How to create an Automobile Marketplace?

Automobile Marketplaces:

By the end of twenty-twenties[2020], the sale of automobiles globally will be influenced digitally. 

What this means is that, the bulk of automobile sales gets a high rise of $40 billion from the current $18 billion as per the report via “Changing Gears 2020: How digital is transforming the face of the automotive industry said“.

Having your presence online will surely be beneficial for the store owners as this channel shall introduce more customers than the existing physical automobile shops that are already set up and running. The online presence will assist more buyers and sellers to connect for sales of parts and vehicles.

You can start from scratch to build your eCommerce auto parts web store but it is surely a time taking process and a lot of time needs be invested. However, you have the option to use some of the open-source eCommerce platforms that allow you to have a basic functional store initially.

Check this write up – How to create a marketplace to know more about the basics of setting up a marketplace.

Having an open-source platform allows you to constantly keep adding up features and functionalities as much as your business keeps on growing. You can check some of the open source platforms that you can use to start your online automobile store – 

1. Magento 2
2. OpenCart
3. WooCommerce
4. Shopware and many others. 

Having a single seller store allows you to create store with a single seller’s products. Within a marketplace, multiple sellers can sell out their product collections by listing their products within the marketplace.

To transform your single seller store into a Multi-Vendor marketplace requires a plugin or a module for the same. Depending upon the eCommerce platform that you have chosen for your online presence, you can set up a marketplace using the respective extension. 

There are various open-source eCommerce platforms that have a single seller store functionality with almost all basic features to let you start your basic web-store. Few of the Multi-Vendor extensions that allow you to convert your single seller store into a functional Multi-Vendor marketplace are – 

• Magento 2 Multi-Vendor Marketplace
• OpenCart Multi-Vendor Marketplace
• WooCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace
• Shopware Multi-Vendor Marketplace

For a list of other platforms, that can be used for creating a Multi-Vendor Marketplace you can visit the Webkul Store for a complete range of products.

Indexing – Catalog Search Performance

When there is a huge number of products within the marketplace, the process of searching the products gets slow, or in other words, the catalog search performance is degraded. To overcome this performance issue for searching within the catalog, Elastic Search is very profitable. 

Using a Lucene based search engine, the customers will be able to find products faster than before and as we know, currently it is the fastest search engine available. It shows the results on a real-time basis. Using Elastic Search allows you to index, search, and analyze big volumes of data quickly and efficiently.

FAQ Section for Products

Frequently asked questions will allow the shoppers or the visitors to find answers to queries for which they cannot get a resolution. What this means is the information that is not there on the product page itself. This allows the users to ask the queries related to the products from the products pages itself. 

Other shoppers or visitors can make a response over the asked questions if they are aware of the same. The answers to the questions asked should be clear for an easy understanding to the customers so as to clear their doubts.

In turn, you get an opportunity to connect with your webstore visitors and reflects your brand value by having a FAQ section for the products. 

Quick Webstore Access & On the Go

Now, after you have your setup your presence using any of the Open Source platforms, you can expand your reach by having a mobile application for your multi-vendor marketplace store. The users will be able to access your marketplace web-store at any time and that too on the go without the need of having a desktop or a laptop. 

For the mobile access, you can use a native mobile application or a PWA. As the technology is changing and upgrading with the time, provide your users with the option to access your web-stores with something more fast and reliable like the – Progressive Web Apps that look like a native apps but are not installed like one but open up in a browser and has a great native like experience and is much lighter as well.

Images & Videos

Images and videos are the first thing that comes to the mind when a shopper visits an online web-store allowing the shoppers to quickly get a glimpse of what the product actually looks like. Having videos is a big thing as it surely increases the trust factor by which the customers get more satisfaction regarding the actual looks of the product. 

However, having high quality images and videos would be something that would be the reason that consumes much of your storage space within your server. So, to overcome this, we can use the Amazon S3 storage for getting better search results and saving the space on our servers.

Moreover, we would have come across few product listings that had a great introduction, few lines of features listed but without any images. This really causes a suspicion in the mind of a customer. What this means is that even after having such nice description concerned has not added any images. 

Centralized Information Management

One of the foremost product management systems like the PIM(Product Information Management) help support the maintenance and correction of the product catalog, data collection, management, and filtration of the products.

PIM being a strong and reliable solution makes it easier for merchants to store and spread the data over their available eCommerce channels and marketplaces.

Now, create manage thousands of products using the Product Information Management software like Akeneo. It allows creation and management of thousands of products at a centralized place. 

Product Tags

Tags are beneficial for the web-store users as they allow them to find similar products relating to the one they are checking out currently. Tags can be accessed from the category, search, and product pages. 

Whenever a customer taps on a product tag they are redirected to the products that are having the same/similar tags thus saving their time and accessing the other related products in a jiffy. To add the product tags automatically you can make use of the Magento 2 Image Based Smart Product Tags.

Product Custom Attributes

Usually, within the Magento platform there are default attributes that allow setting up the product’s additional information. However, if we get to add more of the attributes then we can add more information that would allow us to display more of the product’s description.

Thus, the custom attributes allow in better management of the products within your online store to display more of the description for a better understanding. The marketplace sellers can provide additional information while creating their products.

With the help of custom attributes functionality, the customers can compare products, search products and use it in layered navigation to filter the products at the storefront quickly and easily.

Quick Parts Finder 

Within your marketplace store there should be an option to filter out the automobile parts for an easy access to the customers. Using an extension like the Vehicle Parts Finder would display a drop-down menu option for quickly finding the right parts for the automobiles.

Product Price Rules

For the marketplace sellers, it is important to have the option to set different pricing for the products depending upon the various customer groups. This can be achieved through the marketplace vendor price list extension that allows you to set up different and attractive product prices.

The marketplace sellers can create various price rules based on product, category, product quantity, and total product price. For creating the price list, the seller will add the existing price rules to the price list as per the choice and then the seller can set a price list targeting the respective customers.

Conclusion

As the digital era is transforming into new avenues and generating more revenue, you must make your self market-ready to be in the race where technological advancements must be implemented to keep you business up and running within your brick-and-mortar stores as well as for your online presence.

For any queries or doubts kindly reach out to us at support@webkul.com or raise a ticket at our HelpDesk System.