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The Virto brand is well known in the software market, primarily as the vendor of an advanced B2B ecommerce platform. Many respected brands use Virto for their B2B ecommerce activity.
“In 2021, Virto Commerce software
was included in Gartner's 2021 Digital Commerce
with an Honorable Mention.
”
The most illustrative example of using the Virto Marketplace platform is when a company already has a B2B online store and wants to expand its sales opportunities by inviting partners and third-party sellers to promote and sell products on its website, turning a mono-brand online store into a marketplace.
The first step we see in such cases is when a company from the B2B sector simply adds some pages with a description of partner products to the website. Generally, these descriptions do not have product attributes and are often displayed without even a price.
Obviously, placing partner product descriptions on the vendor website is just an exchange of links, not a marketplace. Prospects are invited to go to the partner's website and submit their request there. The maximum benefit a vendor receives is the ability to track the number of visitors continuing on to a partner's website. You will never know, however, if that customer bought a product from the partner or not. Accordingly, you cannot count on commissions.
You can find other illuminating examples of electrical engineering and mechanical engineering at vendor portals. Their partners are listed on their website, with relevant offerings like project documentation and professional services for the maintenance of machines, etc.
Some partners also build their physical products based on the vendor's components, like assembling electrical cabinets from the vendor’s relays and switches. But for customers, there are no actual prices, no product or service specs, and no ability to place the order and pay.
Take note of another rapidly growing niche for online marketplaces. Many IT companies are interested in building their application ecosystem as a marketplace. Such a marketplace is intended to sell various add-on applications and digital services developed by third parties to expand the functionality of software products from the marketplace owner.
The truth is that many B2B vendors are interested in building a marketplace, but the ecommerce software they use is probably not capable of implementing this functionality. So SMB sellers are especially interested in expanding their customer base through the marketplace owned by a large vendor.
Now, as we have identified the market niche and target audience for our new product, including vendors, suppliers, implementation partners, and third-party sellers, let's see how Virto Marketplace works in more detail.
Virto Marketplace provides out-of-the-box support for ready-made business processes and workspaces for Marketplace Seller and Marketplace Operator. The functionality of the business processes is divided into two roles – the seller and the marketplace admin (also called the portal operator, i.e., the employee who manages the portal for the portal owner).
“Creating a marketplace from scratch is no problem.
”
Virto Commerce is a great place to begin your next project.
“If you need additional functionality, Virto Marketplace
can be extended with new functionality and business processesby integrating market-leading third-party applications.
”
“TheFeaturedCustomers rated the Virto Commerce platform a Rising Star
in the 2021 Headless eCommerce Platforms Category.
”
This review gives prospects better insight into which headless ecommerce platforms would work best for their business according to real customer preferences.
Virto Commerce has developed new packages and modules for Virto Marketplace to build out-of-the-box tools for Operator and Seller roles. The Operator (aka Admin) is the owner of the marketplace, and the Seller is the company or other body intended to sell their products on the marketplace.
The logical division into Seller and Operator packages allows for independent deployment of the solution, scaling (Scale Up and Scale Out), and development. Security requirements are paramount in the choice of such a scheme as well.
The solution also includes a new responsive Seller Portal with intuitive UX/UI for sellers to manage tasks.
b. Build the synchronization for products and variations (including offers, price lists, stock levels, etc.) from Virto Marketplace to the existing ecommerce solution. Then, products from the Sellers will become available in the ecommerce back end.
c. Build order synchronization from the ecommerce solution to Virto Marketplace. Orders must be synchronized to allow marketplace Sellers to process them. The marketplace receives the orders and passes them on to the Sellers.
d. Build order updates' synchronization from Virto Marketplace to the existing ecommerce solution. The purpose is to synchronize order updates from Virto Marketplace to the ecommerce solution and make this info available to end customers.
On the side of Buyers, marketplaces of any type provide greater business opportunities, a wider range of products, and competitive prices. Virto Marketplace allows you to build a very flexible and composable ecommerce solution, which includes a developer environment for customization and fine-tuning of the marketplace features.