A quick global scan will reveal that the top eCommerce companies are multivendor stores. Compared to solo online shops, multivendor websites offer added versatility in terms of,

• The total number of products
• Online presence and authority
• The ease and simplicity of setting up shop on the internet

So how do these e-Commerce websites are able to provide such features?

The answer lies in Plugins and Addons. 

In order to provide a more fulfilling user experience, you require addons that equally benefit customers, vendors and admins. The plugins make it possible for admins and their sellers to conduct their businesses with relative ease.

Being one of the top multivendor marketplace plugins for WooCommerce we understand the importance of such features and proudly introduce the newly upgraded WC Marketplace.

The new 3.5 version includes a bunch of new features, including those the WC Multivendor Marketplace community has been asking for some time.

Here is what you can expect from the new WCMp v3.5:

1. Refund Management System
2. Question and Answers Email Notifications
3. Announcement Notifications
4. Product Notes
5. Vendor Report
6. Buddypress Compatibility

Lastly, stick till the end of the blog to read up on some Additional Features we have in store for future releases.

Refund Management System

The Refund Management System is the newest feature that we are introducing in our existing list of services. 

Our WCMp Community has been asking for this for a very long time, and we are happy to announce that it’s finally here.

Refunds are a crucial feature of any online marketplace. Would you buy an online product without a refund assurance?

Surely you have witnessed a friend asking for refunds because the product wasn’t to their liking. You could’ve asked for refund yourself and must be privy to the importance of this feature.

Customers can come up with plenty of reasons to return your merchandise, such as,

• Products descriptions failing to match customer’s requirements upon receiving the item
• Incorrect dimensions
• Wong product received
• Product no longer required by the customer
• Confusion as to how the product works
• Product not working

Your top priority is to ensure customer satisfaction and brand loyalty and our revamped return management system helps you achieve that with ease and more.

With this feature, you can start selling refunded items relatively quickly and get the maximum possible value out of them. 

The painstaking days of refund management are finally over as the new system ensures,

• Lower Turnaround time (TAT) resulting in instant communication between customers and vendors
• Customer satisfaction thanks to a reliable means of communication
• A more simplified and user-friendly approach towards handling refund requests.

Questions and Answers Email Notifications

Are you missing out on customer queries?

Wouldn’t it be convenient if you or your sellers were notified whenever a customer makes a query?

Well, WC Marketplace v3.5 might have a solution for that. 

We are introducing a new Email Notification feature in v3.5 that sends an email to your registered email-id, whenever a customer posts a question.

Prior to the update you had to login to your dashboard to see whether or not customers had asked any questions. This is a simple yet effective tool to stay informed about what’s going on with your marketplace. Upon activation you’ll receive

• Email notifications whenever someone asks a question about a product
• Embedded links within the email leading back to the question answer section of the dashboard.

The feature enables you to respond faster to customer queries, letting you to maintain an unbroken line of communication.

After choosing the question you can answer it in a popup box, just like the image below. 

As an added bonus, both admins and vendors can also approve or disapprove specific questions from appearing on the product page, making it less confusing for other customers with similar queries.

Announcement Notifications

Although our previous version of WC Marketplace already had this feature, there was no email support. Some admins even complained stating that sellers weren’t responding to their queries.

In reality, the sellers weren’t aware of any such requests in the first place. Needless to say, this gave rise to significant misunderstandings within the marketplace.

In an attempt to fix the issue we are finally releasing email support for the Announcement Notification feature in the new 3.5 release.

We have also added a new functionality. Previously admins didn’t have the option to choose specific sellers who will receive a notification. It was set to ‘All’ by default. 

However, now you can choose your sellers and make personalized announcements. The new feature grants your greater versatility over your marketplace. Sellers even receive an email notifying them of any 

Let’s take a look at a few cases where you can benefit from this upgrade.

• Congratulate your vendors upon reaching specified milestones such as making 10,000 sales.
• Address issues in a more professional way by sending them a personal notification instead of making the matter public to all sellers.

The added versatility offered by the feature enables you to build a loyal relationship with your sellers and convey information faster and in a more reliable way.

Here is an overview of the admin panel where you can compose personalized messages.

You can also keep track of you announcements here:

Once it’s sent, the respective seller receives an email informing him about the notification. You can also send an announcement to multiple chosen sellers, all of who will receive an email as well. 

