19 March, 2024
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How a Demand was Turned into an Entrepreneurial Venture using our Marketplace Script?

What fueled the project?

The desperation of a team of people who set out to put an end to the hardships experienced by parents in getting their school going kids, the academic materials and stationeries they need. In short, it is the mission to help parents enjoy getting their kids ready for the upcoming academic year.

Idea behind

While ecommerce is helping millions of shopaholics to buy at their own convenience why not use the same mechanism to get a platform ready for finding academic materials for school kids?

How we made it?

While sketching for a solution, we drew help from our readymade script, Apptha Marketplace.  It is a ready-to-go solution to begin a multi seller store and so we created an online marketplace where textbook vendors and school stationery product sellers could get a seller account created and start selling academic materials online.

Thus, the long queues for buying textbooks were reduced to just clicks.

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While the base mechanism of Magento marketplace script got 50% of our job done, customizations were needed to perfect the website to the requirements of our client. Read on to walkthrough the customization phase

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Bulk Buys

For those who prefer to buy in big numbers we had the ‘Bulk Buys’ option integrated. This option will help those who like to procure in lot on behalf of organizations (ex: schools, coaching centers, Montessori etc). A form requesting the essential details of the procurer along with cart facility was created. Thus the marketplace script turned out to be the best spot for all kind of shopping preferences.

Book Donation

Considering our client’s philosophy of ‘Giving away what we do not need’ we had a special provision called ‘Donate old Books’ that encourages people to donate their unused and unwanted books. The idea was an instant hit and received remarkable response from textbook procurers and sellers too. This option helped schoolahead.com contribute to a social cause as well.

Product listing page with Ajax cart functionality

In order to provide a swift and easy shopping experience the brains behind schoolahead.com asked for speedy cart page loading. To achieve this we used AJAX loading technique which reduced the need for a full page reload. Any product if added to cart will be added instantly and a real-time pop-up was designed to indicate the list of products being added to cart.

Multi-level category hierarchy

Segmenting a variety of products is a tedious task and it was even more tedious when textbooks and stationery products came into play. The website needed classifications to be done in a variety of angles, for instance, board of education, standard, so on and so forth to provide a better clarity for customers while searching for products.

For providing a solution to this confusion we created multi-level category hierarchy tree which conveniently listed all the products without clutter.

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Design customization for marketplace theme

Though the website looked perfect in our theme exclusively designed for the marketplace script, its founders had their own color preferences. Our design team was instant in responding to their requirements and got the polishing works done in quick time.

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The beneficiary

What started as a grievance of parents who found it hard to find academic materials for kids was turned into a business venture. Schoolahead is now one of the sought after marketplace websites for buying academic materials for school kids. Adding more to it, the convenience which the website offers to sellers and popularity of the website are encouraging more vendors to enroll in the marketplace.

Marketplace script

Alex Sam is a digital marketer by choice & profession. He munches on topics relating to technology, eCommerce, enterprise mobility, Cloud Solutions and Internet of Things. His other interests lies in SEO, Online Reputation Management and Google Analytics. Follow Me Socially: Habr , Dev.to & Viblo .

18 Comments

  1. Patricia Anderson Reply

    Absolutely a fine case presentation for marketplace script. Sure, this presentation will be very helpful to the new customers who want to vouch. I’ve been in magento development and tracking all your new blogs. I will expect more in future.

    1. ramanathan Reply

      Hi Patricia,
      Thanks for reading. This is how we customize our products to meet specific client requirements. You’ll see more such blogs soon.

  2. atul Reply

    Hello Apptha Team,

    Well presentation and good write up. The customized design also looks great. In future, I need such requirements for starting marketplace store.

    Apart from magento, is there any other CMS platform available to build it?

  3. Stephen Reply

    It would be great to see that the ready-made package script turns into a big ecommerce store. To build marketplace store takes time and effort for such a store like schoolahead.

  4. Anatoly Lebedev Reply

    Hello Apptha,

    Even I want to build a marketplace store for my new online business and I am aware that marketplace software comes with basic package and I want to customize with dedicated team to fulfill my requirements.

    I will provide some rough figures based on the requirements. Is it possible to build with this software?

    1. Ramanathan Reply

      Dear Anatoly,

      Thanks for your question here. The script which is 100% customizable and our dedicated apptha developers will work on all of your requirements.

      With your given contact our team will reach you soon!

      Cheers!!!

  5. Adam Thomas Reply

    Very cool software, I am interested in purchasing. How does the software work with regard to shipping integrations for sellers? In other words, can a seller trying to fulfill an order purchased on the marketplace software use shipstation or any other shipping vendor?

    1. Ramanathan Reply

      By default in Marketplace software, the sellers will manage manually their shipping. After completing shipping, the seller will enter the details of shipping name and tracking ID of the shipment made in his/her dashboard. This is the manual process done in apptha’s marketplace software. Apart from this, we can also integrate third party’s shipping gateways like ARAMEX etc under customization. This customization will take additional timeline along with the cost for doing the same.

  6. Michael Sanford Reply

    Hello Apptha,

    I would like to build a marketplace store for downloadable ebook like products. Is it able to build with your script. If yes, contact me to discuss.

    Regards,
    Michael Sanford

    1. Ramanathan Reply

      Hi Michael,

      It’s pleasure to receive your request, with apptha’s marketplace script you can able to switch it as a downloadable products.

      One of our executives will be in touch with you for more detailed explanations.

      Thanks!

  7. Semir Negasi Reply

    I am looking out marketplace script for downloadable digital products with multiple sellers. Can, I make use of this script to explore a downloadable marketplace store?

  8. Diana Vanhoutte Reply

    I’ve got some ideas to build a marketplace website. I’m interested with your customer testimonial and if any one from your team can reach me to elaborate this in detail for making multi vendor store theme for me.

    I look forward to seeing.

    Thanks
    -Diana

    1. Ramanathan Reply

      Dear Diana,

      It’s pleasure to hear your interest on marketplace business. One of our executives from apptha will reach you shortly to explain all about this readymade marketplace script for building your marketplace store.

      Cheers!

  9. Chris Lynam Reply

    I need to replace my magento store into marketplace store. Is it possible to transform a fully controlled multi vendor marketplace store with this marketplace script?

    1. Ramanathan Reply

      Dear Chris,

      This is possible with apptha’s marketplace script. You can get this marketplace extension and install it in your existing magento admin panel and easily start you multi vendor store. If need assistance our live support team will help you out. For queries add your comment below or visit apptha and chat with our live experts.

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