Multi Vendor Shopping Cart Software - A New Wave in Ecommerce

If your online store is struggling to get customers, the multi vendor shopping cart is worth a serious look. Instead of a single store, a mini plaza attracts more visitors. By combining the strengths of complementing vendors into one store, the buyers get a larger selection to choose from and all vendors stand to gain.

For example, your bookstore may consider partnering with a video store. Or, if you have a flower shop, you may consider joining with other merchants in the local area selling chocolates, wines or cards.

The significance of such mini plazas for individual businesses had been overlooked until recently. Most businesses thought of putting only their own products online and wait for traffic. This worked fine for some years, when the few with online stores had an advantage over their counterparts. The exponential growth in the number of online stores wiped off that advantage.

How can the advantage be regained ?

In today's intensely competitive online ecommerce field, combining with others to co-promote a site is vitally important. But, how do stores that once stood separately - like the boutique shops in a shopping mall - suddenly join together?

The multi-vendor shopping cart is the way! It helps you build a store that can accommodate products from different vendors. It can distinguish between the items belonging to different vendors and dispatch the orders and shipping details separately to the respective vendors. The customers will not even know that they have been to three separate stores.

Unlike a physical store - and rarely a single online store - a multi store can suggest to the customer that "many of those who purchased this item also purchased this!". It can be a product belonging to another vendor.

Taking the flower shop as example, a customer who just added a bunch of flowers into the cart may be persuaded to buy a box of chocolate, a bottle of wine or a card to go with the flowers. The customer benefits by having the convenience of ordering all together from the same online store. The vendors benefit by the natural cross selling.

Another advantage of multi stores is that, unlike in a single store situation, you do not have to complement your inventory with companion products you are not the expert in. For instance, a wine shop knows how to offer the best wines just as a flower shop knows flowers. By using them as a co-vendor, the flower shop can leverage on the wine shop's extensive inventory.

Mini plaza is an entrepreneur's opportunity

If you are an entrepreneur looking for new ideas to implement, this offers an excellent opportunity. Even if you do not have your own merchandize to sell, setting up a multi store and signing up merchants will help create a "mini plaza". The more vendors in the plaza, the more recurring revenue for the plaza owner. The participating merchants benefit in the low cost of setting up the store as well as from the cross selling opportunity.

The future of multi vendor stores

It is anticipated that within a couple of years you will see that most successful online businesses are part of one or more stores. These will be more prominent and widespread to serve local businesses - those which can physically work together. Many more mini virtual malls will emerge to cater for local businesses that work together.