Product Notes

Product notes are a brand new feature offering an efficient way to convey changes made to a seller’s product.

Imagine you’re running a marketplace, and one of your sellers introduces a new item. Now, what can you do if, in the past, you’ve had a bad experience with the said product?

Let’s consider you’re selling plant fertilizers. Last year, there was a brand of fertilizers that didn’t sell well. It killed a lot of plants, and customers hated the item.

You removed it from the shelves. However, one of the new sellers started selling the same item a few days ago.

You can send a note asking them to unlist the product or simply dismiss it yourself. The plugin automatically sends an email to the registered email address informing the seller about any action taken by you.

Here is a demonstration of from the admin’s end,

The product notes enable you to:

• Take instant action
• Provide a justification for any sudden changes you made to their listed items
• Unlist unwanted items and maintain an excellent reputation for your marketplace
• Keep the sellers informed about the quality of their products

Here is what it would appear from the seller’s end,

Vendor Report

Behind every successful product launch, business owners invest a considerable amount of resources on market analysis.

In today’s number-driven world, analytics is the driving force for any thriving marketplace. It enables you to make crucial decisions and scale your business through all sorts of hurdles.

That’s why we’ve decided to upgrade the Vendors Report plugin for WC Marketplace. Once you’ve upgraded to the latest version you can access additional information straight from your dashboard, including

• Overview of the sales
• Information on newly signed up sellers
• Information on newly added products

You can leverage this new-found information to

• Offer privileges, encouraging them to sell more
• Congratulate them on reaching a certain milestones
• Introduce other sellers selling similar products

You can do all sorts of things with these statistics, and the Vendor Report plugin allows you ample space for experimentation.

Here is an overview of the Vendor Report plugin which provides a central dashboard where you get an overview of the following:

• Net Sales amount
• No. of previous sellers who have signed up
• No. of products that require approval from the admin before they can hit the shelves
• Total earning from your sellers
• No. of sellers with pending registrations to become an authorized vendor
• The total amount of money your sellers are requesting as commission

Simply install the plugin and gain access to detailed sales reports, enabling you to understand the overall status of your marketplace and ensure business growth in the years to come.

Buddypress Compatibility

BuddyPress Compatibility helps to create a social community in your marketplace. It allows customers to view a seller’s profile and even follow them for the latest offers and products.

This way of bringing customers and sellers together is something we are happy to finally introduce into WC Multi-Vendor Marketplace.

Additional Benefits

For those of you who are still reading, we appreciate you sticking by till the end of the blog. As a reward here a sneak peek into some of the additional features aimed at enhancing your all over selling experience with WC Marketplace.

• A way of Regenerating Commission- Let’s assume you’re running a marketplace on a commission model, where you’re charging 7.5% on each sale. 

Now in the previous month your marketplace became quite popular in your niche. You even managed to attract new vendors to sell on your marketplace.

You might think that the huge influx of new sellers could be a great opportunity to raise your commission rate. You increase it from 7.5% to 10%.

Now what if customers have already bought items prior to the change? 

WC Marketplace calculates commission as soon as a customer completes a transaction. Wouldn’t it be great if you could apply the revised commission rates to older purchases.

Provided that you haven’t yet paid the sellers the new WCMp v3.5 allows you to apply new revised rates to already bought items.

• Refund Syncing with Parent Order- Customers often buy multiple items from different vendors all in a single order, regarded by WCMp as the Parent Order.

Let’s assume the customer bought two items from seller A and seller B. Once the customer completes the purchase, WCMp will create two ‘Suborders’ for each consecutive seller.

Prior to the launch of v.3.5, if the customer requested for a refund on one of the Suborders, the amount wouldn’t have reflected in the main ‘Order’ section.

However, with the new version, once a refund is initiated the amount will be updated under the respective ‘Parent order’, and keep the admin informed on the status of the order..

In addition to these features, WCMp v3.5 also introduces other benefits such as,

• Database query optimizations
• Additional filters and actions

Is all technical stuff, but if you’re interested, you can visit WCMp Github for a detailed explanation into the new features.

WC Marketplace is constantly trying to develop new features, by taking suggestions from the community and keeping up with latest developments in the field. Version 3.5 (https://multivendorx.com/latest-release/) is just the beginning of a long line of upgrades that we have planned for in the days to come.

Download WCMp today and become part of an ever-evolving journey within your niche and within the online multivendor eCommerce industry.