What Are The Most Common Challenges With Creating an Online Marketplace?

The term ‘online’ is familiar to us like none other term. Due to many reasons, a huge shift to the online space can be encountered. In each and every field, the word online has established its position.

This online phenomenon offers many advantages that make it suitable for every task. It saves our time by simplifying our job. In each and every place from entertainment to keeping us up-to-date, from banking to trading, from shopping to shipping, every sector involves the word online in their sphere.

What is an Online Marketplace?

You all are well aware of the expansion of the online market. Do you know that the scope of online business is spreading at a great pace? For this you must know what is an online marketplace?

Online marketplace, also sometimes referred as electronic marketplace is an e-commerce website which is completely managed by the website owner. It connects sellers with the buyers and allows them to sell the goods and products all over the world. Some online marketplaces are for Business-to-Business (B2B) purposes while some are from Business-to-Consumer (B2C).

Marketplaces are the online platforms that allow us to buy and sell goods. It serves as a mediator between the buyers and sellers. Amazon, eBay are common examples of the online marketplace. Many services like IT services, marketing, etc can also be outsourced online through various marketplaces.

Some people get confused with the online marketplace and e-commerce but these two are different from each other. The basic difference between the two is that the marketplace can sell the products of different vendors to the customers, while e-commerce is allowed to sell products of a single vendor to multiple customers.

Advantages of Online Marketplace

The online marketplace offers you a variety of benefits over the offline marketplace. Due to plenty of business support, most of the people are opting for online marketplace. Some of them are mentioned below:

Availability: The reach of the online market is beyond the limit. You can connect with people from anywhere in the world. The offline market is available only to the nearby people whereas the online marketplace is open for all irrespective of their location.

Accessibility: The online market is available 24/7. The online marketplace is not restricted with a time limit. Anyone can access the market at any suitable time. Whether it is day or night you can continue with your work.

Comparison: Customers can compare the prices or any other features without going physically to different stores. Everything can be accessed online with your devices. It will help them to make a better choice.

Low Expenses: Online platforms reduce the other extra expenses that are needed in the physical business. If you are thinking of setting up an offline store, other things like renting a room, building a team, etc is needed. When opting for an online marketplace, the headache of these additional expenses are reduced.

Profit: Choosing an online marketplace is more profitable than the offline business. It directly cut off the extra set up cost along with the additional charges. This in turn with more profit.

Scalability: The online marketplaces are a more scalable form of business. The chances of growing online marketplace are more. It grows fast and dynamically. It also attracts many customers as people are shifting more towards the online platforms.

Challenges involved when creating an Online Marketplace

We have discussed several advantages as well as the beneficial services offered by the online marketplace. But this advantage is not easily accessible to all. This involves a lot of challenges. While shifting towards this marketplace, one has to be well prepared for the different consequences that will occur in the path. Some of the challenges when creating an online marketplace are as follows:

Security: The basic need which everyone wants in their business is security. Nothing in the online platforms is completely secure and so is the online marketplace. Data security is the ultimate issue while working in the online marketplace.

Ranking: When you create and launch a new marketplace, you may face the problem that the platform is not well known and recognized. Your platform will survive in the market if it has proper ranking. This can only be achieved when people are well aware of your platform. Hence, proper branding of your platform is another important issue arising in the online marketplace.

Cart Abandonment: High cart abandonment rates are one of the most common problems while dealing in the online marketplace as about 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. There are many possible reasons for this issue but the main identified reason can be the poor user experience.

Choosing the Correct Path: Before setting the platform one must be clear about the plans and process of the business. Targeting the correct audience also affects your business process. Meeting company’s and customer’s needs is the prime factor. Choosing the correct development path is important to carry out the entire business process easily and efficiently.

Customer Retention: Making new customers is as important as keeping the old customer engaged. Making new customers at the rate of losing the old ones is not a good indication. Customer turnover will affect your platform and hence it is required to maintain a good relationship status with the customers.

Hard Work: Apart from the above mentioned issues and challenges, the online marketplace requires extra work and strength. Only deciding the path to the marketplace is not enough. Working in an online marketplace is not as easy as it appears; it does require lots of energy and time to get fruitful results.

Possible Solutions to the Challenges

There is no issue in the world that cannot be resolved. Yes, it can take more time and hard work, but at last you can do it. If you are interested in setting an online marketplace but afraid of the different challenges involved, then you need not to worry. There are some options which will help you to overcome the challenges easily.
Some of them are:

• Make your services more engaging and personalized. These will attract more customers making them stay rather than leaving the platform. Higher customers engaged, higher profit you will experience.
• Make sure your service offers a more easy, convenient and enjoyable user experience. If the process is lengthy or complicated, it will degrade your platform. Good user experience should be the center of your work.
• Starting your own blog, consulting brand advocates, seeking help from social media, etc can be done to promote and rank your website. Good ranking will be beneficial for your site to fight the unwanted difficulties of the online marketplace.
• Prefer good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to boost your market value. Various tools are required to add worth to your site that can be availed through different SEO practices.
• In order to achieve various business goals, you can opt for SaaS (Software as a Service). The SaaS is responsible for offering on-demand software services to the customers. Therefore, it will be a good choice to enhance your business process in less period of time.
• One should take proper care of customer’s queries. All the questions as well as queries of consumers need to be responded to. Therefore, your site must contain a customer guide page. Make it easy for customers to contact you.

The prerequisite any business person needs is the safe, secure, reliable and convenient platform to carry out proper customer and seller relationships. This need is properly fulfilled by the online marketplace. Apart from various challenges, there can be a drastic shift towards the online marketplace because of the goodness it offers to the people. By seeing the growing importance, the online marketplace is considered as the future of marketing.

I hope the above given article would be helpful for you to understand different aspects of online marketplace. So before going to choose an online marketplace, you should go through different challenges as well as solutions involved in the process.