:

The way products are categorized and the way they're connected on a website makes a huge difference in how easy it is for customers to use that site. Categories should be defined very clearly, with navigation that follows natural pathways to let people find exactly what they're looking for.

To define categories well, it's important to understand your customer and what kinds of searches they tend to do. If your site sells shoes, for example, you might have a category for "Women's size 8" and another for "Black shoes," so your visitors can find all the shoes that fit their body and style preferences. Categories that are too broad will lead people down dead ends; categories shouldn't include more than 5 items at most.

A primary benefit of categorization is making sure products can be found by relevant keyword searches. For example, if someone is searching Google or Amazon for "black women's size 8 shoes," product results with relevant categories will appear higher in search engine results. If the products are categorized well on the marketplace site, people will be able to find them easily, even if they don't know the exact name of the product they want.

You should also pay attention to how products connect from one page to another in your site's navigation. It should follow

Ecom Energize is the most trusted provider of Amazon marketplace management and ecommerce services in UAE. With our dedicated team and state-of-the-art, we assist small businesses in their growth in a very short period of time. We have been working with small businesses and helping them to build their business on Amazon since its inception. We know every nook and corner of Amazon Marketplace, which has made us the best service provider for Amazon sellers.

We provide a range of services, including Amazon Store Optimization, Product Listing Optimization, Inventory Management, Customer Support and Order Processing. We also help clients with product fulfillment using our Fulfillment Centers in India and China.

Our team of experts takes care of every aspect related to your business on Amazon. They are customer obsessed and have a deep understanding of customer behavior on Amazon. They use this knowledge to implement strategies that will help you gain more customer trust and loyalty. Our strategies include but are not limited to product optimization, merchandising strategies, customer experience optimization, personalized marketing campaigns for your products, quick order processing and order fulfillment.

Ecom Energize has an expert team that has been successful in creating several tens of thousands of product listings from scratch for our clients across a wide range of industries.