Vendor-Administered Marketplace
This project came to us with a request to turn the standard Multi-Vendor Ultimate edition into a conglomerate of vendor-administered sites. By its concept, vendors should be granted the rights to manage their standalone storefronts. That was a completely new model implying creation of a new entity - vendor storefront administrators. One modification entailed other changes in the platform functionality and look-and-feel.
BUSINESS AREA
SERVICES
LOCATION
Challenges
Create new entity, vendor storefront administrator
Integrate new design for homepage and product detail page on desktop
Integrate SMS service
Develop a Quick Order Creation functionality
Design mobile app for vendors
Provide Cloud hosting services
Implementing the project
Here we’ll tell you how we customized the project to improve its efficiency and functionality.
New entity
We created a new entity which are storefront admins who have their own privileges and capabilities within the system. This implied cutting the rights of the main administrator. Now, vendors are not just administrators of their mini stores, but rather storefront owners.
Vendor mobile application design
The other request meant developing a mobile app for storefront admins for ease of management from a mobile phone. They should be able to create orders, add products, and communicate with users via mobiles. We developed detailed mockups first, so it was easy to implement the customer idea.
Desktop design integration
The store owner asked us to change the appearance of the home and the product detail page on the desktop to improve the overall view and add more consistency in design of different storefronts. So, we worked out a design considering the fact the project has several independent storefronts. The general style of each storefront was implemented in unique colors. But the overall design remained consistent.
The look of the detail page is now the same for all vendor-administered sites.
Quick Order creation
Time matters. Especially in the eCommerce business. For this marketplace, it was crucial to create orders on the fly to process more orders. We developed a functionality for quick order creation from the admin panel. Our developers removed from the order creation page a step that requires adding an item for vendors who want to sell a service. This rule is valid for one-time services or for services that are not prescribed for a product. For example, a customer buys a table and wants a reseller to assemble it for extra payment. This service is absent on the marketplace. But with the new modification, if the client requests such a service, it can be quickly created. In this case, the price is entered manually, and the quantity will be 1 by default. The vendor can also enter the name of an item which is not present on the marketplace. If so, the product will be created automatically. Then, the vendor sends a link to pay for the order: email or sms.That is: an order for a new item/service is created. The client gets a link for payment on the checkout page with preliminary filled in fields. The only thing remaining for the customer is to pay.
Category slider
The marketplace is rich with product categories. Thus, their quick navigation through them was an acute need. We developed a slider for displaying the root categories. When the user clicks a product category, he or she is automatically scrolled down to the category slider. Customers can switch between categories with the slider. It greatly improves the user experience on the site.
SMS service integration
To enhance security of the site, we developed an add-on that adds two-factor authentication when entering the administration panel. After filling in the username and password to access the admin panel, the administrator enters the code from SMS. Thus, only authorised administrators who correctly filled in the code can access the dashboard.
Result
A vendor-focused marketplace with awesome administration capabilities, consistent design of all storefronts, and a handy quick order creation function.
