The current trend to keep distance from crowded stores and long queues may be something new for the world. But this is exactly what the online shopping industry was expecting from millennials. No more the customers are waiting for preparing the item list to buy from the stores. People and IT companies are finding the eCommerce app the best way.

As per the reports by Statista, the retail shopping platform has seen a 6 percent growth in traffic within the first quarter of 2020. The eCommerce industry has reckoned the growth of visits from 12.81 billion in 2020 to 14.34 billion in March 2021 over the eCommerce websites.

The rising figures and expected growth of eCommerce platforms have enticed the stakeholders and mobile app development companies to invest in such multi-delivery platforms. Industry giants from all around the globe and retailers are working hard to put their platform at the forefront and earn a good reputation along with great revenue.  The survival and competitiveness of eCommerce app development need to stay intact amidst the competition. Therefore, we have seen a great push towards the multi-vendor or multi delivery eCommerce store instead of thriving over grocery delivery app development. The fundamentals are the same with the little difference in availability of items and open platform for all vendors.

Multi-vendor marketplace takes away the overhead of managing inventory, recording logistics, and ensuring the best deals. Customer loves to scoop in multi-vendor store, because of the great availability of items and the large set to decide the item. Owners of such platforms can focus on marketing the platform. Here in this article, we will throw some light on the costing factor, efforts and the flexibility needed for such eCommerce app development.

What Are The Multi Delivery Apps?

A multi-delivery e-commerce industry solution means a single platform for delivering medicine, food, grocery, confectionery, and other relevant items. The list of products may go on depending upon the wish of the owner. The app plays a role to connect multiple vendors to a huge database of customers. Mobile app development companies have changed the pattern of old-styled platforms and revealed a new avatar of eCommerce.

If you are reading this article, certainly you want to know what features, you need to put into or expect from an on-demand app development company. The components of the app need to include several features, which make an app capable. Let’s understand the features necessary for three components:

• Admin
• Vendor
• User

Admin section features

• Payment system: Admin needs to take care of the automatic and manual payouts. A powerful payment system eases the task of real-time payment and saves around 90 percent of the time of vendors. The auto payout features save the vendor and owners from the complexity of sharing. A credible IT company can guide you with the most reliable payment method.
• Vendor subscription: Vendors can be offered different plans for adding the products, and setting up the store. The annual subscriptions and monthly plans help vendors in better sell, and draw out a great deal. Better selling is possible with the variety of products and huge store components.
• Multi-level access: When you set up the costly architecture of a multi-vendor marketplace, it is a necessity to separate the access of each party involved. The different parties involved in the app are given different access.
• Shopfront: Always it is not necessary for a website development company to build the marketplace from the scratch. There are different platforms available that provide complete control over the cloud-based marketplaces. These platforms offer different opportunities to set up the store or mult9ivendor store with great ease. An eCommerce website development company can open a store with some preferences, such as language, vendor, currency and products etc and handle with a single admin panel.
• Order management system: When you set up the multi-vendor marketplace, it becomes necessary to manage the different orders, a customer may select the order from different vendors and every vendor must see only its individual sales.With a good order management system in eCommerce app development, customers can order multiple products and make a single simple payment instead of buying each product separately. Each vendor can see orders of only their products.
• Warehouse management: Here, the admin can track the real-time inventory in eCommerce industry solutions. Also, the vendor can mention a local warehouse for managing operations.

Vendor section features

• Registration: The multi-vendor marketplace needs to be smooth and hassle-free for product registration, selling, and marketing. This is the most common component for mobile app development companies. Every vendor needs to have an individual profile, where customers can see the details or the products offered by a particular vendor.
• Real-time inventory management: The inventory management needs to be fast and smooth in such a kind of website development service. An updated inventory management system helps in building a strong selling channel.  The better the inventory management, the faster the sales occur. A perfect system automatically updates the inventory and helps in taking calculated decisions.
• Taxing system: A marketplace sells items in different regions. Every region has it specific taxing system, which needs to be managed rightly. Tax needs to be accurately calculated over every sale.
• Review and comment: Every business runs on customer feedback. The better the feedbacks are, the more improvement the business gets. A vendor can make changes in the system with help of feedbacks and on the other side, a customer can complain for the bad service and can communicate with the vendor. Ecommerce app development essentially needs the feature.
• Storefront modification: Every vendor cannot have the same storefront. Every vendor wants to make its shop attractive. Therefore the features to design the storefront are shared. They can modify the theme of the store, the color of the store, the template and the placements of the items.

User section features

• Captcha: Users can access the vendors using Captcha. Captcha assistance is provided by mobile app development companies to give users great access.
• Product comparison: It is a hot feature to load over your multivendor app. Customers love to make quantifiable decisions. Multiple products can be compared depending upon some particular criteria. Like if you are buying a cooking pan, then multiple brands claim differently. All features once compared, a firm decision can be made. As a store owner, your duty is to let users save their pennies while catering for their needs.
• Orders: A customer must have a hassle-free buying experience. He needs to be able to purchase different orders. You need to be away from showing too much to and fro navigation between cart and products page. A smooth shopping with the same cart eases out the shopping. The mobile app development company with experience with similar app understands the importance of UX and ensures easy shopping.
• Become a vendor: There are many people who work as drop shippers. They may want to become a vendor. If an on-demand app development company gives them a choice, it can help the process.

