What is the Purpose of a Marketplace Business?
An online marketplace is simply a type of e-business site where multiple different third party vendors offer product or service information. These businesses do not have physical storefronts on the physical location that you see in shopping malls and many different types of websites are set up on the Internet for business purposes. Many of these websites are referred to as digital open markets, which basically means that they operate like conventional markets with sales and other financial processes taking place between buyers and sellers on the internet. Online marketplaces tend to be the most common form of multichannel commerce and are a great way to streamline the manufacturing process.
In order to understand what a marketplace consists of it helps to take a look at how people normally shop. In a typical marketplace you will find that there are salespeople who visit the front of your store and go directly to the products or services that they wish to purchase. The more organized and comprehensive the marketplace the more likely this to be the case, however it is also true that you may only need one person to do all the buying for you and they can come in and help the other customers with their items. The reason for this is that the marketplace is quite likely powered by an online payment system such as PayPal. The buyer then enters their credit card details once they have decided on the items that they wish to purchase and the seller sends the transaction to the purchaser.
This transaction is usually sent through to the vendor’s website and the transaction is completed. At this point the website informs the buyer that the goods have been sold. Several marketplaces then allow the user to log in and make new comments and ask questions about the items that they had bought. Some marketplaces also allow users to leave their feedback about the products that they have bought. All of these interactions that take place between buyers and sellers on the marketplace are known as third-party interactions.
The key to successful selling on these marketplaces lies in being able to establish a good reputation and creating trust between the seller and the buyer. These two key ingredients are all important for a thriving business. There are several different ways that a seller can do this, however a practical guide to online communities will focus on building community within the marketplace itself. Building trust within the marketplace is very much part and parcel of the process of community-building and is a vital process of how to sell goods on the Internet.
A practical guide to online communities will tell you that this is usually done by establishing a blog on the platform that you are using to operate your marketplace business. Many marketplaces have their own blog or network of blogs that people can join. If you have not yet set up your blog, you should consider doing so immediately. This is a great way to establish a presence within your marketplace, providing you with a method of communicating with the rest of your community-building peers. Once you have posted to your blog, you should invite others to visit it. By leaving comments on other users’ blogs you will be able to build your network of peers and potential customers who will be interested in what you have to offer.
It is important that you remember that just because a marketplace has a presence on one of the social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn does not mean that it is an effective marketing platform for your product. Marketplaces exist for the sole purpose of making money. While it is possible to make sales from these platforms, it is more often the case that the marketplace owner uses these platforms as a source of communication and information for his or her customer base. In order to be successful at use the tools provided by these types of sites as part of your community-building efforts, you should also work hard to make yourself available for your customers and maintain an active presence on each of the platforms.
