Digital marketplaces help you provide the personalization customers expect, and in today’s crowded e-commerce space, customer experience has never been more important. Projections are that global e-commerce sales will surpass $7 trillion by 2025. While web shops are essential for businesses, digital marketplaces take simple selling to the next level by giving businesses more ways to connect with customers.
With a B2B or B2C marketplace, you benefit from an ecosystem of buyers and sellers. On this platform, buyers can search for products, see product descriptions and reviews, and make purchases, while sellers can list their products and take orders.
Developing your digital marketplace should be an ongoing process that allows you to stay flexible by working with your marketplace partners to offer a variety of products and services to your customers. Here are some best practices to take full advantage of digital marketplace opportunities.
Beyond window shopping
Business customers are consumers too and want things on demand and with the convenience of a one-stop shop. For example, if a customer wants a service that is not part of your core business, such as a cybersecurity add-on, you can still offer the service from one of the companies in your supplier network. Businesses of all sizes can offer subscription-based services to their customers and offer third-party add-ons and integrations.
Customers benefit from being able to pay as needed for the technology they use. T-Mobile, for example, offers Netflix along with connectivity services in one bill. In B2B you can pay a monthly fee for a PC, the software and other products. Workplace-as-a-Service (WaaS) is a cloud-based service that offers companies a virtual work environment that can be accessed from anywhere. Business customers receive a shopping experience tailored to their needs with the convenience of only paying with one supplier.
When building your digital marketplace, the customer should be at the heart of your strategy – what do your customers want and what are the needs of the customer base you are trying to attract? The difference between a simple online shop and a digital marketplace lies in customer loyalty and the lifetime value of the customer relationship. Subscription plans generally promote longer customer retention and allow you to proactively solve customer challenges and anticipate their future needs.
Paired with artificial intelligence, a digital marketplace helps you analyze data about customer purchases and usage patterns to better understand your customers’ needs and preferences. According to a survey by Bain & Company, most companies are using AI tools to monitor and improve the customer experience.
How would you like your customers to interact with your business from the start? A common mistake is to fill your catalog with the “best sellers” and biggest names and hope for the best. A catalog must be carefully composed and focused on the needs of your customers.
Automation = speed and agility
Another common mistake companies make is to design their marketplaces from a unique perspective and with easy transactions in mind. This is where companies can get stuck. When implementing a digital marketplace, you want to be scalable. Prepare to grow and evolve with your marketplace strategy over the long term, with digital commerce being a big part of your business.
It is important to automate and integrate processes early on. The digital marketplace is the trading engine at the forefront, but you need technology on the backend to run everything efficiently. The more add-ons you offer from other providers, the more complex it can become to manage subscriptions.
Cloud platform providers, also known as Marketplace Operation Applications (MOAs), provide the technology to enable digital marketplaces. They enable marketplace operators to manage processes such as seller onboarding, product catalogs, and billing and provisioning. With your subscriptions, you are in constant contact with your customers from a billing perspective and have the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell and stay in the customers’ minds. Automation helps ensure a seamless customer experience.
Rely on digital ecosystems
Trying to build a digital marketplace yourself would take too long and internal resources would be blocked by manual processes. When you reach out to an experienced MOA, you get a pre-built architecture and a diverse network of companies that you may be able to work with to open up new markets and expand your reach.
From B2B services to mobility and travel to healthcare and housing, industries work together as digital ecosystems. When it comes to the digital marketplace, the post-in-cart experience and throughout the customer lifecycle is where a digital ecosystem delivers the most value.
By integrating the delivery of these products and services, you can diversify your catalog in an efficient and cost-effective way. The value of the ecosystem is that it can simplify connections between vendors through a centralized experience: one company is not responsible for creating new infrastructure to support different products, all participants in the digital ecosystem have something to offer.
The key is to continue to transform your digital marketplace, using customer service as a driving force. Digital marketplaces help you build long-term relationships with your customers using subscription-based or pay-per-use models that offer a variety of product combinations. You’re never done building your marketplace if you want to stay agile and encourage customer loyalty. With a customer-centric strategy, automation, and a mature digital ecosystem, you’ll be better positioned to meet your customers’ needs now and in the future.
Jess Warrington leads CloudBlue’s sales and pre-sales team in North America and is responsible for CloudBlue’s overall go-to-market strategy in the region. CloudBlue partners with the world’s leading service providers such as T-Mobile, CDW, Lenovo, Telefonica and Telstra to name a few to enable them by providing a technology solution to automate end-to-end digital delivery , to scale in the digital economy chain and enables the interconnection of ecosystems. Warrington has been working with global companies for more than 15 years to enable their digital advancement and increase their value for their end customers and the market.
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