Things to Remember While Developing the Marketplace

An eCommerce marketplace involves a complex structure. Every section of the multi-vendor marketplace needs to be professional and impressive, while demanding a perfect IT company partnering. The complexity of the marketplace necessitates the continued maintenance and smart development team backing up the platform.

To fulfil the demands of the platform, you need to hire dedicated developers or an experienced mobile application development company. Here are few important points that you must think of while considering the development process.

• User Experience: An eCommerce platform needs to have smooth functioning and smooth navigations. Too much clutter over the page can annoy the user. A user must be able to move easily through the page, which is why it is important to collaborate with mobile app development companies. Well-defined categories, appealing UI, and refined usual can give a better user experience.

• Refined: A marketplace is responsible for the marketing and selling of multiple vendors and different items. It needs to keep a check on the originality of the product. The products that are fake, and adulterated should not be included. Once reputation tarnishes, the user never wishes to purchase from the same website.

• Analytical approach: As an eCommerce website development company, you must find out all the alternate or competitive options. This helps you in realizing the pros and cons of existing leaders. This helps in giving the high-end products.

• Communication flow: The user needs to communicate with the vendors or may need to communicate with the marketplace team for different reasons. The web development company, stakeholders and vendors must stay in communication. Therefore a strong communication flow is needed.

• Choice of the platform: There are many platforms that save you from building a marketplace from scratch. Such a platform must be suitable to your budget and the eCommerce website’s specific needs. It should meet the user requirements while satisfying vendors with the policy.

For making your multi-delivery app a success, you need to personalize the shopping experience. Making a strategy for vendors to sell the products helps them in selling products, but also adds up new vendors to your portal. Apart from basic functions, you can combine few tools to make your app a satisfactory experience for users. For utilizing the tools and technology, you need to hire eCommerce developer or a reliable mobile application development company.

Key Aspects of Multi-vendor Marketplace Development

• Research: It is similar to any IT project and the whole is acquainted with the Software development life cycle can easily understand the phases of any app development. Before any start, it is important to give intense market research. An ecommerce marketplace is not a new kind of app, there are many competitors already running in the market.You need to think, about what USP your product need to have. How are you going to draw attention to your portal?Money and investment are important, but fruitful, only when the investment is combined with strategy. Analyze the customer behavior, make a budget estimate, plan out the MVP features and then make qualified decisions for the technology.

• Operating system: It may seem an easy step, but it integrates deep research of your customer segment. Determine the target audience and look for the preferable one. Knowing the Geolocation of the prospective customer and getting knowledge of the most prevalent OS platform is important. The android market is vast and pervasive, whereas the iOS market is loyal and limited.Both have their own pros, it’s upto you and your product to choose the platform and hire iOS developer or android developer.The iOS-based mobile apps take less development time but cost you more. Android app development company and iOS development company both are good to go for; the essential thing is to reach your customer needs.

• Appearance and UX of the app: The design and user experience of the app are the primary things to take care of. It makes the first impression on the app. If the design is attractive, but the user does not understand the app easily, the app will not succeed. Therefore, ensure the smooth UX of the app with an eye-catching design for making it an easy success.

• Essential features: Know the ecommerce industry solution competitors. Look out for the features that are essential to be given. You need to make an app, which is easy to use and fast to reach. A peculiar pattern can confuse the customer and result in them leaving the app. Also, a list of essential features builds the MVP model along with some stand-alone exclusive features that make the app.

Read More:- How To Start A Successful Multi-vendor E-commerce Marketplace?

Website Development Company Can Integrate The Essential Features Such As

Tech stack for Multi Delivery App Development

It’s the best thing to keep the most updated tech stack with a mobile app development company. You can determine the tech stack by consulting an experienced developer or getting advice from tech-savvy managers. Here is the preferable and most commonly used tech stack for such an eCommerce app.

• Front end: Laravel
• Infrastructure: Amazon Web Service
• Database: Postgre/MySQL
• Deployment: AWS Elastic Bean Stalk

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Multivendor Marketplace?

You can estimate the cost of an app, but cannot determine the actual cost of the app. Each business is different.  The same technology stack does not guarantee the same cost of the app.

The features, development hours, location of the developers, final requirements, iterations and other factors influence the cost. But here, we can help you out with the most approximate cost based upon the evaluation done so far.

Let’s understand the influencing factors for android app development companies:

• Type of eCommerce store
• Complexity of design
• Number of features
• Integration of third parties
• Cost of the hiring a dedicated developer team

Cost of Development Phases

• Front end and back end development: $9000-$15000
• QA and testing: $4000-$8000
• UI and UX: $2000-$5000

An app needs to run over a different platform, where the cost increases. However, the initial cost for the single platform development costs around $15000 to $27000. The cost may increase when you integrate AI and other features.

Conclusion:

E-commerce websites and online marketplaces have changed the shopping scenario with the help of on-demand app development companies. People are more interested and more engaged in shopping because of all-around shopping efforts. The market rising at the fastest phase, therefore vendors are also getting greater revenue sources.

The multi-vendor marketplace reveals a world of opportunities because it sources a mass crowd of buyers. You tap the wider market, achieve market reputation, gain new vendors and avail online shopping without hassle. If you have this idea, we advise you to meet the experienced mobile application development company, which can guide you with the right set of features and the best available technology.