What is a Marketplace site?

One common development request that we recieve here at Sunrise Integration is for the creation of a Marketplace site or to extend marketplace features into an existing platform. A marketplace is single location or platform that features products from different shops, while directing checkout to a single, easy process.  For example, Amazon is an example of a (huge) marketplace platform that aggregates sellers from all over the world. If you're looking to showcase products from multiple merchant shops on your platform, then creating a marketplace is what you need. Shopify has recently released a new Marketplace Kit of API services that allow for the development of these sites. Let's review how Sunrise Integration can develop a marketplace for your business.

A marketplace site typically features various products and categories from different shops and display them all on a single platform where buyers can browse on one location. Since products can originate from different stores, it's important for the marketplace to maintain the proper product details and inventory to ensure a successful checkout. With the release of the new Marketplace Kit, Shopify has empowered developers to create these sites using new API and checkout services.

Creating a Marketplace on Shopify

In order to properly manage the products, we start by creating a Sales Channel app for your marketplace. Your participating merchants would install this app within their Shopify store thus granting access to their store's product details. The merchants then publish the products that they want to share from their store. The main Channel app aggregates the products and details into a central channel that displays the products on the marketplace platform. Creating a Sales Channel app does require API programming and development so contact Sunrise Integration when you're ready to start building your service.

Creating the Storefront

You'll want each associated product (store) within your marketplace to have a dedicated page. This allows each of your merchants to have unique branded details within your marketplace. We can accomplish this by creating a unique domain/path for each page to display all of the products on a single location. This would typically look something like:

www.your-domain.com/shops/cool-shoes

www.your-domain.com/shops/hip-hats

www.your-domain.com/shops/joe-store

Now each of the connected shop details and products are featured on a single page in your marketplace. As customers browse your marketplace, they simply add the products to the cart and checkout on your store. The real magic is happening behind the scenes using the Shopify API. The Channel app is pulling product details and pricing information from each of the connected stores. Your marketplace cart contains all of the selected products from the different shops. This allows buyers to select various items for purchase while continuing to browse on your marketplace. They don't have to leave your site to view or purchase the products. Customers shop for products and checkout on your platform. This increases customer satisfaction and sale conversion.

Extending Marketplace Services outside of Shopify

These great marketplace features aren't just limited to your Shopify storefront. The Sunrise Integration team can add these great marketplace ecommerce features to any platform. Using Shopify's foundational tech stack, we can leverage the APIs, webhooks, and UI components to bring a full-featured marketplace to your platform or app. Buyers purchase products from your marketplace and complete their checkout on the merchant's store while the merchant fulfills the order. Your platform bills merchants for sales made on the marketplace.

Connecting and Creating with the Shopify Marketplace Kit

Sunrise Integration can help add commerce to your platform and open up a world of new Shopify merchants with the Marketplace Kit collection of APIs. The Marketplace Kit leverages Shopify's commerce features and connects your platform to millions of merchants and their products. We can connect your platform and users to external Shopify merchants and their products. The development process involves integrating and programming using various API services from Shopify so contact Sunrise Integration to ensure you have an expert team in your corner.